Mancus
Mancus (sometimes spelt mancosus or similar) is a term used in early medieval Europe to denote either a gold coin, a weight of gold or a unit of account of thirty silver pence. Distinguishing between these uses can be extremely difficult: the will of the Anglo-Saxon king Eadred, who died in 955, illustrates the problem well with its request that 'two-thousand mancuses be taken and minted into mancuses' (nime man twentig hund mancusa goldes and gemynetige to mancusan).
The origin of the word mancus has long been a cause of debate. One suggested interpretation linked it to the Latin adjective mancus, meaning 'defective'; this was thought to be a reference to the poor quality of gold coinage circulating in eighth-century Italy. However, it has become clear that the earliest references to payments in mancuses, which occur in north-eastern Italy in the 770s, specifically refer to Islamic gold dinars. Consequently, a second older theory is probably correct: that mancus derives from the Arabic word manqush, meaning 'struck', which was often employed in a numismatic context.
After its first appearance in 770s Italy, use of the term mancus quickly spread across northern and central Italy, and had leapfrogged over Gaul to reach England by the 780s, for a letter written in 798 from King Coenwulf of the Mercians to Pope Leo III mentions a promise made in 786 by King Offa to send 365 mancuses to Rome every year. Its use was at a peak in the ninth and tenth centuries, and was only occasional thereafter.
The number of actual gold coins circulating in the west that would have been termed mancuses is difficult to calculate. Because of their high value such coins were less likely than other pieces to be lost, whilst the rarity of gold and its close relationship to bullion meant that coins were often melted down for re-use as jewellery. Indeed, many gold coins used between the eighth and thirteenth centuries were struck in small numbers with a specific purpose in mind, and probably did not circulate commercially in quite the same way as coins of silver or other metals: in many cases they clearly had strong associations with specific issuing authorities such as a king (such as Coenwulf of Mercia), emperor (such as Louis the Pious)or archbishop (such as Wigmund of York). On the other hand, they might not reference any king at all, relating to a city (e.g., Chartres) or a moneyer (like Pendred and Ciolhard at London under Offa). Some gold pieces were simply struck from regular silver dies. In addition to these gold pieces with meaningful inscriptions issued in the west, there circulated some genuine Arabic dinars and imitations of them. Curiously, several of these imitative dinars - including the famous example bearing the name of Offa of Mercia - are based on originals struck in the year 157 AH (773 or 774 AD), the precise significance of which remains uncertain: it may be that careful copies of a coin of this year circulated widely, or that a particularly large number of dinars of this year entered the west for some reason. It must be borne in mind, however, that before the thirteenth century gold coins were extremely rare in western Europe: in England, for instance, only eight native gold pieces with meaningful legends are known from c. 650 to 1066, which can be complemented by finds from the same period of half a dozen Arabic gold and perhaps ten Carolingian gold pieces or imitations of them. Substantial and regular production of gold coinage only resumed in the thirteenth century.
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References
Grierson, P., 'Carolingian Europe and the Arabs: the Myth of the Mancus', Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 32 (1954), 1059-74
McCormick, M., Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300-900 (Cambridge, 2001), c. 11