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

3io
The Coins of Europe
Duke of Saxony associated with it that of Burgraf of
Magdeburg a civil office which is enumerated among the
honours of the house even in the eighteenth century and
were originally feoffees of the empire, who had perhaps
gradually converted a normal municipal preferment into an
hereditary administrative trust and rank, or, as in the case of
Brandenburgh, purchased We the title and fief direct from the
superior lord. trace nothing in the numismatic series
prior to an autonomous denarius of Bernhardt I. (973-1010),
of which we furnish an engraving in the text. It reads on
obverse Bernardhvs Dvx, and on reverse, in retrograde
characters, 1 In Nomini Domini Amen a preparation for the
Dei GratiA of later reigns. These pieces gradually degenerated,
and at last gave way to a system of bracteatcs,
which prevailed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
over the whole of Saxony, and was adopted by the burgraves
of Leisnig, Strehla, and Dohna, on one of whose coins we
meet with H\enricus\ D\ci} G\j-atid\ B\urgravius\. The
productions of this archaic era emanated from several mints,
as we shew elsewhere. Leipsic was a seat of coinage from
the twelfth century but, as was the case with other modern
;
capitals, it by no means occupied at first a foremost place
among the mints of the state.
There was no farther development, so far as we are
aware, till the opening years of the fourteenth century, which
witnessed the introduction of a series of excellently engraved
and struck groschen of good silver, usually ascribed to the
mint at Klein-Schirma. The earliest which we have seen
bear the name of Duke Balthazar (1408), and there are
1
This peculiarity of certain archaic coins may, it is suggested, have proceeded
from the neglect of the die-sinker or engraver to provide
type in the striking process.
for the reversal of the