Denier - Pepin the Short Meaux mint

Pépin the Short's monetary reform of 755 — sometimes cited as 754 — fundamentally restructured Frankish coinage by centralizing production under royal authority and standardizing the denier as the empire's primary silver unit. Before this intervention, minting rights had fragmented badly across ecclesiastical and aristocratic hands, producing a chaotic range of weights and purities. The Meaux attribution here is significant: the Seine-et-Marne region sat along critical trade routes northeast of Paris, making it a logical node for royal mint activity under the early Carolingians. Gariel's classification and Morrison's concordance both place this type firmly within Pépin's controlled issues rather than the transitional Merovingian-influenced series.