Czech Coins of the Romanesque Period - Finding of 11th and 12th century denarii from Nespek - depot II

Czech Coins of the Romanesque Period - Finding of 11th and 12th Century Denarii from Nespek - Depot II

All collectors who are interested in coins of the Bohemian Denary period have probably come across the iconic term Nespek. It refers to several extremely interesting and important treasures from the Romanesque period that were discovered in the now sleepy village of Nespeky, in ancient times an important settlement on the trade route from Prague to Posázaví. Those lucky collectors managed to get some of the guaranteed Nespeka denarii for their collections.

For a long time it seemed that the joy of the collectors would be balanced by the sad fate of the last of the treasures and one of the greatest treasures of the denarius era ever. It will dissipate into hundreds of numismatic collections and its composition can never again be reconstructed. Our history will be deprived of an important testimony from an era that still poses many question marks to our knowledge. However, thanks to the painstaking and very time-consuming work of a few dedicated numismatists and leading experts on the coinage of the denarius period, and the helpfulness of many others, a literal miracle has occurred. The treasure has been largely documented, scientifically processed and nowadays published.

The publication describes in great detail the extraordinarily rich composition of the find, while also examining 12th century coinage in a broader context. State-of-the-art technological and methodological techniques have been used in the documentation of the material, which has yielded a number of surprising revelations. From this perspective, the publication represents an important milestone for future numismatic research on a more general methodological level.

Collectors, art historians, and others interested in artistic craftsmanship agree that 12th-century Czech denarii represent a quite extraordinary gallery of Romanesque art, unparalleled in its category on a pan-European scale. Nevertheless, the results of numismatic research for this period have, with a few exceptions, been limited over the past century to minor studies and a few fairly economical catalogue outputs. It is clear that the publication of the Nespeka II hoard, thanks to its comprehensive scope and breadth of treatment, will largely rectify the old debt. It will undoubtedly become an absolutely indispensable reference for scholars and collectors of the denarius period.

All of the issues are carefully categorized in the book into groups according to mintmark and very well documented photographically. Whole groups of coins, whose description has hitherto been limited to citing a single type according to Cach's typology, can now be very carefully sorted into a number of often very surprising and visually interesting variants. From the composition of the find, combined with the study of other finds, it has also been possible to update the chronological series of 12th century Bohemian denarii and to reattribute and assign some of the mints to different rulers.

This 296-page large-format publication was published as the first volume of the Czech Numismatic Society's Bibliotheca Numismatica series and in cooperation with the ABALON publishing house. The book is carefully typographically edited. Very impressive are the numerous large-format photographs of the coins, which give prominence to the colourful details of the coinage scenes that are almost imperceptible on the coins themselves.