Manuel Mozo, experto en moneda medieval
Today at NCV, we have the pleasure of interviewing Manuel Mozo Monroy, a leading expert in medieval numismatics. He is especially known for his work on the coins of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Leon. Born in Madrid in May 1967, Mozo is a systems engineer who combined his professional career with his passion for numismatics.
He has published numerous works, including the Enciclopedia de la Moneda Medieval Románica en los Reinos de León y Castilla (Encyclopedia of Medieval Romanesque Coinage in the Kingdoms of León and Castile), a leading reference in his field , una referencia de primer orden en su campo.
In addition, he has collaborated with several museums and archaeological associations and is a member of the Spanish Association of Medieval Archaeology and the Spanish Numismatic Association.
Tell us a little about yourself. How did you start collecting? What do you currently collect?
MMM: Good morning. Everybody knows that my numismatic specialty is medieval coins in general and Tell us a little about yourself. How did you start collecting? What do you currently collect?
MMM: Good morning. Everybody knows that my numismatic specialty is medieval coins in general and Castilian-Leonese Christian coins in particular. Within this vast field, the pieces that I collect are limited to the medieval period -between 900 and 1230.
I started collecting at a very young age. I was only 10 years old. I started with the coins in use in those years, but then I began to acquire medieval coins, which, although they were more expensive at that time, were at least accessible to me. Since then, I have kept my interest there, also expanding to the rest of the Christian peninsular kingdoms -Aragon, Navarra, Catalonia, Valencia, and Mallorca- to pieces from the rest of Europe and the Holy Places of the Holy Land and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, and even Hispano-Muslim dirhams minted during the Emirate and the Caliphate.
In addition to all the above, for some years, I have been collecting coins from Tibet and also all the coins produced in the Faroe Islands.
What is the rarest piece you have seen or have in your collection?
MMM: As for medieval coins, I have had the immense luck of being able to see -and, above all, touch- everything. Before the 2008 crisis, I was able to see all the most important private collections of medieval coins from Castilla y León in Spain, and after that year, with the economic problems that occurred worldwide, old collections that were unaccounted for began to appear, and I was able to access them. If we add to this the fact that I have had the opportunity to review the monetary collections of almost all the museums in Spain and of a large number of archaeological sites of which I am a member of different research projects, I think I can say without much fear of being wrong, that I have seen everything or almost everything.
Please tell us who is a reference for you in collecting and why.
MMM: I have always taken Bernard of Chartres’ famous phrase in 1159 to answer this question: “we are all dwarfs on the shoulders of giants”. So, for me, any author who has contributed their knowledge to medieval numismatics is worthy and deserving of my admiration.
However, the person to whom I owe the most in my career was León Hernández-Canut y Fernández-España, whom I have always considered my teacher, mentor and friend. He trusted me and believed in me enough to allow me to ride on his shoulders while he was alive. Thanks to him, I am who I am in medievalism.
Can you tell us a funny anecdote that has to do with collecting?
MMM: For me, numismatics and collecting are very serious, and I take them as such. However, suppose I were to extract a funny moment. In that case, I remember one day when we went to investigate the medieval coins of a provincial museum —whose name I will omit so that this anecdote is not taken in a derogatory way—, Dr. Ana Serrano and I, after having made us wait a long time for the director to arrive, and after taking us back and forth for a while, they placed us at 11:20 AM in a large room full of coins and told us “These are all the coins we have. There are about 6,500 of them, but they are all out of order. You have until 2:00 PM this afternoon to see them. After that, we will close.
You can’t imagine the pace at which we had to work that “little while”. It was as if space-time had been folded into twelve parts, and we were doing different things simultaneously in each of its twelve multidimensional polyhedral faces. Do you know the effect of movement that occurs when you see a video accelerated to double or triple its real speed, and it seems to you that any displacement seems ridiculous and disjointed like those of the “Duracell Bunny”? Well, the same, but corrected and enlarged.
It was insane, but we did it: we saw 6,500 coins that were stored in endless trays of hundreds of coins, discriminating which were Castilian-Leonese Christian coins and which were not, weighing and photographing them in only 2 hours and 40 minutes. And on top of that, everything was just as well placed as initially. If there were a “Guinness Record” for the fastest research in the world, we would certainly hold it, and surely, no one would ever take it away from us for the rest of our lives.
How do you see the current collecting market and how do you see it in 5 years?
MMM: Collecting is currently on the rise. But there are two types: the “classical” one, occupied by those who want to get some new coin for their collections with some frequency, and the investment one, which can only be afforded by some people with a lot of money.
In this group, there are, in turn, two well-defined groups: the first, made up of collectors who love numismatics and make great economic efforts to obtain expensive and rare coins, and the second, made up of another group of people who do not care about coins and simply use collecting as an investment mechanism to earn more money than they spend, and which in some cases, even serves to reintroduce into the world market money that could hardly be reintroduced into economic circles.
Five years from now, the market will follow the same path, with the only exception that there will be fewer and fewer “old-fashioned” collectors since there is not and will not be a generational replacement. I am not saying that no young people are attracted to collecting, but there are fewer and fewer of them. Young people prefer to live the present in another way, in which even physical money is disappearing. It is difficult to be attracted by collectibles that are not perceived or handled on a daily basis.
