The Münster Rebellion

Subtitle: Why the European Renaissance wasn’t actually a very good time to be alive.

The man whose face is stamped on this 1535 silver medal is Jan van Leiden. In January 1536, van Leiden was tortured to death with two other men at a public square in Münster, a city in the German region of Westphalia. The city’s officials and a throng of spectators watched as the three were pulled apart with searing hot tongs, one by one, until their agonies were ended with a thrust to the heart. But who was this Jan van Leiden, and why was he so violently and horribly executed?

Germany in the 16th century was a rough place. Martin Luther’s protests against the corruption of the Church sparked a long and partly successful rebellion against the spiritual and temporal authority of Rome. They also sparked smaller movements that branched off of Lutheranism to pursue their own goals. One of the earliest of these offshoot movements was Anabaptism. This new Christian sect proposed that infant baptism was invalid and that, to be truly saved, Christians must be baptised as adults. Some Anabaptists also advocated for total equality between fellow Christians and even the total abolition of property and wealth. Naturally, the Church hated these innovations, but they had their hands full with the Lutherans and the Netherlands and northern Germany became hotbeds of Anabaptism.

Anabaptism shot through much of northern Europe in the early 16th century. Source: Maximilian Dörrbecker (Wikicommons).

Renaissance Europe was a mix of large kingdoms and small principalities, dukedoms and republics. One of these was the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire. While formally under the control of the Emperor, Münster was truly ruled by Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck, who was exactly what he sounded like: both the prince of a territory and a bishop of the Church. He wasn’t the city’s absolute ruler, however: Münster had an elected town council, unusual for a state in that period.

Initially, the population of Münster was composed of a mix of Catholics, Lutherans and Anabaptists. By 1532, however, that balance began to change. Bernard Rothmann, an Anabaptist preacher in the city, began to rail against the Catholic Church, while Bernard Knipperdolling, a wealthy merchant with Anabaptist sympathies, used his printing press to spread Rothmann’s sermons far and wide. By 1533, the city had attracted two of what would become the century’s most charismatic and dangerous men – Jan Matthys and Jan van Leiden. Matthys and van Leiden had traveled from their homes in the Netherlands to answer Rothmann’s call for the establishment of a “New Jerusalem” in Münster: a perfect Christian society that would witness and be spared from the end of the world.

Ironically, their actions ended up bringing down deadly wrath upon Münster and its remaining inhabitants.

It looks serene now, but in the 16th century this Münster street would have deadly wrath called down upon it. Source: Mbdortmund (Wikicommons)

Matthys and his lieutenant van Leiden immediately took a considerable share of influence in the city’s affairs through their connection to Rothmann, the firebrand preacher, and Knipperdolling, the respected councilman and merchant. Together, the four initiated a religious reign of terror. They first ran new elections to the Münster city council that packed the body with Anabaptists. Matthys then shockingly urged the council to put the town’s spiritually unfit – meaning its Catholics and more moderate Protestants – to death. Knipperdolling managed to negotiate this sentence down to forced expulsion, and many of the city’s old families were subsequently thrown out without their property or belongings. These remaining assets were transferred to Münster’s new arrivals: thousands of destitute Anabaptists from the surrounding northern German and Dutch lands, attracted by Knipperdolling’s continued printing and publishing of Rothmann’s calls to action.

All of these happenings naturally attracted the attention of the Prince-Bishop of Münster. Waldeck, who had fled Münster ahead of the Anabaptist takeover, promptly gathered his forces, supplemented by mercenary troops, and laid siege to the city.

Meanwhile, Matthys and van Leiden began to organize the city’s defense and stockpile its resources. Helpfully, Matthys claimed to regularly receive messages from God. These divine revelations included orders to put the “faithless” of Münster to death, orders that he and his men carried out swiftly. God also apparently ordered him to ride out of the city armed, with a few dozen followers, to meet the Prince-Bishop’s thousands of troops in battle, because on Easter 1534 that’s just what he did. Jan van Leiden inherited the spiritual leadership of Münster right after Matthys’ death (cause: getting hacked to pieces by Franz von Waldeck’s cavalry.)

Jan van Leiden as King of Münster in a 1534 portrait. Some of the commemorative medals minted by the Anabaptists used this image for their designs. The motto at the bottom of the engraving reads “God’s power is my strength”, a straightforward summary of how van Leiden thought of himself.

