Constantine XI Palaeologus (Dragases), 1448-1453. 1/8 Stavraton (Silver, 13 mm, 0.55 g, 12 h), Constantinopolis, 1453. [I]C - XC Nimbate bust of Christ facing, wearing tunic and pallium, raising his right hand in benediction and holding book of Gospels in his left; to left and right of nimbus, two pellets.
Rev. K - C Facing bust of Constantine XI, wearing crown with pendilia and scalloped tippet; in field to left and right, two pellets. S. Bendall: The Coinage of Constantine XI, in: RN 33 (1991), p. 137 and pl. XVII, 134-54 (
same dies). DOC 1789 (
same dies). LBC -. PCPC -. SB -. Very rare. A beautifully toned example of this exceptionally important issue. Some areas of weakness and with a few faint scratches
, otherwise, good very fine.
From a German collection of late Byzantine silver coins, formed in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
When the eleventh Constantine, one of ten sons of Manuel II (1391-1425), succeeded his brother John VIII (1425-1448) to the throne, the once mighty Byzantine Empire, heir to two millennia of Roman history, was but a shadow of its former self. After a century of increasing Ottoman pressure, Constantine controlled but the capital with a strip of land to the North and the Morea in the South. On 2 April 1453, the sultan Mehmed II marched with 80,000 troops on Constantinople and laid the final siege to the city. Commanding a conglomerate of 7-9,000 Byzantine and allied troops, Constantine repelled the attackers for nearly two months, but the Turks eventually breached the city walls on 29 May. Constantine's body was never found, but as he was last seen fighting heroically near the city gates, it is commonly assumed that this is where the last Roman emperor died, thus bringing to an end an imperial line of succession going back fifteen hundred years to Julius Caesar and Augustus.
Prior to the publication of a small hoard of late Byzantine silver by S. Bendall in 1991, only two coins of Constantine XI were known. The tiny and crude 1/8 stavrata with his initials on the reverse were likely struck in the final stages of the siege of Constantinople specifically to pay the few remaining soldiers under his command, making them the last Roman coins ever to have been issued.
