Gemini, LLC
Auction 12 11 January 2015
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Byzantine-Papal. Constantine IV and Pope St. Benedict. Siliqua, 0.22g (6h). Rome, c. 684-5 AD. Obv: Crowned beardless bust facing, wearing chlamys and holding globus cruciger in right hand. Indeterminate border. Rx: Rm in monogram combined with a short barred cross monogram, eight-pointed star in upper left field. Pellet and bar border. SNR 64 (1985), Type 6. O'Hara 11 (this coin). NAC/Leu May 1993, lot 589 (three known). Sear 1233 var. EF
This and the following two small silver coins surprisingly combine a portrait of the Byzantine emperor on the obverse with the monogram of the serving bishop of Rome (pope) on the reverse, implying that the popes acquired temporal sovereignty long before historians had hitherto suspected. Though a few such coins were already published by Sabatier in 1862, they did not really become known and appreciated until Michael O'Hara published a small find of them in the Swiss Numismatic Review for 1985, and a group of 41 of them then appeared in an NAC-Leu Sale in May 1993, with an introduction also by Michael O'Hara. As O'Hara there wrote, "These small silver coins, to use the rather sensational terminology in the Daily Telegraph item (Sept. 12, 1986), are expected to prompt the rewriting of a chunk of mediaeval (Dark Age) history"
This and the following two small silver coins surprisingly combine a portrait of the Byzantine emperor on the obverse with the monogram of the serving bishop of Rome (pope) on the reverse, implying that the popes acquired temporal sovereignty long before historians had hitherto suspected. Though a few such coins were already published by Sabatier in 1862, they did not really become known and appreciated until Michael O'Hara published a small find of them in the Swiss Numismatic Review for 1985, and a group of 41 of them then appeared in an NAC-Leu Sale in May 1993, with an introduction also by Michael O'Hara. As O'Hara there wrote, "These small silver coins, to use the rather sensational terminology in the Daily Telegraph item (Sept. 12, 1986), are expected to prompt the rewriting of a chunk of mediaeval (Dark Age) history"