Jan van Leiden, a.k.a. Jan Bockelson, was an interesting character. In addition to leadership over the fervently faithful Anabaptists of Münster, van Leiden also inherited Matthys’ direct line to God – as well as his allegedly attractive wife Divara.

This new Jan was slightly different from the old one. Van Leiden first weirded out the people of Münster by running around town naked, supposedly in a divinely induced trance, and then he shocked his followers by announcing that God wanted Münster to adopt polygamy as a legal practice. Jan completed his master plan (assuming he had one) by having himself declared King of Münster, something that the severe Jan Matthys had never done. His Majesty dissolved the city’s old government and created a royal court for himself composed of his inner circle of friends, including the two Bernards, Knipperdolling and Rothmann.

A depiction of Jan van Leiden baptizing a girl. Adult baptism was one of the defining aspects of Anabaptism and was outlawed in many parts of Europe to combat the movement.

Despite his faults, van Leiden seemed to have been at least kind of competent, because his newly organized defensive military units, composed by the remaining citizens of Münster, successfully repelled two of the Prince-Bishop’s direct assaults. The city was starving, however, and by mid-1535 its some of its people had had enough. Several deserters to the enemy’s siege lines gave the Prince-Bishop enough information to realize that he had worn the city’s inhabitants down. A third assault in late 1535 was successful, and the Prince-Bishop’s men retook Münster after a bloody battle within the city’s walls.

Many of the town’s population were summarily executed, but the leaders of Münster’s short-lived rebellion were captured alive to be questioned and later to be horrifically executed. Van Leiden, Knipperdolling and one Bernard Krechting suffered the officially sanctioned sentence of being ripped apart with coal-heated tongs for one hour each. Bernard Rothmann, the other ringleader of the Anabaptist rebellion, was not available for execution – after the last battle for Münster, he simply disappeared. Even if he had been killed in the fighting, we should probably consider him lucky that he didn’t have to share the scaffold with his friends in January 1536.

As a final insult, the bodies of the now-dead Anabaptist leaders were shoved into iron cages that were then hauled to the top of Münster Cathedral, presumably there to serve as a reminder and a warning. The corpses have long since decayed and scattered, but the iron cages remain hanging from the steeple of the great church to this very day.

This bizarre chapter of history raises all kinds of issues. We’re still not sure just how far King Jan of Münster believed what he told his people during his short reign – many of his actions suggest a desire for self-preservation that Jan Matthys, the man who rode against an army with a handful of citizen-soldiers, clearly didn’t have.

But the short-lived experiment in Münster is about more than this uniquely strange character. It’s also about the role that fanatical beliefs – religious or otherwise – can have on people. Münster was a relatively peaceful town before the arrival of the extremist Anabaptist preachers from Holland, and it was largely due to the influence of the Münsterites Hoffmann and Knipperdolling that they succeeded in overturning that peace and taking control of the city. Otherwise, they probably would have remained two obscure Dutch guys remembered only by hardcore Reformation historians. But they bought their fame at a great price. Thousands of Münsterites were killed, some by the extreme Anabaptists and some by the Prince-Bishop and his mercenary armies. Thousands more lost their homes and livelihoods. And the heads of the whole business lost their lives in an undignified, brutal and incredibly painful way.

Today’s Anabaptist societies, most famously the Amish and the Mennonites, are entirely pacifist and spend their time farming, building furniture, having children and not using modern technology. Maybe living in obscurity isn’t such a bad thing.

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Another van Leiden medal. I have no idea what it says on the reverse.

Münster’s Anabaptist “coins” aren’t coins at all. Many Anabaptists, including the Münster faction, didn’t believe in money or personal ownership of property, so minting coins would have been pretty useless. Medals bearing the image of Jan van Leiden as king of the “New Jerusalem” were crafted purely for propaganda purposes. These medals were produced at a time when the quality of coins was on the rise: they were beginning to be produced on round planchets, as opposed to the irregular planchets common to medieval coins.

I’m not even sure how many of these things exist, but considering the brief period of Anabaptist rule in Münster and the extreme strain on the besieged city’s resources, I imagine not too many were produced. Medals and other trinkets from the period and place are still around, though. Let me know if you find one!