Háblanos de tu obra. ¿En qué crees que estás especializado?
MMM: de alguna manera ya respondí a esta pregunta en vuestra primera propuesta. Mi especialización es la numismática cristiana en los reinos cristianos de Castilla, de León, de Aragón y de Navarra.
No obstante, sí quisiera añadir a este respecto que, según mi opinión, nadie se puede considerar con rigor experto en ningún campo de la numismática, si no se complementa dicha especialización con un conocimiento muy profundo de otros campos del saber. En mi caso fue necesario -y lo sigue siendo- estudiar y aprender muchísimo de historia medieval universal, economía, política, arte, diplomática, sigilografía, arqueología, sociología, religión, epigrafía, paleografía, latín, archivística, bibliografía, e incluso sobre campos tan aparentemente alejados de la numismática como puedan ser la matemática o la medicina.
Tell us about your work, what do you think you specialize in?
MMM: In a way I already answered this question in your first proposal. My specialization is Christian numismatics in the Christian kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarre.
However, I add in this regard that, only one can be considered an expert in any field of numismatics if a profound knowledge of other fields of expertise complements this specialization. In my case, it was necessary -and still is- to study and learn a great deal about medieval universal history, economics, politics, art, diplomacy, sigillography, archaeology, sociology, religion, epigraphy, paleography, Latin, archival science, bibliography, and even about fields as apparently distant from numismatics as mathematics or medicine.
One cannot be an expert in numismatics if one does not have a broad knowledge of the related sciences surrounding coins. If one does not manage to see the coin in its global contextualization in the period in which it “lived,” such pieces will be nothing more than a mere objects out of their time and place.
It would be similar to finding a credit card in the year 3000: we will not be able to have the slightest idea of how important it is today or how important it was in the past because credit cards are already beginning to cease to be used, with their inclusion in mobile devices.
A coin, from any era, is nothing without its environment.
Future plans: What projects are you working on right now? When do you think they will see the light of day?
MMM: Any Middle Ages numismatics enthusiast knows my “project” because it is the same one I have been working on for 40 years: my “Encyclopedia.”
I already published the first three volumes in 2017, covering the period from Pelayo (722) to Alfonso XI (1350), for which I had the privilege of receiving the Count Garriga award for numismatic research.
Since then, I have continued writing the remaining volumes of this encyclopedic project—from Pedro I (1350) to Enrique IV (1474). Finally, these last ones have become five more volumes, so the Encyclopedia will end up consisting of eight volumes—which, translated into pages, will be about 5,300-.
I only have to finish the studies corresponding to some typologies of Enrique II, which I will be able to finish by next January or February 2025. Then comes the layout, registration, legal deposit, ISBN, etc., printing, and distribution. So maybe, with luck and God willing, everything could be finished by April or May of next year.
I would like to express one point regarding this matter. Like many things in our country, this “life project”—to which I have devoted my entire being—has not been a pleasant experience. I have received minimal assistance from only a few individuals and institutions. More often than not, I have encountered impediments, insults, obstacles, mistreatment, envy, disrespect, verbal aggression, and various forms of injustice. It’s clear that in this homeland, the prevailing attitude often seeks to undermine merit.
As Otto von Bismark said: “Spain is the most powerful country on the planet: it has been trying all its life to destroy itself and has not yet succeeded.” In truth, it is only a phrase said by this great strategist of the First World War, but it is loaded with so much “hatred towards the other” that it only summarizes in one sentence what is nothing more than the familiar feeling of the Spaniard. What Freud called “death drives,” that is, to destroy everything for the mere fact of putting an end to that which one is not capable of doing for oneself. This is the Spanish spirit and the pandemic to which the “Encyclopedia” has been surviving —I really do not know how—in spite of all the attacks and sieges it has gone through.
And finally… Can you give any advice or recommendations for collectors based on your experience?
MMM: As I explained, what I have felt the most in these forty years has been loneliness and disdain. In the beginning, everything was obstacles and impediments. It was a work of continuous wear and tear as if there was more interest in stopping my research than in pursuing the search for information to clarify the historical process of medieval numismatics.
For years, I had to fight like a warrior simply to have access to research and coins—museums, archives, collections, sites, books, documents, etcetera. It was only after many, many years that I was able to be recognized in the world of numismatics as a researcher. From then on, everything was easier, but until that moment, every attempt to advance became an ordeal and a continuous frustration.
So, my recommendation for both collectors and researchers -based on the rawest and hardest experience-is to join a group that really looks after them and their entrepreneurial zeal for discoveries.
I am currently a member of Nummus, the Spanish Numismatic Society. It is the first numismatic association in which a multitude of research agreements are being created with entities – museums, universities, state institutions, etc. – to facilitate numismatists’ access to the coins of the Spanish numismatic society.
Gracias por vuestro interés en querer saber mi opinión sobre todos estos interesantes aspectos sobre los que me habéis preguntado. Muchas gracias.
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