Matthew II

The coinage of Matthew II is a study in inference. Where a later duke will announce himself in the legend, the Lorraine denier of the first half of the thirteenth century is characteristically silent: a mounted knight on one face, an eagle or a cross on the other, and a place-name where a ruler’s name might have been. Initials appear from time to time, but a single Gothic letter is a weak witness, and the same letter can be made to serve several masters. The corpus of Matthew II has therefore been assembled the long way round — from the towns he acquired, the dates he acquired them, and the habit, well documented across his reign, of answering an acquisition with a coin.

That habit is the key to the whole arrangement, and it is worth stating plainly before the individual mints are taken up. Matthew II, duke from 1220 until his death in February 1251, was an active accumulator of territory: he inherited a duchy diminished by his brother’s dower obligations, spent thirty years repairing it, and left it materially larger. Sierck’s own local tradition records that its ducal mint was one of five operating during his reign. A striking at a newly acquired town was not primarily an economic act. It was a public statement of lordship, in the most widely circulated medium available, and it is what allows the numismatist to date coins that name no one.

Sierck

The most striking example is the coinage from Sierck. These deniers depict an armed horseman at a gallop, with the legend CIRKES on the reverse — an unambiguous reference to the town on the Moselle that came into the dukes’ possession in 1247 (an attribution proposed by de Saulcy and firmly established in cataloguing tradition). Since Matthew died in early 1251, any coins of this mint struck by him must belong to the final four years of his reign.

The hypothesis that minting began immediately after the town’s acquisition is well-founded, even if not documented; it relies on the common practice of the period, and there are no apparent reasons for a delay. All that can be stated with certainty is that a mint was established at Sierck Castle, producing several varieties of deniers — the scale of production points to a substantial workshop rather than a symbolic or trial issue.

Thionville

The Thionville episode is the briefest chapter of this reign and represents one of the rarest subjects in the numismatic collection. In 1225, Matthew married Catherine of Limburg — daughter of Waleran III of Limburg and Ermesinde, Countess of Luxembourg — a union that granted him access to Luxembourgish territories, including Thionville. However, it brought no financial gain. The lordship passed to Matthew along with the title but without the accompanying revenues; viewing the possession as a burden rather than an asset, he relinquished it almost immediately.

Nevertheless, he initiated coinage there. Deniers bearing the local legend TIONVILLE survive from this short period of ownership; since the timeframe is bounded by the dates of the marriage and the relinquishment of the lordship, these coins can be dated more precisely than almost any other issues of the reign: 1225–1226. This brief period of minting explains their rarity. It also sheds light on the duke’s priorities: coinage began immediately — precisely what one would expect if the minting was an act of asserting rights rather than a commercial venture.

Lunéville

Lunéville came to the duchy by force. Hugues II, Count of Lunéville, spent his years in conflict with Matthew, was defeated, and surrendered his county; an exchange of lands settled the matter, and the lordship and its castle entered the ducal domain in 1243.

A denier survives that fits the moment. It shows the familiar galloping horseman, here covering himself with his shield, and a reverse legend recorded in sale descriptions as LINIVIL or LINIVILE, accompanied on some readings by an imperial eagle; a cited specimen weighs 0.65 g. The name has occasionally been claimed for Ligniville, and the possibility cannot be dismissed outright — medieval mint legends are abbreviated to the point of ambiguity. But Lunéville is much the better candidate. It was acquired at a datable moment, it was a place of real consequence with a fortress the dukes would occupy for the rest of the Middle Ages, and it fits the established pattern: a new possession, promptly announced in silver.

Nancy

Nancy is the one mint whose attribution needs no scaffolding. The deniers show an armed horseman on the obverse and an imperial eagle with the legend NANCEI on the reverse, and a number of varieties carry a Gothic M beneath the horse — universally read as an abbreviation of Mahus, the vernacular form of the duke’s name. Here, for once, the coin speaks.

The Nancy issues are also the most various. Symbols beneath the horse shift from one striking to the next; the reverse legend appears in abbreviated, blundered and irregular forms; letter shapes drift. This is the ordinary signature of a mint working continuously over many years rather than in a single campaign, and Nancy had reason to work: the town had been assigned as dower to Matthew’s widowed sister-in-law Gertrude de Dagsbourg on his accession and returned to the duchy on her death in 1225, leaving the duke a full quarter-century of undisturbed possession.

The eagle invites more comment than it can safely support. Matthew was a close associate of the Emperor Frederick II — he accompanied him on crusade and into Italy in 1235, and broke with him only in 1247, when he undertook to the Church to oppose the Hohenstaufen party. It is tempting to read the eagle as a partisan badge and to date by it. The temptation should be resisted. The imperial eagle is a common motif on Lorraine and Rhineland money of the period, it expresses a general fact about the duchy’s place within the Empire, and it appears on issues that cannot be aligned with the shifts in Matthew’s politics.