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

45 o The Coins of Europe
feeling of his relatives at Milan for the artistic treatment of
the current money and we
; reproduce a copper sesino
belonging to him, of which the style and spirit are unsurpassed,
while the legend on the reverse is singularly curious
for the period and country.
This ancient city,
on which the labours of M. Yriate
have thrown a good deal of new literary light, enjoyed the
right of coinage from the twelfth to the fifteenth
century, when the mint was closed by a bull of
Pius II. (1458-64). Very few monuments appear to have
survived of its products. The ordinary types are the denaro
and grosso with the short cross and Arimini on reverse, and
on the obverse the standing figure of St. Gaudecius holding
a crozier in his left hand and raising the right in the act of
benediction. The republican period extended from 1250
to 1350; between 1432 and 1462 Sigismundo Pandolfo
Malatesta exercised a seigniorial sway over the city, and
struck the bolognino and picciolo with his own name or
initials and the effigies of St. Gaudecius or St. Julian.
The first intimation of an independent coinage for the
Parmesan district is the grant of Philip of Suabia not long
before his death in 1 208. Denarii of small
module or oboli occur with Philipvs on obverse
and Parma on reverse. The former exhibits the name of the
emperor so disposed that PH. occupy the centre above what
appear to be a crozier and a sceptre, and ILIPVS is
placed
round the outer circle. The centre of reverse has a rudimentary
donjon, as shown in a more elaborate form in the
denari of Frederic II. about 1225. The money continued
to be of the ordinary communal type and scope down to the
advent of the Farnese family in the sixteenth century
in the
person of Pietro Lodovico Farnese, son of Pope Paul III.,
1546-47. This once great and powerful house emulated in
its coinage the other Italian states : and we have examples
and reverses
of a varied character with realistic portraits
embodying classical legends. Even down to the close of
the seventeenth century considerable attention seems to have
been paid to the work ;
but some of the copper sesini fail