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An Anglo-Saxon Gold Finger-ring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

The massive gold finger-ring, the subject of this paper, was, I am informed, discovered in the city of York and may be thus described. Within a mount of seven circles of wire, alternately plain and ornamental, having three circles in front, three behind, and one on the edge, is set a solidus of the emperor Valentinian I, A.D. 364–75. The shank, which is of plain, thick wire, is beaten out at either end into a flat semicircle, and is attached to the reverse of the coin and to the mount, whilst to the shoulders are applied a considerable number of pellets of varying size (pl. XLII, 1).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1939

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References

page 182 note 1 Cohen, H., Description historique des monnaies frappées sous l'Empire romain.

page 182 note 2 Heraclius I recovered the True Cross from the Persians, A.D. 628.

page 182 note 3 Hodgkin, History of the Anglo-Saxons, i, 269.

page 183 note 1 Deloche, Anneaux sigiliaires, 25, 103, 197, 293—6; Dalton, Catalogue of the Finger-rings in the British Museum, no. 166; Oman, Catalogue of Rings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, no. 236.

page 183 note 2 Guilhou sale, lot 464.

page 183 note 3 Récamier sale, lot 717.

page 183 note 4 For other Merovingian coin-set rings, see Romanisch-Germanisches Korrespon-denzblatt, ix, 2, fig. 3, which shows a coin of Justin II, A.D. 565–78, the shank ending in volutes, and Lindenschmit, Die Alterthümer der Merovingischen Zeit, p. 403, pl. xiv, figs. 1 and 2.

page 183 note 5 Deloche, op. cit., cclvii, cclvi.

page 183 note 6 V.C.H. Hants, i, 397.

page 183 note 7 Dalton, Catalogue of the Finger-rings in the British Museum, no. 204.

page 183 note 8 Sotheby's sale, 26 Nov. 1929, lot 171.

page 184 note 1 Bede, , Ecclesiastical History, ed. Giles, (1870), book 11, ch. xx, p. 107.Google Scholar