coin discovery reveals
image:
Two fused groups of Anglo-Saxon coins found in the excavations of the Palazzo della Rovere in Rome.
view moreCredit: Cecilia de Leone
English expats avoided ‘travel money’ hassle, thanks to special treatment from the Pope in the early Middle Ages, new research suggests. The discovery of 20 coins alongside evidence of craftwork in Rome’s English quarter, provides the first material evidence of the Schola Saxonum, and suggests it was a thriving and valued expat community.
In 2020, archaeologists started excavating deep under the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere near the Vatican. In July 2023, the site made global news when the discovery of the ruins of Emperor Nero’s theatre was announced. Now, the site has led to a major medieval discovery which transforms our understanding of the Anglo-Saxons in Rome.
The archaeologists found twenty coins which have been identified as Anglo-Saxon – 19 silver pennies and one halfpenny – minted over a period of about 40 years in the names of Alfred the Great's son, Edward the Elder (899–924); and his grandsons Æthelstan (924–39) and Eadred (946–55). Fourteen of the coins were found in rubbish pits in two clusters of 6–8 coins, which are now fused together after a millennium underground. The rest were scattered nearby. The team also found ten coins from the Roman period and from tenth-century Italy, as well as evidence of craftwork involving leather, bone and metal.
Long-term collaborators, Professors Francesca Tinti and Rory Naismith were invited to study the intriguing coins and interpret their significance in light of what was already known about the history of this area. Their findings, presented in a chapter co-written with Marzia Di Mento, Valentina Pica and Filippo Salamone, have just been published in a new book (in Italian) entitled: Rome and the Others (300-1000): Foreigners in the city between conflicts and integration.
“The coins aren’t pretty but they have a lot to say,” says Rory Naismith, Professor of Early Medieval English History at the University of Cambridge. “More Anglo-Saxon coins from this period have now been found in Rome than papal coins. This sounds bizarre, but it’s telling us that a very large amount of money was flowing in from England at this time.”
As well as dating the coins, Naismith and Tinti were able to identify which parts of England they came from: East Anglia, Kent, London and the West Midlands.
The halfpenny is a particularly rare find for this period and is important, the researchers argue, because this denomination is associated with trading hubs in which lots of lower value money was changing hands.
“Before this big discovery, we never had any material remains of the English quarter in Rome,” says Francesca Tinti, Professor of Medieval History at the University of the Basque Country, and a visiting research fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge (2025-6). "We've been hoping this moment might come for most of our careers."
What we knew before
Medieval texts refer to an Anglo-Saxon quarter in this area from the second half of the 8th century; two 9th-century fires were recorded; and it was known that these expats worshipped in a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was even said that Burgred, King of Mercia (the English Midlands) from 852 to 874, was buried in the church having been exiled from England by the Vikings.
The English quarter lay within the Leonine City, an area between the Vatican and the River Tiber protected by walls following a raid by pirates in the 840s. While still on the periphery of Rome in this period, it occupied a finger of land pointing directly to St Peter’s and benefited from nearby bridges making it convenient to cross the Tiber. We don’t know how big the entire Schola Saxonum was but the area of craft activity covered at least 3,000 square metres, approximately half a football pitch.
A few placenames in Rome still hint at this largely forgotten history. The embankment road between the Tiber and the Vatican – the Lungotevere in Sassia – takes its name from the Schola Saxonum. And the Santo Spirito in Sassia hospital continues the charitable function which the area once provided to Anglo-Saxon visitors.
Expats with privileges
Naismith and Tinti argue that because the coins were found individually or in small clusters, and scattered – rather than deliberately buried in a larger hoard – they provide clear evidence of trade. The archaeologists found no evidence of silver bullion being melted down on the site so the researchers are confident the coins were lost by craftspeople and shoppers, not in the context of being turned into local currency.
Together with the leather-, bone- and metal-working finds, the coins show that the Schola Saxonum was not just a place for pilgrims to rest and pray. It was a bustling hub of craft and trade.
