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Description: | The Coins and Medals Department of the Fitzwilliam Museum curates a huge collection of nearly 30,000 medieval coins. Of these, 7,000 coins were made in the British Isles, 1,300 in Germany, 1,100 come from the Iberian Peninsula in Spain and over 900 originated in France. In total, the Continental medieval coin collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum includes around 22,000 individual items.
Philip Grierson (1910-2006) was a well-known Cambridge historian who specialised in medieval monetary history and became possibly the most celebrated numismatist of the twentieth century. As a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College for seventy years, he taught successive generations of history undergraduates and was affectionately known as one of the most sociable dons. Yet his reputation was formidable as an international scholar with an enviable command of languages, who held posts concurrently at Cambridge, Brussels and Washington. For fifty-six years he was Honorary Keeper of Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum.
His own collection of medieval European coins, the finest that exists, has been housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum for the last thirty years and was bequeathed to it after his sad death, together with his magnificent library. It is a fitting obituary that a frequent comment in the annual reports of the Museum reads Ã-Ã
as usual Professor Grierson led the group of regular donors to the Department of Coins and MedalsÃ. | Subjects: | Numismatics Medieval period Coins | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | 01223 332 923 | Telephone: | 01223 332 900 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:8421 | Go to resource |
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