The Coinage of the Visigoths of Spain, Leovigild to Achila II

An epoch in the history of the coinage of Western Europe is marked by the introduction of a strictly autonomous and national currency in Visigothic Spain by King Leovigild (A.D. 568-586). His predecessors and contemporaries — and he himself until about the year 575 — had been content to issue anonymous imitations of the imperial coinage; but at the beginning of the fourth quarter of the 6th century this able and energetic ruler had achieved a degree of independence from Rome and Byzantium that finds numismatic expression in the striking of trientes bearing his own name. Rapidly, in the course of the final years of Leovigild's life, there evolve the main traits of an independent, national coinage of quite extraordinary interest, not only because of its character as the first really distinctive mediaeval coinage of the West but also because it continues virtually without interruption, and at a large number of mints widely dispersed over the Iberian peninsula, down through the long line of Leovigild's successors to the extinction of the kingdom by the Muslim invaders early in the 8th century.