THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

VI
CONTINENT OF EUROPE
The necessarily succinct sketch which we present in
this case of the numismatic history of a vast and pro-
lific region may be read side by side with the more
copious account which we were enabled to furnish in a
preceding publication, the " Coinage of the European
Continent, , ' >
1893. The two great sources of inspira-
tion and development were Teutonic and Scandinavian,
or, in other words, the earliest as well as the best
suggestions for modern numismatic productions were
derived from the North by different channels, and
supplanted the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine models,
which we recognise in the so - termed Merovingian
money, and in the primitive currencies of Gaul and
Britain. We shall perceive how during centuries the
whole of the Continent satisfied itself with a monetary
system of the simplest and most meagre description,
how in actual circulating media it possessed down
to the thirteenth century nothing higher than the
silver penny and its equivalent, and how it was the
great commercial and religious movement stimulated
by the Crusades which, by opening new routes for
trade, and drawing more closely together the East
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