Denier - Pepin the Short Chartres mint, RP

Pépin III seized the Frankish throne in 751 by deposing the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, with papal backing — a transaction that reshaped the political architecture of Western Europe and demanded immediate coinage reform to legitimize the new dynasty. The Chartres mint, operating under episcopal authority, was among the workshops tasked with producing deniers to that end. Pépin's monetary reforms, consolidating weight and silver content across Frankish minting centers, laid the direct groundwork for Charlemagne's better-documented overhaul of 793–794.

The RP mint signature on this piece — read as a retrograde or abbreviated workshop mark — is catalogued by Gariel but absent from Prou, a gap that reflects how inconsistently these early Carolingian provincial issues were documented in the nineteenth century.