Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
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Title:
Silver Penny of Cynethryth
Creator:
Description:
This silver penny features a bust portrait of Queen Cynethryth (d. 798), wife and consort of King Offa of Mercia and the only Anglo-Saxon queen known to have coinage struck in her name alone. The queen wears a
peplos
-style dress or tunic fastened with round pins at the shoulders. Her hair sweeps away from her face in stylized curls and she wears a simple round diadem on her head. The accompanying inscription reads EOBA, presumably the proper name of the moneyer who issued the penny. Little information survives regarding Cynethryth’s lineage or early life. However, her marriage to Offa was recognized as fully legitimate in the eyes of the Church, a marked departure from previous Anglo-Saxon marriage practices in the period of transition from paganism to Christianity in Mercia and a strategy that cemented the legitimacy of the couple’s heirs. Surviving charters record that Cynethryth acted as a witness from 770-87 in the name of her son Ecgfrith and again on the occasions of her daughters’ marriages, indicating her importance in the Mercian line of succession. Documents record her title as “Queen of the Mercians by the grace of God,”and a letter from Pope Adrian I addressed Cynethryth and Offa as joint rulers. Cynethryth became abbess at Cookham monastery following Offa’s death in 796 and was named heir to her husband’s monastic properties in 798. Cynethryth’s portrait on Mercian coinage, particularly the profile view and classicizing dress, hearkens back to coins minted for late Roman imperial women, especially those of Constantine’s mother, Helena. As Pauline Stafford notes, these visual cues that link Cynethryth to Helena underscore how the Mercian queen’s ruling authority relied on her identity as a mother.
Source:
Wikimedia Commons
Rights:
Public Domain
Subject
(See Also)
:
Coins
Cynethryth, Wife of King Offa of Mercia
Portaits
Queens
Geographic Area:
British Isles
Century:
8
Date:
757- 796
Related Work:
Updated photograph at: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/cm/s/silver_coin_of_cynethryth,_wif.aspx; Similar silver pennies struck by the same moneyer have turned up in hoard discoveries since the late 1990s, see for example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/antiquitiesproject/5272622665/; http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/197414
Current Location:
London, British Museum
Original Location:
England, Central, minted in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia
Artistic Type (Category):
Digital Images; Coins
Artistic Type (Material/Technique):
Silver
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm):
//
Inscription:
Obverse: EOBA ; Reverse: CENEðRYð REGINA M (Translation: Obverse - Eoba, Reverse - Queen Cynethryth M(ercia))
Related Resources:
Stafford, Pauline. "Political Women in Mercia, Eighth to Early Tenth Centuries," in
Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe.
Edited by Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr. Leicester University Press, 2001. Pages 35 - 49.; Pauline Stafford. "Queens and Queenship," in
A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland, c.500-c.1100
. Edited by Pauline Stafford. Riley-Blackwell, 2009. pp.459-76.; C.E. Blunt, "The Coinage of Offa" in Anglo-Saxon Coins, ed. R. H. M. Dolley. Methuen, 1961. pp. 39-62.