Denier - Pepin the Short Paris mint

Pépin III deposed the last Merovingian king in 751 with papal blessing — the first Frankish ruler to be anointed by the Church — and his coinage reform followed directly from that political rupture. The Paris mint, operating under royal authority rather than the fragmented episcopal and comital control that characterized late Merovingian issues, produced this denier as part of a deliberate standardization effort that his son Charlemagne would later expand into the dominant monetary system of medieval Europe.

The weight standard represented here — lighter than the Merovingian sceat tradition — reflects Pépin's 755 reform, which reorganized the Frankish pound into 22 solidi of 12 deniers each.