Introduction

Around the year 508 CE, Bishop Avitus of Vienne wrote to his brother Bishop Apollinaris of Valence asking for a gold monogrammed ring, whose features he described in detail. He asked Apollinaris to ensure that the ring was not made from a ‘corrupted mixture of gold’ that was of the same debased metal content that the ‘King of the Visigoths had commanded to the public mint’. Avitus's letter offers a tantalizing hint that this Visigothic ruler, Alaric II (r. 484–507 CE), was reducing the fineness of his gold, which people including Avitus had noticed. A clause in the Burgundian law code, the Liber Constitutionum issued around a decade after Avitus's letter, corroborates that Alaric had apparently minted adulterated coinage, since the clause banned coins that ‘had been debased at the time of king Alaric’. Several other stories about the last few years of Alaric's reign discuss Visigothic money as well. The Chronicle of Fredegar, for example, recounts that Alaric II owed tribute to the ruler of the Merovingians, Clovis (d. 511). Alaric was required to pay Clovis the amount of gold required to cover a mounted Merovingian envoy and his spear. When Alaric could not fulfil this impossible demand, conflict broke out between the two rulers, with Clovis eventually victorious. Likewise, both Gregory of Tours and Procopius of Caesarea explicitly mention that Clovis carried off Alaric's treasure at the end of the conflict.