CHAPTERS' ABSTRACTS 1) From the ritual uses of coins to their creation as relics. The book and particularly this chapter involves thoughts on the life of coins as objects, and on the very nature of money and its origin: economic...
moreCHAPTERS' ABSTRACTS
1) From the ritual uses of coins to their creation as relics. The book and particularly this chapter involves thoughts on the life of coins as objects, and on the very nature of money and its origin: economic historians may be interested in seeing how the price of blood became materialized as relics in medieval and modern Europe. Coins as relics are one aspect of the ritual and devotional use of coins. Both archaeological and written evidence forms the basis for the discussion; from funerary contexts to foundations of buildings, offerings to altars, saints, shrines and sacred springs. The narrative focuses on the actors who at different times and places made use of the coins providing them of a biography expanding from the usual monetary one into one more connected to relation with the supernatural. The ongoing scholarly debate on this topic is rich and lively at present, and a full account of recent “Christian materiality” research is provided.
2) The coins of St Helena: objects of devotion before the invention of the Thirty Pieces of Silver. The recent understanding of the role of the ‘coins of St Helena’ has been crucial to detect the extent of devotional uses of coins in medieval Europe. A coin of St Helena was described by pilgrims among the relics in Rhodes in the late fourteenth century, before being replaced by one specimen of the Thirty Pieces of Silver. They were usually Byzantine coins misread by devotional intentions. Their popularity in the late middle ages and later is proved by a papal bull of 1587 which transformed into relics with indulgence the 125 Byzantine gold coins of a hoard found in excavations in Rome, Lateran, some of which are still kept in churches in Milan, Florence, Arezzo and Bologna, and more are recorded in Italy and elsewhere.
3) Judas, the Priests and the Thirty Pieces of Silver. Who was Judas? How did he transform himself from one of the closest disciple of Christ to his traitor? This chapter deals with the interpretations of Judas across time. It underlines the crucial shift of the Christian view of Jews: at first ‘just’ infidels, becoming at the time of the Crusades Christ’s killers. Judas figure became then more and more negative and a medieval legend portrayed him in ever grotesque ways. His connections and perceptions of money and wealth are considered from the Gospels to the writings of medieval Church Fathers. Was he really so greedy? We can observe that, quite unusually for a money minded person, he did not negotiate the price of Christ with the priest. He asked them what they were prepared to offer; they said thirty pieces of silver; he just accepted. He can thus be defined a most inept merchant, ad he is made say that by himself with the words in some version of the medieval legend of his life and afterlife.
4) The legend of the Thirty Pieces of Silver: from hagiographic tale to coin relics. The medieval legend of the Thirty Pieces had these coins first struck by Abraham’s father and then used in most Biblical transactions, including the gifts of the three wise men (the Magi). Mary lost them and the coins ended up in the treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem, to be given to Judas. When Judas returned them to the priests, the coins had become “price of blood” and could not be put back in the treasury. Instead, the priests used them to buy the potter’s field (Matthew 27, 7: “And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in”). In the 1480s the Dominican friar Felix Fabri, in his Evagatorium in Terram Sanctam (‘diary of his journey to the Holy Land’) reported the legend and considered that once in the potter’s hands the coins were dispersed in the world (et hoc pacto dispersi sunt ab invicem per mundum). The fatal sum of money which had been indivisible and compact until the completion of its destiny, finally became divisible and fragmented into thirty individual coins. In this way the status of the coins related to the Thirty Pieces of silver changed and they were transformed into relics of the Passion in medieval and modern Europe.