Naismith says: “The Anglo-Saxons are there to visit the Pope and tour churches in Rome, but they've still got to feed themselves. So they've got to make things and trade. That’s what these finds tell us. This was a fairly big community, probably hundreds of people, living there on a permanent basis. So they're keeping a miniature Anglo-Saxon town going. You can easily imagine craftsmen arriving from Winchester, London or York and setting up shop by the Tiber.”
Evidence of English coins changing hands in Rome challenges a long-held assumption that the papacy forbade the use of foreign currency in the city. Documents from Rome in this period generally only refer to papal coinage, and other texts record foreigners preparing to get their travel money. In a 9th-century letter, we hear from a Frankish abbot fretting about the need to change currency as he plans a trip to Rome. This new discovery suggests that English visitors to Rome were given special treatment.
“You don't find other foreign coins in Rome from this period,” Naismith says. “It seems to be very much an English thing. There are not many coins from the Frankish world or even northern Italy. It seems to be a very specific connection they've got with the English at this stage.”
One of the newly identified coins is Papal, suggesting that the two currencies were used side-by-side.
The researchers point out that while other foreigners, including the Franks, Lombards and Frisians, were also cared for by dedicated institutions close to St Peter’s, the Anglo-Saxons left the most traces behind, and appear to have enjoyed special privileges.
Tinti says: “The English in Rome were quite unique. They made the greatest effort to get there. Their journey was really dangerous and many people died on the way. But once in Rome, they were special. We knew they had the privilege of being able to bury their dead in this area and now, it seems, they were permitted to use their own currency."
For Anglo-Saxon kings, having their coins in use so close to St Peter’s brought significant prestige, the researchers argue. At the same time, the arrangement showed people back in England that their rulers could facilitate pilgrimages, bringing spiritual benefits to the king and his subjects.
A long special relationship
England’s special relationship with Rome was built on diplomatic ties going back to the late 6th century, when Pope Gregory I arranged a mission to the English. “The Anglo-Saxons were very devoted to Rome from that point on”, says Naismith, a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
He points out that the relationship became increasingly formalised from the late 8th century when Offa of Mercia (757–96) instituted an annual payment of 365 gold pieces to the papacy to keep the candles burning in Rome’s churches. In the late 9th century, Alfred the Great was sending frequent alms to Rome, and in 883 – according to Alfred’s biographer, Asser – Pope Marinus I generously freed the Schola Saxonum ‘from every tribute and toll’ at Alfred’s request. The researchers caution that this doesn’t prove that Alfred secured the currency deal, but it is a possibility, and we now know that his son’s coins were in use in Rome.
The 10th century witnessed the development of Peter's Pence, which involved every household in England, at least notionally, giving a penny as alms for Rome. And in 1027, King Canute visited Rome, in part to continue the tradition of negotiating financial benefits for English pilgrims with the Pope.
“The English were particularly keen on consulting the papacy,” Tinti says. “Sometimes the Popes struggled to understand what was happening in their far-off land.”
“The Anglo-Saxons were very firmly a part of the European community,” Naismith says. “They kept these bonds with Rome going strong for hundreds of years, through thick and thin. These coins show us how deep that relationship went. It's not just kings sending money and forgetting about it. It's people going to Rome in large numbers and setting up a home away from home on the banks of the Tiber.”
The excavation was directed by the Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma under the scientific supervision of Renato Sebastiani and Alessio De Cristofaro. Fieldwork was carried out by MDM Archeologia srls and coordinated by Marzia Di Mento, in collaboration with Filippo Salamone, Flavia Botrugno and Laura Stamerra. A preliminary study of the Anglo-Saxon coins found in the excavation was conducted by Cecilia de Leone.
Reference
M. Di Mento, R. Naismith, V. Pica, F. Salamone, F. Tinti, ‘Ricerche nell’area della schola Saxonum’, in Rome and the Others (300-1000). Foreigners in the city between conflicts and integration - Roma e gli altri (300-1000). Stranieri nella città tra conflitti e integrazione, Atti del Convegno Internazionale PRIN 2022 (Roma, Università RomaTre, Aula Magna, 11-12-13 dicembre 2025), ed. L. Spera, R. Santangeli Valenzani and R. Menna (Quingentole (Mantova): SAP Società archeologica, 2026), pp. 489-505.
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