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Penny anonymous St. Edmund Memorial coinage
| Issuer | East Anglia, Kingdom of |
|---|---|
| Year | 885-915 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 1.45 g |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A small plain cross pattée is displayed at the centre of a beaded inner circle, a motif standard on Anglo-Saxon and Danelaw pennies of the period. Surrounding the inner circle is a beaded border enclosing the moneyer's legend in retrograde or abbreviated Latin characters. The outer legend records the name of the moneyer responsible for striking the coin, reading BOTECN, interpreted as Bosecin. The overall design is spare and functional, consistent with the anonymous memorial penny series struck in East Anglia under Danelaw authority. The flan is irregular and the strike shows characteristic unevenness of hand-hammered late ninth- to early tenth-century coinage. |
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| Reverse lettering | BOTECN (Translation: Bosecin.) |
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| Additional information |
Edmund, King of East Anglia, was killed by the Great Heathen Army in 869 — bound to a tree, shot with arrows, and beheaded — and was venerated as a martyr almost immediately. This coinage, struck by anonymous moneyers across the Danelaw roughly fifteen to forty years after his death, is historically extraordinary: a pagan-controlled territory producing coins commemorating a Christian king its own rulers had killed. The Danes who now governed East Anglia apparently found the cult of Edmund too politically entrenched to suppress, and possibly useful to legitimize their own administration.
Output from multiple moneyers working across different centers means die links within the series are complex and still not fully resolved.