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

Introduction 4 1
indecision as to the permanent acceptance of the canonised
Cappadocian contractor, who possibly presented a portion of
his plunder to the priests for a
; pattern kopek of Peter,
1701, a current one of 1711, and a pattern of 1724, shew
only a mounted spearman, while a pattern of 1723 inserts
the dragon. The saint ultimately triumphed, and appears on
a kopek of Catherine I. 1727, and on subsequent kopeks
and their multiples, and on some of the silver money, but
with constantly diminishing prominence
in modern days.
An Italian (Pistrucci), who should have been capable by
tradition of achieving something better, brought him to
England, and placed him on the money of George III. Any
other Government in Europe would have dismissed him from
its service for such a wretched abortion.
There are one or two remaining aspects of this part of
the subject worth notice and attention. The canonisation of
monarchs or rulers, usually after their death, as in the cases
of Edward the Confessor and Henry VI. of England, the
Emperor Henry II. of Germany, Philip le Beau, Duke of
Burgundy, and St. Stephen and St. Lladislaus of Hungary,
formed a circumstance of which their successors, as a rule,
took the fullest advantage, by perpetuating their sanctity on
the coins of subsequent reigns. The legend of St. Lladislaus
is
preserved on the reverses of the money of Matthias
Corvinus two centuries later ;
and a noble gold piece of
Maximilian the Great of Bavaria, 1598, exhibits on one
side a small full-length in armour and imperial robes, with
sceptre and globe, of Henry II. who died in 1024. This
policy tended to shed a religious halo over the throne, and
to confer on the occupants a species of divine origin.
The
same principle and feeling underlay the not unfrequent
practice of introducing on the face of the coinage the
delivery of the national banner by the patron-saint to the
reigning prince the ceremony imported or suggested a
;
superhuman delegation of power, of which, even in such
commercial states as Venice and Florence, the standard was
the embodiment and symbol.
Another respect, in which the same principle was kept