W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

26 The Coins of Europe
ever, from the presence among them of certain dated
examples, which are entitled to rank as the earliest attempts
of the kind. But slight progress is perceptible in the style
and execution of the money, even when we arrive at the
eleventh century, and examine the types in use in Arragon
and in Leon and Castile ;
and it was not till the close of the
thirteenth that a marked improvement occurred in the products
of these mints, and that we discern the beneficial
results of combined Gothic and French influence.
The numismatic system of Leon and Castile appears
to have been somewhat irregular. Some pieces bear the lion,
others the castle, alone, while a third variety unites those
symbols. It is likely enough that there were special coinages
for the two divisions of the kingdom.
The armorial bearing or cognisance on some of the
early silver pieces of these provinces exhibits a curious
anomaly and contradiction in the shape of a rampant lion,
although on the other side the true etymology of the name
of the former province presents itself in the word Legio. A
coin of Alfonso X. (1252-84) has the legend disposed in
a then novel linear fashion ;
and one of John II. (1406-54),
in whose reign commenced a currency in a sort of metal
resembling copper, adopted the lamb and flag of the French
moutons (for, and, like the maravedioi Ferdinand and Isabella,
the initial
of the monarch, crowned, on the other side.
The money peculiar to Arragon, prior to its
amalgamation
with the remainder of Spain,
is found as far back as the
thirteenth century with the distinctive emblems of the Barcelona
mint, the pellets and annulets in the alternate angles of
the Cross on the reverse ;
and from the same period we have
a series of characteristic portraits of the reigning princes.
On the whole, the strange vicissitudes which Spain
underwent are tolerably legible in the variant character of
her coinage while she remained the home of so many
successive or contemporary races. Visigothic Northman,
Moorish Goth (descendant of Genseric and his fellow-emigrants),
Celt, Provencal, Frenchman, left their mark in turn
on her institutions of all kinds. During the Visigothic era