Denier - Pepin the Short

Pépin III's monetary reform — typically dated to around 755 — broke from Merovingian tradition by standardizing the denier as the primary silver unit and bringing minting under royal rather than episcopal or aristocratic control. It was one of the earliest systematic attempts at monetary centralization in post-Roman Western Europe, and it laid the administrative groundwork that Charlemagne would later expand into a empire-wide system.

The Prou reference gap is telling: these early Carolingian pieces remain poorly systematized in the major catalogues, and attribution between mints is frequently contested.