COINAGE

The Celts on the European mainland began minting coins in the fourth century BC, with designs based on Greek originals. Many of these found their way into Britain during the course of trading and eventually, in the first century BC, British kings began minting their own coins. This started in Cantium (Kent), with cast imitations of bronze coins of the Ambiana tribe across the Channel in northern Gaul.

Coins were made in surprisingly large numbers. It is said that from the middle of the La Tene period, they were minted by the million.

Pre-Roman Celtic coins sometimes have figurative images on them: representations of animals or people. These are evidently heavily symbolic. Some coins show a boar, and this is a motif on other objects too, such as the Witham shield made in the second century BC. It is also thought that coins had a special role as largesse and as an indicator of wealth, which would have made the imagery more potent.

A Gaulish coin found near Maidstone shows a stag and a boar running together. The stag has a huge eye and over-large antlers. The boar has over-large bristles. There are three different circular symbols, one of which may represent a rayed sun.

Coins of the Aulerci Eburovices tribe, who lived in the Evreux region in Gaul, show a boar image superimposed on the neck of a manlike image. This has a link with a similar pairing on a stone carved from Euffigneix: a human figure wearing a torc, with a boar carved along its torso.

By AD 10, the Camulodunum mint was turning out magnificent gold coins inscribed in full with name of the king, CVNOBELINVS. More often, kings contented themselves with an abbreviated form of their names and the names of their mints, so some coins had CVN and CAM (or CAMV) on them or CVN REX TASCIO F, “King Cunobelin, son of Tasciovanus.”

A British coin bearing King Cunobelin has the short form of his name on one side, CVNO, and the abbreviated name of his capital on the other, CAM for Camulodunum. The designs are admirably simple, compared with the fussy designs on modern coins.

The imagery on these coins sometimes tells us a lot about the tribal mindset. Cunobelin was setting out to be as Roman as could be. Other tribes portrayed totem images. Others went on imitating Gaulish coins, in ever-freer styles, so that the images became totally abstract. The head of Apollo was transformed into a swirl of hair. The image of a horse became more and more stylized until it was reduced to a few sweeping lines. The exploded horse image was already in existence in Britain, drawn on the chalk hillside at Uffington, and that had been there since the very beginning of the Iron Age, so the image was already available, and it is possible that the coin image was copied from it.

On the other hand, some northern tribes, such as the Parisii and the Brigantes, seem to have held back from engaging in the money economy and never struck any coins of their own.

COLUMBA OF IONA

Columba was born a prince of the northern Ui Neill in 521. Two of his first cousins became kings during his lifetime, and he himself was eligible for kingship. When he was in his twenties, he was hostile to the overriding influence of the (non-aristocratic) Ciaran of Clonmacnoise.

Columba is said to have founded around 40 monastic houses in Ireland: the first at Derry, close to the dynastic home of his family at Ailech.

Without permission, he copied the Gospel Book of Finnian belonging to Moville, who sought judgment against him from King Diarmait. Diarmait had executed the King of Connacht’s son, who had killed a youth while playing games and who had sought sanctuary with Columba. Columba rallied the monks and the regional kings of Ireland against Diarmait’s centralized and tyrannical rule. He also won a military victory against him at the bloody battle of Cuil Dremhne in 563.

The consequence was exile, imposed on Columba by a monastic synod that deplored the involvement of monks in political warfare. This is how Columba arrived at Iona.

Once there, Columba converted Brudeus or Bridei, King of the Picts, and consecrated Aedan, King of the Scots, at Dal Riada. He appointed monks as bishops to communities in Britain; as monks, they remained under Columba’s authority. He visited Ireland several times, and also the Irish colonists in Dal Riada in Britain; he made at least two journeys to visit the northern Picts, where Bridei had enormous respect for him.

Overall, Columba had enormous influence over the development of the Church in northern Britain and Ireland. He also wielded considerable political power, and it was probably his influence that kept the northern kingdoms at peace with one another.