After what we may call the Viking coinage in our country we have the regular series of coins struck by the Danish or Norse Kings of Northumbria, who copied types of contemporary English kings in the south. These form, as we have said, a series perfectly distinct from the coins of (Guðred) Cnut and Siefred, which constitute the greater part of the Cuerdale find, and show incidentally how the Dano-Norse kingdom had become assimilated to the rest of England, and how distinct it really was from the contemporary Norse kingdoms in Ireland. Then we have the various series of coins imitated from the coins of Ethelred II. The Scandinavian varieties of these have been just described and discussed; but we may add to them the coinage of the earliest Norse kings of Ireland. This series, as Dr. Aquilla Smith has shown, begins with the coinage of Sihtric III., who copies precisely the same C-type of Æthelred which was universally copied on the Scandinavian money. We may finally, as the outcome of all this discussion, range the earliest Scandinavian coins, or the earliest struck by any Scandinavian ruler, in the following classes: 1. Transitional coinages— a. Imitations of coins which had been carried to the north (e.g. the imitation of the Dorstat coins described by Dr. Hildebrand ?). b. Viking coinage represented e.g. by Cuerdale Find, which includes barbarous imitations of English pennies. c. New series such as the "St. Edmund" series, struck south of the Humber. d. Coins of Cnut and Siefred in Northumbria. (As explained Cat. Eng. Coins, vol. i., pp. 201-2, though these coins bear the names of Cnut and Siefred there is no necessity to suppose them to have been issued under the authority of these kings.) 2. Later Dano-Norse coinage in Northumbria, which is assimilated to the contemporary coinage of the SouthHumbrian English kings. 3. The earliest coins certainly struck by Scandinavian people elsewhere than in England. All these began by imitations of Ethelred II., Type C, which were struck in the following places by the following kings: : The Björkö pieces being very probably ornaments and not coins. XI. ON SOME PECULIAR MEDIEVAL MILANESE TYPES. THESE types originated about the middle of the thirteenth century, the early medieval coinage of Milan, as elsewhere, having little variety, and being comparatively uninteresting; the denaro (or grosso) was almost the only coin, and its type was generally a rude portrait, a cross, or a monogram, with the name of the city for which it was struck. Gradually, more distinctive types were introduced, the earliest being representations of patron saints. Thus Venice adopted St. Mark; Florence, SS. Cosmus and Damian or St. John; Lucca, the Sanctus Vultus; Arezzo, St. Donatus; Rimini, St. Gaudentius; Rome, St. Peter; and Milan, SS. Gervasius and Protasius (its protomartyrs), who were beheaded there in the first century, and the great St. Ambrose, its bishop during the latter part of the fourth century. These first appear on a gold coin struck during the republic 1250-1310; its obverse has the protomartyrs standing together, with their names in the margin, anl in the middle, vertically, MEDIOLANVM; its reverse has St. Ambrose standing within a trefoil-headed niche, his right hand raised in the act of benediction, with the legend S. AMBROSIVS. Pl. VIII. Fig. 1 is a grosso of Henry VII. of Germany, with the type of St. Ambrose seated, his right hand raised in the act of benediction; the obverse has the legend HENRICVS REX. Fig. 2 is also a grosso of the same sovereign; its obverse has the standing figures of the protomartyrs, with their names in the margin, and between them vertically the legend HNRIC IPAT1 (Imperator); the reverse has St. Ambrose seated, as on Fig. 1. It is interesting to be able to determine from the titles. on these coins the years in which they were struck, for Henry VII., who was elected King of the Romans in 1308, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1309, invaded Lombardy the following year, and was again crowned as king at Milan in 1311; in 1312 he was crowned as emperor at Rome, and he died in August, 1313. Therefore, No. 1, with the regal title, must have been struck during the latter part of 1311 or early in 1312, and No. 2, with the imperial title, between his coronation in 1312 and his death in August, 1313. After the middle of the fourteenth century the type of SS. Gervasius and Protasius was discontinued, and that of St. Ambrose varied. On Fig. 3, struck by Galeazzo II. and Barnabo Visconti, 1354-1378, the bishop is still shown seated, with his right hand raised as on Fig. 2, but instead of blessing he brandishes a sort of triplethonged whip. The following are some of the abbreviations of "Imperator" met with on mediæval coins : Rome Milan { IPA. Charlemagne, before 816, with Pope Leo III. Frederic I., before 1186. IPRT.Henry VII., before 1313. IPAT. Henry VII., before 1313. IPT. Louis of Bavaria, before 1329. Servia {IPAT. Imperatrix} Stephen VII. and Elena, before 1356. Fig. 4, struck by Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 1466-1476, shows another variation, the bishop being in a standing position and using his whip on a retreating figure. The most remarkable type, however, is that of Fig. 5, which was struck during the same reign as Fig. 4; the bishop is here represented on horseback, attacking with his whip some soldiers, one of whom has fallen under the horse's feet. The same incident is shown in Fig. 6, taken from a sixteenth-century panel painting in my possession and attributed to Giovenone of Vercelli. As regards the meaning of the whip in the hand of St. Ambrose, I suggested in a former paper2 that it might have reference to Christ's driving the money-changers out of the Temple; the same idea appears to have occurred to M. Cahier, where he says, " C'était une sorte de pendant à notre Seigneur chassant les vendeurs du Temple." Speaking on the same subject Mrs. Jameson says, "A more frequent attribute [of St. Ambrose] is the knotted scourge with three thongs. The scourge is a received emblem of the castigation of sin; in the hand of St. Ambrose it may signify the penance inflicted on the Emperor Theodosius; or, as others interpret it, the expulsion of the Arians from Italy and the triumph of the Trinitarians. It has always this meaning, we may presume, when the scourge has three knots." Mrs. Jameson continues:-"I remember (in the Frari at Venice) a picture in which St. Ambrose, in his episcopal robes, is mounted on a white charger, and flourishing on high his triple scourge. The Arians are trampled under his feet or fly before him." On type of front-faced seated figure. Num. Chron. 3rd series, vol. iv. p. 257. 3 Caractéristiques des Saints dans l'Art Populaire, vol. ii. p. 429. |