If you want to learn more about the Münster Rebellion of 1534-5, look up the book The Tailor King. There are probably many more sources on the subject written in German and Dutch, but I can’t read them. If you’re more into podcasts, or you have four and a half hours to kill during commutes to and from work, check out Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History site, which features an episode on the rebellion and its causes and effects. I’m a big fan of his work, and you might find that you’re one too.

Junk I found in a container in the back of the closet

Yesterday, I was clearing out space in preparation for a move. I rarely shift things around. As a result, my closets (or my “throw random shit in here” rooms, as I like to call them) always become more and more cluttered and useless until I’m absolutely forced to deal with them.

The upside to only entering a closet once a year is that, when you do enter it, you find things that you never knew you had. My most interesting find was a box containing several coin and coin-related things that I’d collected since I was a kid. Didn’t know what else to write about, so here they are.

This is a golf ball machine token left over from a trip to a driving range twelve or so years ago. It was made somewhere called Niles, Michigan. This is what Niles, Michigan looks like:

All I remember about my trip to the driving range was that I hit a lot more clumps of grass and dirt than I did golf balls.

If I were so inclined, I could probably take this token back to that driving range and rent some golf balls – so it still has some use. Not so for the next piece up.

In 1996, this token would have bought one ride on MARTA, Atlanta’s godawful rapid transit system. Atlanta was hosting the Olympics that year, hence the Olympic-themed token. Like most American subway/local rail systems, MARTA now uses a card system, so this token is now only good for its historical/novelty value. Maybe it will be worth a lot in five hundred years.

Speaking of useless, here’s a pressed penny. If you’re not familiar with the concept of pressed pennies, imagine a machine that destroys a penny by crushing it and stamping a new design on its now elongated corpse. Now imagine that the machine requires a quarter in payment for this valuable service. Yes, for only 26 cents, you can commemorate your trip to a tourist trap attraction with a souvenir that you’ll accidentally drop down the side of your car seat on the way home and forget about until you decide to clean up your vehicle’s interior.

This particular pressed penny comes from someplace called “Blizzard Beach.” I have no idea what that is, but I know that I went to Disneyland as a kid and that this penny has Disney stamped on it – so it must be from Disneyland. How magical.

This Canadian nickel technically is not junk. It’s worth five cents in Canada. Down here, though, it isn’t worth anything unless you can trick someone into thinking it’s a US nickel.

This is actually pretty easy to do, considering the fact that US and Canadian coins of the same denomination are almost exactly the same diameter. It’s not uncommon to find Canadian coins in change in the US – it’s how I came across this piece. If you’ve got a jar of change you plan on rolling up or pouring into one of those evil ripoff Coinstar machines, you might have a few of the Queen’s coins mixed in.

This pile of coins is most definitely not junk. These are Eisenhower dollars, also called Ikes. Ikes are sometimes called silver dollars, but this is a misleading name – unlike its Morgan and Peace dollar predecessors, the normal, made for circulation Ike contains no silver at all.

The Ike is a strange bird as US currency goes. First minted in 1971, the Eisenhower dollar was designed at a time when large coins were going out of style. It was terminated in 1978 and replaced by the small quarter-sized Susan B. Anthony dollar, which had an even shorter run of three years. Today, Ikes are a lot like two dollar bills: although they’re legal tender, they’re almost never found in circulation and are generally saved for their novelty value. Apparently they can still be gotten at some banks, so if you feel like paying a debt with hundreds of pounds worth of dollar coins, that’s still an option.

Communist coins

Today is May 1st, the day that the world minus my country celebrates May Day (we Americans have ours in September because we’re special.) May Day is an old European holiday with ancient, pre-Christian origins – sort of a harvest festival from a time when the success of communities were tied to the fertility of the land.

Today, though, May Day relates primarily to labor, a connection that it picked up during the growth of the organized labor movement in the 19th century. May 1st was chosen as “International Workers’ Day” by the budding socialist and labor movements and became an occasion for large labor-related demonstrations and marches. While this new May Day wasn’t exactly a “communist holiday”, it now has that connotation in some parts of the world, partly because the some of the largest May Day celebrations were put on by the Soviet Union. So what better day to look at some coins of the old communist bloc?

