Tremissis - Chilperic I Vermand mint

Chilperic I, king of Neustria, was described by Bishop Gregory of Tours as "the Nero and Herod of our time" — a ruler more interested in tax extraction and theological argument than stable governance. His reign saw aggressive manipulation of the gold coinage, and contemporary sources specifically accuse him of debasing the tremissis by substituting inferior metal, an act that provoked direct complaints from his own subjects. Whether a given surviving piece reflects genuine fineness or that documented adulteration is rarely answerable without assay.

The Vermand attribution rests on workshop identification rather than any explicit mint signature — Merovingian tremisses of this period name moneyers, not mints.