W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 421
balanced jurisdiction, induced them to favour and support
the pretensions of the Holy See, and while this policy
tended to maintain their rule over outlying portions of their
dominions, it also laid the basis of a system which reduced
their power to an almost nominal point. During centuries,
Italy, like Germany and the Netherlands, remained an open
ground for successive adventurers, who supplanted each
other or who, quarrelling among themselves, opened the
country to some new force, ever ready to seize an opportunity
for aggrandisement.
The Franks, who never possessed in the Peninsula more
than a feudal suzerainty, apart from their protectorate over
Rome, have left, however, traces of their presence and sway
incomparably more distinct and diffused than those of the
Goths and Lombards. These conquerors did not fail to
discern the value, as a mark of fealty and a vehicle for
publicity, of the principle by which the seigniorial and
municipal coinages carried on the face the evidence of issue
under their sanction ;
and from the prominence which we
find accorded to the imperial name even by princes and
cities virtually independent of the Crown nay, at first by
the pontiffs themselves we must infer that such a feature
in the monetary economy was viewed as a source of protection
and an improvement of title. But, independently of
the money issued in alliance with cities and princes, the
Franks at the first outset adopted the common expedient of
copying the type and module of the currency already in
vogue, and the moneyers of Clothair himself, when Italy
fell to his portion after the death of Clovis, were led, if
they
were not instructed, to follow a style superior to any found
on their own currency, and recommended by
its
popular
acceptance.
The successors of Charlemagne were unable to uphold
in its integrity the vast empire which he left to them. The
Carlovingian line became extinct on the death of Louis IV.
(908), having enjoyed the sovereignty during even a shorter
period than their precursors, but leaving behind them far
more solid monuments of their existence and domination.