5) The Thirty Pieces of Silver depicted as instruments of the Passion. This chapter contains an extensive analysis of how the Thirty Pieces of Silver were depicted in art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with some later appearence. They are seen as part of the instruments of the Passions (with the cross, the nails, the column of the flagellation, etc.) in the setting of images of Christ as Man of Sorrows and of the Mass of St Gregory (here the living figure of Christ appears on the altar where Pope Gregory the Great celebrates mass). Both types of images were usually of indulgential nature, so that contemplating each step of the Passion would help the devout to relive it and do penance. The coins are illustrated in various ways: in Italy the are often seen as a transaction taking place (a hans passing the coins into another hand); the sum can also be figured as a bag: north of the Alps the entire sum is represented with the thirty coins all described so that the devout would count them all, reflecting on the perfidy of greed and of Judas. This sort of inventory has never before been attempted.
6) The Thirty Pieces of Silver as relics. This chapter reveals the appearance of the documented specimens, still existing or at least described. The first one was ‘created’ as relic in c.1300: a Syracusan silver decadrachm framed in gold with the inscription ‘since it is the price of blood’ (QVIA PRECIVM SANGVINIS EST). It surfaced in the market in the nineteenth century and is now in the Hunt Museum, Limerick. The most frequent type of relic of the Thirty Pieces is of the ancient mint of Rhodes (c. fourth to second centuries BC). The specimen in the island of Rhodes is recorded since 1395 and was seen by many pilgrims who described it in detail from 1413 to the late fifteenth century: the Knights used their coin relic by distributing wax casts to the devout during the liturgy of Good Friday. The also permitted visitors to take their own casts of the relic which then used to make silver reproductions produced by goldsmiths once returned home from the pilgrimage. Similar Rhodian specimens in Rome, Oviedo, Paris and Malta were made the object of Antiquarian studies since the sixteenth century, with discussion of their authenticity. The specimens appear in different sources spread from Valencia, Spain, to Uppsala, Sweden, and Russia, in number of over 50 coins. The most impressive one is kept in a reliquary in Nin, Croatia, documented in 1412. This book will open the path to the discovery of more specimens, either as existing relics in altars and shrines in churches, or listed in inventories of lost relics.
7) The Thirty Pieces of Silver as Jewish shekels. In the sixteenth century Antiquarian and Biblical studies provided a better understanding of Hebrew and ancient Jewish coins. Scholars started to rejects the assumption that ancient silver coins of Rhodes could have been paid as the ‘price of blood’ and suggested that Jewish shekel must have been used instead. This line of thought was developed in Germany and Eastern Europe, brought forward by the Reformation and often coincides with the intensification of anti-Judaic attitudes. The fist representation of the Thirty Pieces of shekel type appears on a painting at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, once attributed to Lucas van Leyden: it can be dated to c. 1520s and instead of authetic jewish shekel it reproduces a alse type bearing a cencer instead of a cup or omer,
8) Through the eyes of the Antiquarian and those of the Devout. Identification and debate since the sixteenth century. This chapter explores how debates on the Thirty Pieces developed, investigating whether that sum was large or small, whether the coins had to be Judean, Roman or Rhodian coins. Debate involves particularly the value of the potter’s field, therefore questioning whether that field was large and worthy, or small and inexpensive. Catholic scholars are seen protecting the authenticity of their coin relics, where Protestant scholars were depriving those coins of any value. The subject is followed all the way to the beginning of the new millennium, when the specimen in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome, until recently still preserved, was declared ‘dismissed and discarded’ by official Church authorities.
9) Conclusion: ancient and modern legends, coin relics and the nature of money. The chapter brings together the theories and interpretations put forward by classicists, medieval art historians or historians of medieval economic thought. The main conclusion is the importance of money, and how the ‘price of blood’ became materialized in medieval and modern Europe not just in single coin relics, but in a monumental relic in Rome. It is the very stone where the Thirty Pieces of Silver were counted to Judas, and this stone stands on four columns which equal the measure of the body of Christ, with a height of 178 cm. Measure of the prize of Christ accepted by Judas, and physical measure of Christ himself.
APPENDIX 1 LISTS ALL SPECIMENS DOCUMENTED SO FAR
APPENDIX 2 BY FRANCESCO D'ANGELO HAS 'Collection of sources on the Thirty Pieces of Silver'