This first specimen is a silver 15 kopek coin from the Soviet Union dated 1925. If you know your interwar European history, you know that the 20s were a very difficult time for Russia and the USSR’s other constituent republics. The Russian civil war ended in 1922, but its disastrous effects had a long-lasting impact on the people of the Soviet Union.

1925 in particular marked a time of change in the USSR. Vladimir Lenin had died the previous year, and Joseph Stalin now began to consolidate his power and eliminate his political rivals. Lenin’s New Economic Policy, implemented in 1921, was meant to turn the Soviet Union towards a “socialist market” economy in which producers could sell their surplus goods on the market, but Lenin’s death marked the beginning of the NEP’s end courtesy of the rising ruler, Stalin. This 15 kopek piece bears the Soviet coat of arms and the old communist motto “Workers of the World Unite!”

Between 1939 and 1944, the Polish state ceased to exist. First divided between Germany and the USSR and later overrun by the Nazis following the German declaration of war against Russia in 1941, many of the Poles developed an underground resistance movement. The Polish Home Army and the much smaller communist-affliated People’s Army of Poland both fought against their German occupiers. As it happened, the end of the war resulted in the Soviet Union dominating almost all of eastern Europe, including Poland, which soon became a Soviet satellite state with a very Sovietesque Stalinist political structure.

The above coin was minted in 1949, just four years after the end of the war. Until 1952, the newly formed Polish state continued under its old pre-war formal name of Rzeczpospolita Polska, or Republic of Poland. 1952 saw the addition of “People’s” in the title, officially making Poland into a recognizably communist People’s Republic.

The eastern states of Germany also fell into the Soviet orbit after the end of World War II. After the Allies invaded Germany in 1944-5 and put an end to the Nazi government, they split the country into four zones. The eastern Soviet zone officially became the German Democratic Republic in 1949, a communist state and a member of the communist, Moscow-oriented Warsaw Pact.

These 10 and 50 pfennig coins were minted in 1948 and 1968 respectively. The difference between the two is evident in their symbols and inscriptions. The 1948 coin was minted when “East Germany” was still just the Soviet zone of Allied-occupied Germany. Consequently, it bears the simple inscription “Deutschland” and a gear and ears of wheat, a thrown together mishmash of typical communist imagery. The other coin, minted when the East German regime was well established, bears the country’s formal name Deutsche Demokratische Republik and its official emblem.

The last example isn’t a coin, but a banknote. Can you guess what country it’s from? The obverse might give you a clue: it’s North Korean. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is perhaps the only totalitarian communist state still left in the world, and it’s also one of the few states that is trying to achieve offensive nuclear capabilities against the will of most of the rest of the world community. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are represented quite well by this five won note: a nucleus dominates the center of the note while two scientist-looking guys stare stoically to the left. The implication is obvious, isn’t it?

Denomination and demonetization

Currency denominations are generally pretty standard around the world. Most countries issue coins and banknotes in 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s or 25s, 50s, and 100s. Countries with currencies that haul around a lot of zeros issue their money in the same denominations multiplied by 10, 100 or 1,000 (or one billion if you’re in Zimbabwe.)

Which makes the above note a little unusual. This Burmese note began production in 1987 and is worth 45 kyats. Yes, really.

You might be wondering who would issue such a bizarre banknote. Look no further than the late Ne Win, a general in the Burmese army and former head of the military government that has ruled Burma (aka Myanmar) since 1962.

The kyat has been the off-and-on currency of Burma since 1852, when King Pagan Min began minting kyat coins in gold and silver and smaller denominations in silver and bronze. The value of the silver kyat was fixed to that of the British Indian rupee. When British forces captured Burma after a series of wars in 1886, the old kingdom was incorporated into the British colony of India and the rupee became Burma’s currency.

A .917 silver kyat from 1852. Its obverse bears a peacock, the symbol of the old Burmese monarchy and of the later anti-colonialist independence movement.

After a period of Japanese occupation during World War II, Burma came into its own politically when the British Raj collapsed in 1948, and the kyat was reestablished as its official currency. Unfortunately for the Burmese, their newly independent republic was wedged between China to the north, French Indochina to the east and India to the west – all boiling pots of political activity and sometimes conflict. The Union of Burma lasted until 1962, when General Ne Win instigated a coup and established a military state based upon a strange mix of Buddhism and Marxism. The general proceeded to nationalize most of Burma’s private companies, forbade the opening of new firms with private capital and instituted price controls, all moves that had disastrous effects on the country’s economy.

