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

508 The Coins of Eiirope
Leon, Castile, Navarre, Arragon, and Provence and
; these,
which constituted the germs of the modern and existing
kingdom of Spain, became in due course the sources of some
very interesting coinages of more or less peculiar types.
That of Arragon in the reign of Sancho Ramires (1063-94)
exhibits a not very marked advance on the Visigothic style
and execution ;
but the following century witnessed the
fruit of some beneficial influence, probably of French or
Italian origin, at least on the portraiture, as we see in an
anonymous dinhero of Arragon, with the Provincia or
Provence reverse, and Rex Aragone, ascribable to some
period about 1200. The bust in profile is more usual, but
one of Martin (1396-1400)
is full-faced in a tressure on the
model of the English and Dutch groats. It was in his
person that the house of Barcelona became extinct, and was
succeeded by that of Castile, which prepared the way for
the ultimate union under Ferdinand and Isabella in 1479.
The extension of English influence and interest in this
direction had been promoted first by the matrimonial alliance
between Edward I. and Eleonora of Castile in 1253, and
again by the accession of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
Aquitaine, and Guienne, in the succeeding century to the
throne of that kingdom and to the titular sovereignty of
an(
Portugal jure uxoris.
Spain merely followed the customary mediaeval incidence
in a division among several more or less independent communities,
but participated with Sicily and Southern
Italy in the political and religious anomaly, by
which during a very protracted and, it may
almost be said, the most interesting period a considerable
share of its soil was in the hands of Mohammedans. There
was, apart from the struggle for supremacy between various
provinces, that between the two Bibles. From the fourth to
the fifteenth century one of the most Catholic regions in
Europe formed debatable ground, where the principles of
Christianity were not then held and vindicated by the dominant
race. The separate consolidation of Arragon, Leon,
and Castile, and their eventual fusion into one government,