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

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 365
reproduce in a barbarous and degraded style the Byzantine
patterns. The series extends to about 1395 ;
and subsequently
to that period and down to 1879-80, when the
existing principality was formed by the Treaty of Berlin,
Bulgaria constituted part of the Ottoman Empire. The
modern currency comprises
: in copper or bronze, I, 2, 5, and
i o stothemke ;
in silver, -|leu,
I leu, and 2 leua or leva ;
in
gold, the 20 leva or Alexander. In 1880 and 1887 bronze
pieces of 10 canteim were struck as patterns.
Servia has from the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth
century undergone, in common with all this group
Servia?'
of states
or communities bordering on powerful and rapa-
c i us neighbours, numerous and violent changes
of fortune and boundary. Numismatically the
Servians may be regarded as belonging to the same category
as Roumania, Bulgaria, and Bosnia, but under the independent
Schupans or Zupans the province which we are
considering produced a currency which in the fourteenth
century displayed, with an obvious servility to Byzantine,
Servia : denarius of Byzantine type of Stephen VII., 1.336-56.
Hungarian, and Venetian prototypes, far greater care and
skill in the execution than those of Bulgarian origin. One
of the most remarkable specimens, from the celebrated
Montenuovo cabinet, is of concave fabric. There are a
few pieces outside the regal currency corresponding to the
seigniorial coinages of Western Europe, and struck between
1386 and 1452 by various personages in right of their
feudal tenures in Montenegro and elsewhere. Some of the
inscriptions are in Greek characters and it ; may be suspected
that in one or two instances the source of the coin is political,
and was the act of a competitor for the crown.
In regard to the question of early Servian gold, of which