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+--- Thread: Article What are medieval English coins doing in an excavation in Rome? (travels in history) (/thread-21519.html)
What are medieval English coins doing in an excavation in Rome? (travels in history) - C C - Oct 8, 2026
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-are-medieval-english-coins-doing-in-rome-they-could-be-rare-evidence-of-a-little-england-enclave-that-received-special-papal-privileges-180989625/
EXCERPTS: A hoard of medieval coins unearthed in Rome could be the first physical evidence of an English neighborhood that once thrived near the Vatican.
[...] Though its exact size remains unknown, the neighborhood was located within the walled-in district between the Vatican and the Tiber River known as the Leonine City. Founded in the eighth century, the Schola Saxonum was a hub for English pilgrims traveling to Rome. The researchers also unearthed evidence of leather-, bone- and metal-working at the site, suggesting that hundreds of full-time residents may have once lived there.
“The English quarter in Rome really was an interesting and vibrant place,” Naismith tells New Scientist’s James Woodford. “It might be compared with districts in modern major cities that house a specific community, like the Chinatown areas of London, Melbourne, San Francisco and other cities.”
The new discovery corroborates the Schola Saxonum’s hypothesized geography and suggests that its residents enjoyed a degree of economic independence, including the privilege to use their native currency in a foreign land.
The halfpenny discovery is especially significant, researchers say, as the small denomination is typically associated with the everyday transactions that took place in trading hubs. The researchers found no evidence of melted-down silver bullion, which would have suggested that English travelers were converting their money into local currency.
“To see Anglo-Saxon coins in such numbers, from a site where they must have been used and lost over a sustained period, is therefore surprising and raises questions about the status of English currency in tenth-century Rome,” the researchers write in Rome and the Others, per the London Times’ Kaya Burgess.
Though other foreigners—including the Lombards, Franks and Frisians—also made pilgrimages to Rome and built institutions near the Vatican, they don’t seem to have received the same privileges as the English. (MORE - missing details)