Ne Win also had a few strange quirks. The general was apparently interested in numerology, a form of fortune-telling that involves playing with numbers, usually in relation to the subject’s name. The practice of supernatural number-games stretches back to the Hebrew practice of gematria, but despite its ancient religious roots, numerology is a famously random and easy-to-screw-around-with practice.

Ne Win didn’t seem to think so, however. In 1985 the old general, who regularly consulted with soothsayers, introduced a 75 kyat note, to be followed by 15 and 35 kyat notes the next year. The older, much more logically denominated 50 and 100 kyat notes were demonetized following a grace period during which citizens could exchange some of their old money.

A 1986-series 35 kyat banknote bearing the image of General Aung San, a major Burmese independence figure. The Burmese must have been wondering what their leaders were smoking when they came up with the idea for these notes.

Most of these new issues wouldn’t last. In 1987, Ne Win realized that since 9 was his lucky number, Burma’s banknotes should naturally all carry values that were divisible by 9. Therefore, he issued a series of 45 and 90 kyat notes meant to replace the now demonetized 25, 35 and 75 kyat notes – hence the weird bill at the top of the page. (Why he didn’t also put out 9, 18 and 63 kyat notes is a mystery.) This time, the Burmese government didn’t allow its citizens to exchange their old notes, and countless people lost large portions of their savings.

The official demonetization announcement came without warning at 11 am on September 5th. Accounts of the day in Yangon, the capital of Burma, depict empty markets and streets as Burmese citizens presumably went home to figure out what the hell they were supposed to do with all of their suddenly useless money.

A streetside market in Yangon, the Burmese capital.

By this point, the Burmese were no strangers to forced remonetization. The military government often used this tool to clamp down on black market activities. It’s no surprise, then, that Burma’s economy had suffered so badly – and that 1988 saw massive pro-democracy protests led in part by Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of Aung San (the anti-colonial leader featured on the 15, 35 and 75 kyat notes.) These protests did not bring down Burma’s military regime, but it did see the end of Ne Win’s rule and the eventual phasing out of his crazy banknotes, which were soon replaced by normally denominated notes.

So when you pull a ten or twenty out of your pocket, take a moment to think about how lucky you are. Be thankful that your money makes sense and that it (hopefully) won’t be made worthless by a reckless and unaccountable government.

Gold and silver as legal tender?

Americans who grew up in the 50s still remember a time when US currency contained precious metals. Until 1964, our dimes, quarters, half- and full dollars were made of a 90% silver alloy, a composition that was changed to copper-nickel because of silver’s rapidly rising price. And until 1932, higher-denomination coins from $2.50 to $20 were minted in 90% gold, a practice that was put to an end by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A silver Washington quarter minted in 1932, the first year of its production.

But could we be returning to the days of gold and silver as legal tender? The Arizona state legislature seems to think so. Yesterday, the Arizona House approved a Senate bill authorizing the use of gold and silver coin as legitimate payment for goods and services, providing the vendor is willing to accept precious metals over cash or credit. The bill still has to be signed into law by Republican Governor Jan Brewer.

State Republicans, who sponsored the bill and voted for it down party lines, claim that they’re reacting to the inflation and the possible (some would say the inevitable) collapse of the US dollar. Dedicated followers of American politics might recognize this line as one of the main arguments of the sound money movement, which pushes for the national legalization of gold and silver currency and has Ron Paul as one of its most visible supporters. The bill also has support from mining companies, particularly Arizona’s own Scottsdale Silver & Gold LLC.

US Representative Ron Paul of Texas holding a piece of silver. For those who don’t know, Rep. Paul is a Republican with a strong libertarian bent and he really hates the Fed. This 77 year-old doctor and legislator has a rock star-like following among a hard core of supporters.

So if the governor passes this bill, will Arizonans be carrying around gold pieces like they used to in the old West? Will you be able to buy a beer for a silver coin? More importantly, will this bill actually change people’s spending habits?

We don’t have to answer this question with a hypothetical, because it’s already happened once before. In 2011, Utah’s legislature approved a bill with language similar to that of the Arizona bill. You can now pay or accept any gold or silver “issued by the federal government” in Utah. Presumably this includes the modern American Gold and Silver Eagles issued by the US Mint as well as old 90% US gold and silver coins. Residents of Utah who choose to use gold and silver for their purchases can either plonk down actual coins or carry them to the Utah Gold & Silver Depository, which hands out what are essentially debit cards attached to precious metals checking accounts.

