A new blog post finally after a month absence due to some difficulty in getting some new additions to my collection. Particularly due to the vents happening globally right now. However, this month I have managed to attain some new medieval coins to add to my display case.
From the picture you can see two small silver coins from the Kingdom of Hungary. Both were minted under the King Sigismund I, who ruled Hungary from 1387 – 1437. There are no actual dates on the coins themselves, so the closest I can get is the reign of Sigismund himself. The coin on the left is a Dinar and weighs 0.17g, whilst the coin on the right is a Parvus and weighs just a measly 0.23g. You may also notice that the coins are quite small, especially when put in comparison to a penny. The dinar measures 13.5mm and the parvus is 11mm. Both are roughly 1mm thick.
Now Sigismund was not just the ruler of Hungary, but was also the King of Croatia (which was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary at this time), King of Germany, King of Bohemia, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor. But since the coins I got this month are from Hungary, I will just discuss a little history in regards to that part of his life.
Sigismund became king of Hungary in 1387 when his betrothed, Mary, on the death of her father, became Queen of Hungary. His kingship of Hungary was not peaceful, as he would spend the first nine years after his coronation in a ceaseless struggle to keep hold of the title as the Kingdom itself was very unstable.
Much of the struggle came from trying arrest power back from the local elite who had been administering much of Hungary. Sigismund had paid over much of the power the Kingship held to the local nobility to keep them loyal when he ascended the throne. The restoration of the authority of the central administration took decades of work. The bulk of the nation headed by the House of Garai was with him; but in the southern provinces between the Sava and the Drava rivers, the Horvathys with the support of King Tvrtko I of Bosnia, Mary’s maternal uncle, proclaimed as their king Ladislaus, King of Naples, son of the murdered Charles II of Hungary. It was not until 1395, that the pressure from these nobles had been suppressed
Numismatic Exploits 