A remarkable collection of Anglo-Saxon coins discovered near the Vatican is providing new evidence for the community of English pilgrims and settlers who made their home in medieval Rome. The finds suggest the Schola Saxonum was not simply a stopping place for pilgrims, but a thriving neighbourhood where Anglo-Saxons worked, traded and may even have enjoyed the unusual privilege of using English money.
The coins were discovered during excavations beneath the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere, also known as the Palazzo de’ Penitenzieri. Work began there in 2020, and the site attracted international attention in 2023 with the discovery of remains identified as the theatre of the Roman emperor Nero. The medieval levels have now produced another significant find.
The research is presented by Marzia Di Mento, Rory Naismith, Valentina Pica, Filippo Salamone and Francesca Tinti in the newly published volume Rome and the Others (300–1000): Foreigners in the City between Conflicts and Integration. Their work combines the archaeological evidence with what historians already knew from written sources about the Anglo-Saxon presence in Rome.
“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.”
Twenty Anglo-Saxon coins in medieval Rome
Two fused groups of Anglo-Saxon coins discovered during excavations at the Palazzo della Rovere in Rome. The groups contain six and eight coins respectively and form part of a collection of 20 Anglo-Saxon coins found at the site. Photo by Cecilia de Leone.
Thirty coins were recovered from five archaeological contexts at the site. Twenty are Anglo-Saxon: 19 silver pennies and a halfpenny dating from the reigns of Edward the Elder (899–924), Æthelstan (924–39) and Eadred (946–55). Identifiable examples were minted in several parts of England, including East Anglia, Kent, London and the West Midlands.
Fourteen of the Anglo-Saxon coins survive in two fused groups of six and eight coins. These were recovered from rubbish pits, while other coins were scattered through nearby archaeological contexts. The excavation also produced tenth-century Italian coins, including one probably issued under Pope John X and another struck at Pavia under Hugh of Provence and Lothar II, along with Roman and Late Antique bronze coins.
The presence of a halfpenny is particularly revealing. Such a low-value denomination is uncommon in hoards and is more readily associated with relatively small transactions. The researchers therefore believe that the assemblage reflects money actually being used rather than wealth deliberately accumulated and hidden.
Although evidence for metalworking was found at the site, there is no indication that silver was being worked there. This makes it unlikely that the Anglo-Saxon coins had simply been imported as bullion for melting down. Instead, their archaeological contexts point towards active monetary exchange in this part of tenth-century Rome.
Finding Rome’s Anglo-Saxon quarter
The Palazzo della Rovere in Rome, where the excavations took place, with St Peter’s Basilica visible in the background. Photo by Rory Naismith.
The discovery is particularly important because the Schola Saxonum was previously known principally from written evidence.
“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. “We’ve been hoping this moment might come for most of our careers.”
Anglo-Saxons had been making the long journey to Rome for centuries. Bede records that Cædwalla, king of Wessex, travelled there at the end of the seventh century, was baptised by Pope Sergius I and died soon afterwards. He was buried at St Peter’s. The Schola Saxonum itself appears in the Liber Pontificalis by 799, although the connections between Anglo-Saxon England and Rome were already well established.
The settlement occupied an advantageous position between St Peter’s and the Tiber, close to a river landing known as the Portus Maior. Its memory survives in the modern Roman district of Borgo and in names such as Lungotevere in Sassia and Santo Spirito in Sassia. The latter church stands on the site associated with the Schola Saxonum‘s medieval church of Santa Maria.
The community could include some distinguished residents. Burgred, king of Mercia from 852 to 874, went to Rome after being driven from his kingdom during the Viking invasions. He died there and was buried in the Schola Saxonum‘s church. A papal document from 1053 also confirms a special burial privilege allowing English people who died within the schola to be buried there.
The archaeological evidence now gives a much more tangible sense of what life within this community may have been like. Finds associated with leather-, bone- and metal-working suggest that people were producing goods as well as accommodating pilgrims.
“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,” Naismith says.
Were the English allowed to use their own money?
Professors Francesca Tinti and Rory Naismith, who helped analyse the significance of the Anglo-Saxon coins discovered in Rome. Photo courtesy of the University of Cambridge.
The coins also raise a more intriguing possibility. Written references to monetary payments around tenth-century Rome generally specify papal currency, suggesting that foreign money was not normally expected to circulate there. Yet the new Anglo-Saxon coins appear alongside contemporary Italian currency and come from contexts associated with everyday production and exchange.
The researchers therefore argue that Anglo-Saxon pennies were circulating within this part of Rome rather than merely arriving as religious offerings.
“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.”
The chronology may provide a clue. Many Anglo-Saxon coins discovered in Rome date between about 900 and 970, following a period of particularly close relations between Alfred the Great and the papacy. In 883, Pope Marinus I reportedly sent Alfred a piece of wood from the True Cross, while Alfred repeatedly sent alms to Rome during the following years. Special silver coins inscribed ELIMO[sina], or alms, were even produced during Alfred’s reign, probably for payments sent to Rome.
More significantly, Alfred’s biographer Asser reports that Marinus, at the king’s request, freed the Schola Saxonum “from every tribute and toll”. The exact nature of that privilege is unknown, but the researchers suggest that permission to use English currency could have been one of the financial advantages enjoyed by the community. They stress that the evidence does not prove this connection, but it would help explain why English coins circulated on such an unusual scale in Rome.
“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,” Tinti says.
The relationship continued long after Alfred. Peter’s Pence developed during the tenth century as an English payment to Rome, while in 1027 King Cnut travelled to the city and negotiated with the pope over charges affecting English travellers.
