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

426 The Coins of Europe
consisting of 40, 20, 10, and 5 baiocchi, presents different
legends on each piece. Another set, also in mixed metal,
but of circular form, comprises 40, 16, 8, 4, 2, I, and ^
baiocchi. The copper, with Dio E Popolo, 1849, consists of
3, 2, i, and ^ baiocchi; of the first there are two varieties.
The first numismatic era of this republic was productive
of nothing calculated to denote the probability of the great
political and commercial development which
Venice. 1 r awaited it. Recent discoveries and identifications
have afforded actual knowledge of a fact which might have
been surmised, namely, that in the course of about three
centuries the Venetians struck at' least four -and -twenty
varieties of a silver denaro with the names of successive
emperors of the West. Count Papadopoli has laid us under
obligations by classifying these pieces in his pamphlet entitled
Sulle Origini Delia Vcneta Zecca, 1882, where careful
engravings of them may be found. But the evolution and
escape from this monotonous currency were very slow and
;
when the Government at last, in the twelfth century, not only
introduced the grosso or matapan, 2 but made that the starting-point
of an absolutely autonomous coinage, we have to
confess that, while for the most part the standard was well
maintained, the treatment and taste left much to be desired.
The great departure from the feeble and inconvenient
machinery, where the denaro and its moiety were the only
currency of an indigenous origin, and the republic was
obliged to resort to foreign specie in the case of large transactions
or to calculation by weight, was perfectly analogous
in its conception and limits to that of other continental states.
In the type of the grosso there was little or no originality :
its style and spirit are quite Oriental ;
and the sole point of
difference seems to be that while here the germ was Byzantine,
in the case of the French gros tournois the germ was
Arabic. The obverse of the Venetian coin is
apparently a
direct copy from a seal of Orio Malipiero, the predecessor in
1
See three papers on the Coins of Venice, by the present writer, in the
Antiquary for May to July 1884.
2 Said to have owed its name to Cape Matapan, between Zante and Cerigo.