Berengar I held the Italian throne in name more than in practice — his reign was punctuated by Magyar invasions that devastated the Po Valley repeatedly after 899, and by 905 he had lost and partially recovered his grip on the kingdom. This third coinage series, struck at Pavia, the traditional Lombard and Carolingian royal mint, was issued during that turbulent stretch between his imperial coronation in 915 and the years immediately preceding it, when asserting monetary authority was itself a political act.
Pavia remained the only functioning royal mint in the regnum Italiae through this period.
Berengar I held the Italian throne in name more than in practice — his reign was punctuated by Magyar invasions that devastated the Po Valley repeatedly after 899, and by 905 he had lost and partially recovered his grip on the kingdom. This third coinage series, struck at Pavia, the traditional Lombard and Carolingian royal mint, was issued during that turbulent stretch between his imperial coronation in 915 and the years immediately preceding it, when asserting monetary authority was itself a political act.
Pavia remained the only functioning royal mint in the regnum Italiae through this period.