For Naismith, the finds also challenge the image of Anglo-Saxon England as an isolated society on the edge of medieval Europe. “The Anglo-Saxons were very firmly a part of the European community,” he 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 and coordinated by Marzia Di Mento, with Filippo Salamone, Flavia Botrugno and Laura Stamerra. A preliminary study of the Anglo-Saxon coins was conducted by Cecilia de Leone.
Top Image: A late medieval view of Rome from Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493.
A remarkable collection of Anglo-Saxon coins discovered near the Vatican is providing new evidence for the community of English pilgrims and settlers who made their home in medieval Rome. The finds suggest the Schola Saxonum was not simply a stopping place for pilgrims, but a thriving neighbourhood where Anglo-Saxons worked, traded and may even have enjoyed the unusual privilege of using English money.
The coins were discovered during excavations beneath the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere, also known as the Palazzo de’ Penitenzieri. Work began there in 2020, and the site attracted international attention in 2023 with the discovery of remains identified as the theatre of the Roman emperor Nero. The medieval levels have now produced another significant find.
The research is presented by Marzia Di Mento, Rory Naismith, Valentina Pica, Filippo Salamone and Francesca Tinti in the newly published volume Rome and the Others (300–1000): Foreigners in the City between Conflicts and Integration. Their work combines the archaeological evidence with what historians already knew from written sources about the Anglo-Saxon presence in Rome.
“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.”
Twenty Anglo-Saxon coins in medieval Rome
Thirty coins were recovered from five archaeological contexts at the site. Twenty are Anglo-Saxon: 19 silver pennies and a halfpenny dating from the reigns of Edward the Elder (899–924), Æthelstan (924–39) and Eadred (946–55). Identifiable examples were minted in several parts of England, including East Anglia, Kent, London and the West Midlands.
Fourteen of the Anglo-Saxon coins survive in two fused groups of six and eight coins. These were recovered from rubbish pits, while other coins were scattered through nearby archaeological contexts. The excavation also produced tenth-century Italian coins, including one probably issued under Pope John X and another struck at Pavia under Hugh of Provence and Lothar II, along with Roman and Late Antique bronze coins.
The presence of a halfpenny is particularly revealing. Such a low-value denomination is uncommon in hoards and is more readily associated with relatively small transactions. The researchers therefore believe that the assemblage reflects money actually being used rather than wealth deliberately accumulated and hidden.
Although evidence for metalworking was found at the site, there is no indication that silver was being worked there. This makes it unlikely that the Anglo-Saxon coins had simply been imported as bullion for melting down. Instead, their archaeological contexts point towards active monetary exchange in this part of tenth-century Rome.
Finding Rome’s Anglo-Saxon quarter
The discovery is particularly important because the Schola Saxonum was previously known principally from written evidence.
“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. “We’ve been hoping this moment might come for most of our careers.”
Anglo-Saxons had been making the long journey to Rome for centuries. Bede records that Cædwalla, king of Wessex, travelled there at the end of the seventh century, was baptised by Pope Sergius I and died soon afterwards. He was buried at St Peter’s. The Schola Saxonum itself appears in the Liber Pontificalis by 799, although the connections between Anglo-Saxon England and Rome were already well established.
The settlement occupied an advantageous position between St Peter’s and the Tiber, close to a river landing known as the Portus Maior. Its memory survives in the modern Roman district of Borgo and in names such as Lungotevere in Sassia and Santo Spirito in Sassia. The latter church stands on the site associated with the Schola Saxonum‘s medieval church of Santa Maria.
The community could include some distinguished residents. Burgred, king of Mercia from 852 to 874, went to Rome after being driven from his kingdom during the Viking invasions. He died there and was buried in the Schola Saxonum‘s church. A papal document from 1053 also confirms a special burial privilege allowing English people who died within the schola to be buried there.
The archaeological evidence now gives a much more tangible sense of what life within this community may have been like. Finds associated with leather-, bone- and metal-working suggest that people were producing goods as well as accommodating pilgrims.
“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,” Naismith says.
Were the English allowed to use their own money?
The coins also raise a more intriguing possibility. Written references to monetary payments around tenth-century Rome generally specify papal currency, suggesting that foreign money was not normally expected to circulate there. Yet the new Anglo-Saxon coins appear alongside contemporary Italian currency and come from contexts associated with everyday production and exchange.
The researchers therefore argue that Anglo-Saxon pennies were circulating within this part of Rome rather than merely arriving as religious offerings.
“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.”
The chronology may provide a clue. Many Anglo-Saxon coins discovered in Rome date between about 900 and 970, following a period of particularly close relations between Alfred the Great and the papacy. In 883, Pope Marinus I reportedly sent Alfred a piece of wood from the True Cross, while Alfred repeatedly sent alms to Rome during the following years. Special silver coins inscribed ELIMO[sina], or alms, were even produced during Alfred’s reign, probably for payments sent to Rome.
More significantly, Alfred’s biographer Asser reports that Marinus, at the king’s request, freed the Schola Saxonum “from every tribute and toll”. The exact nature of that privilege is unknown, but the researchers suggest that permission to use English currency could have been one of the financial advantages enjoyed by the community. They stress that the evidence does not prove this connection, but it would help explain why English coins circulated on such an unusual scale in Rome.
“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,” Tinti says.
The relationship continued long after Alfred. Peter’s Pence developed during the tenth century as an English payment to Rome, while in 1027 King Cnut travelled to the city and negotiated with the pope over charges affecting English travellers.
For Naismith, the finds also challenge the image of Anglo-Saxon England as an isolated society on the edge of medieval Europe. “The Anglo-Saxons were very firmly a part of the European community,” he 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 and coordinated by Marzia Di Mento, with Filippo Salamone, Flavia Botrugno and Laura Stamerra. A preliminary study of the Anglo-Saxon coins was conducted by Cecilia de Leone.
Top Image: A late medieval view of Rome from Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493.
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