My Roman Coins With Early Christian Symbols

Constantine I
A.D. 327
#1236; nummus 19mm 2.6g
CONSTANTINVS MAX AVG; laureate head right
SPES PVBLIC; chi-rho atop standard of 3 medallions impaling snake, in left field A.
in ex. CONS
RIC VII Constantinople 19





Constantine I
A.D. 328
#1236; nummus 21mm 3.2g
Anepigraphic: diademed head, looking up to heavens
CONSTANTINIANA DAFNE; Victory seated l. on cippus, palm branch in left hand and laurel branch in right hand, looking r.; trophy at front, at the foot is a kneeling captive with head turned being spurned by Victory; A in left field.
in ex. CONS
RIC VII Constantinople—

Thanks all for posting comments and coin pics. Hi Victor! You are THE MAN for Late Roman Bronze Coins. Your expertise is appreciated. As a collector and dealer you are helpful and honest.

An interesting topic, indeed! And while I have no problem with extending this thread to coins of later periods - and I think we have to move past Roman times - I think the topic may benefit from having its own thread. Otherwise we may miss those medievalists who do not also trigger on titles about Roman coins.

In any event, I think you are correct in pointing to Louis IX as at least the first French king who referred to Jesus on his coins. The gros tournois is one of his examples, he was also first to pick up XPC on his ecu d'or (with the inscription XPC VINCIT XPC REGNAT XPC IMPERAT - Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands). That was the first gold coin to be minted in France since Carolingian times - eight known specimens I think, I wish it was part of my collection so I could show it, but alas ... .

Louis, also known as Saint Louis (he was canonized in 1297), worked hard to live up to the tradition of the French kings being considered Rex Christianissimus, "The most Christian king." He participated in two crusades, showed pity for the poor, mercy for the rebels, and mutilated the blasphemists. Having a strong Christian message on his coins was completely in line with this.

But coinage from other regions I know less about. It would indeed be interesting to see what other examples of early references to Jesus or the Bible there are.

Beautiful coins.
I've seen one or two while detecting where the XP isn't overlapped, but never really figured out what those were.
like
*
X P
X

Are those in the same 'family' or something else?

@Gainn: An 'X' instead of an overlapped 'XP' would be in the same "family", I think. That is just an even shorter form of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ. (Not to be confused with 'X' used for the number 10, like in the inscription 'VOT X'.)

If by '*' you mean an eight pointed star, that is a symbol used on several coins by Constantine the Great. It could represent Sol, an early patron god of his. It is not a Christian symbol anyway.

Non-overlapped 'XP' I don't think I have seen on Roman coins ... do you have an example of such a coin? (It does show up later on medieval coins as part of XPC, XPI and similar forms for "Christ".)

@Doucet: Thanks, nice contribution!

Interesting coin, @Gainn, but not one that I recognize. The cross below the star is probably a Christian cross, but the letters (X and P or T) do not seem to be connected to form a word.

Maybe post it in the Ancients section for identification?

@livingwater, a couple of us CCF members are writing a paper for publication, and would like to cite your paper in Celator. In addition to the Volume, we need the page number, but I have not been able to get any of the links to load any more (I am pretty sure this was not the case last year when we began working on it).
Any chance you could provide the page number(s)?

Thanks!

Constantius II Centenionalis AE22mm Bust / Christogram







Magnentius Centenionalis AE23mm Bust / Christogram