Tag: #Italy

Striking gold in Italy

Recently there has been news of an exciting new find in northern Italy.  In the small town of Como, workers working on the abandoned theatre there discovered a small amphora dating roughly from the 5th century AD.  What is more interesting is that the amphora was filled with roughly 300 gold coins in relatively good condition.  It was the presence of these coins which allowed archaeologists to determine the rough date when the amphora was deposited.  News of the find was issued by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

The official statement, along with many of the issued photo’s can be found here. All in the original Italian.

The Roman Empire during this period was facing a series of crises, a lot more dire than those which happened two centuries earlier.  By this point the empire had split into two.  With the thriving Eastern half of the empire being centred on Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), and historians often referring to it as the Byzantine empire.  The Western half instead was collapsing and centred on Rome, and would face several invasions by Germanic tribes in the 5th century.  Rome would be sacked by the Goths in 410AD, and again in 455AD by the Vandals.  The Western half of the empire officially came to an end in 476AD when the then emperor, Romulus Augustulus, abdicated.

Justinian I, of the Byzantine empire, attempted to reclaim some of the lands in Italy during the 6th century, but his successors were unable to keep a hold onto them, as raids and invasions by the Lombards (another Germanic tribe) increased significantly after Justinian’s death in 565AD. The Lombards eventually gradually asserted their own control over Italy until 774AD when Charlemagne conquered the area and integrated Italy into the Frankish empire.

Collection Update Feb ’18

So after the last few months of exploring the coins of Asia, we return westwards to more familiar grounds and explore some coins from Italy.  The coins I have acquired date from the early 19th century during the tumultuous phase when Italy underwent several social and political revolutions which culminated in the unification of the disparate Italian states into the Kingdom of Italy in 1871, when Rome was made the capital of the new country.

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Going from left to right in the picture there is a 6 Tornesi piece (1801) from the Kingdom of Naples (a much clearer picture can be found here).  In the middle is a 5 Quattrini (1826) from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.  Finally on the far right, we have a 1 Soldo (1866) from the Papal States.

Since the fall of Rome, the Italian peninsula was divided amongst a lot of independent states which despite their close geographic position, it is often debated whether they really shared a similar culture.  Thus there was no real calls for unification.  That however changed when Napoleon invaded Italy and created the Kingdom of Italy in the North.  This quickly reverted back in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna when Napoleon was defeated.  Overall,  Italy could be split into five geographical areas.  The ultra-conservative Kingdom of Naples in the South, the theocratic Papal states in the centre.  The Austrian Empire controlled much of the North-East, and exerted control over the remaining central states of Tuscany, Parma and Modena, whilst in the North West was the only truely independent state of Sardinia, also known as Piedmont.

In 1848, there were a series of revolutions across Europe.  In Italy, revolutionaries in Milan and Venice rose up against the Austrians, Sicilians fought for independence from Naples, and in Rome they declared a Republic.  The Roman Republic was led by Giuseppe Mazzini who had founded a revolutionary group called the Young Italians and had been launching insurrections for years.

Unfortunately, in a short time the rebellions had been crushed.  Austrian’s defeated the uprisings, Neapolitans crushed the Sicilians, and French troops were sent to Rome to reinstate the Pope (they would remain in the city for some time).  This period was known as the First Italian war for Independence, and it ultimately failed.  However, it allowed the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II to position himself to lead the unification movement.

To try and gain powerful allies, in the 1850’s, he sent troops to the Crimea to fight alongside the British and the French against the Russians.  Eventually Napoleon III of France came to their aid for two reasons.  First to gain prestige and hopefully weaken the Austrian Empire, and second, in 1858 he survived an assassination attempt by an Italian revolutionary, and by allying with the Kingdom of Sardinia, hoped to curb this sort of activity.  Piedmont ceded the regions of Nice and Savoy to France, and the alliance was cemented.  They both attacked Austria in April 1858, starting the Second War of Italian Independence.  They were victorious against the Austrians, and gained further help from the central states of Tuscany, Parma and Modena who had subsequently ousted their pro-Austrian leaders.  Piedmont annexed Lombardy, and the central states that helped in the war voted to join the Kingdom.

Shortly after this victory, Guiseppe Garibaldi (a famed revolutionary who had fought in Europe and South America) was persuaded by other revolutionaries to launch the invasion Sicily.  He managed to gather a thousand volunteers, and limited support from the British.  In the 1860’s he sailed for Sicily and slowly fought his way North.  He entered Naples to much celebration and hoped to push on further to Rome.  He was further pursuaded by Victor Emmanuel to stop, because French troops were still stationed in the city.  So Garibaldi handed over his southern conquests to Victor Emmanuel, and the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861 (minus the cities of Venice and Rome).  Italy would gain Venice in 1866 when it was handed over to France to keep them neutral during the brief war Austria fought against Germany during Bismarck’s attempts to make Germany the greater German power.  France quickly turned the city over to Italy.

Italy would not gain the city of Rome until 1870.  During this year Germany invaded France kick-starting the Franco-Prussian war.  Germany’s speedy gains in the war forced the French to withdraw the troops they had stationed in Rome, allowing the Italians to simply march in.  In 1871, Rome was declared the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy, and the unification of the country was complete.  Although joined together politically; culturally and economically, the new kingdom had many problems to overcome.