Utah’s law hasn’t been in force long enough to say what sort of effect it might have, but I suspect that the only people who are going to take advantage of these new precious metals as legal tender laws are the same people who would willing use or accept gold and silver for purchases either way. Most vendors will consider it too much of a pain to account for the daily fluctuations in the prices of gold and silver to accept them as payment – not to mention the fear of receiving counterfeit coins. Setups like the Utah Gold & Silver Depository are a possible solution, but a lot of the people buying up precious metals seem to be preparing for a total financial meltdown and probably wouldn’t be comfortable parting with their physical assets under any circumstances.

By Portable Antiquities Scheme from London, England (Wikicommons). This is a pile of old US gold coins. If the governor of Arizona signs this bill into law, you would probably be able to buy a car in Arizona with ten of these coins.

The bill also presents problems for government. Arizona’s Department of Revenue has refused to accept gold and silver as payment, probably rightly anticipating the sort of bureaucratic nightmare that a dual dollar/metals payment system would involve. There’s also the fact that this whole initiative comes out of an inherent mistrust of the dollar by libertarians, a position that no government agency in the US can easily get behind.

Personally, I love my collection of coins but I’m not about to go out and spend them on anything. Yes, inflation is an issue (though really, low cost of living adjustments and rising food prices are much more of a problem.) But my paychecks still have dollar signs on them, and when I go to the local grocery store or the cafe, they still only take dollars. I’m not an expert in this field, but it doesn’t take an economist to determine than whatever people perceive to have value does in fact have value. The same goes for gold and silver, doesn’t it?

But what the hell. If I ever do go to Arizona, I’ll be sure to take along a silver dollar to spend.

The coldest bastard in Roman history?

Above are two silver denarii from the 3rd century A.D. These ancient Roman coins were some of the most commonly used in the empire for the purposes of trade (small transactions and wages would have been paid with the large bronze sestertius or smaller denominations.) The denarius was a symbol of the Roman Empire and its power throughout the western world, and it appropriately bore the emblems of power.

The two denarii in the picture bear portraits of the long-lived emperor Septimius Severus (left) and one of his sons and successors, Geta (right.) Severus, a general commanding several legions in Pannonia (in modern Croatia) had won the throne in A.D. 193 after defeating and deposing Didius Julianus, the senator who bought the empire by bribing the Praetorian Guard after they had murdered the previous emperor, Pertinax (who had taken over from the also murdered and very crazy emperor Commodus.) By the time Severus entered Rome, the Romans must have been desperate to put an end to the madness of the past fifteen years following the death of Marcus Aurelius.

Fortunately for the Romans, Severus was a fairly able, if somewhat severe, administrator who brought a degree of stability back to Rome. Unfortunately for the Romans, the sons of Severus were a couple of lousy assholes.

A portrait of the Severan family. The Severan dynasty ruled Rome, with a brief interlude, from 193 to 235.

Here we see the happy royal family in a portrait. The bearded guy is Septimius Severus, the woman at his side is his wife Julia Domna, and the children are their sons Lucius Severus Bassianus (a.k.a. Caracalla) and Publius Septimius Antoninus Geta. Notice that one of the children has had his face removed from the portrait. More on that later.

Even as Emperor, Septimius Severus was a dedicated general and led several campaigns during his reign. Caracalla and Geta, however, did not take after their father, preferring the easy life in Rome. Contemporary Roman historians Cassius Dio and Herodian tell us that the two brothers spent their days gambling, drinking and generally being useless layabouts. The historians also claim that the two hated each other utterly.

For some reason, Severus felt it would be best to leave the empire to both of his sons to rule jointly. Pretty much everyone else felt, probably correctly, that this was a terrible idea. In any case, Severus died in A.D. 211 after naming his sons co-emperors with himself. Caracalla and Geta immediately divided up the royal palace and set up rival camps within the same imperial administration.

While Dad was dead and gone, however, Mom was still around – and she was angry. Julia Domna couldn’t simply sit by as her sons tore the empire apart. Accordingly, she called on Caracalla and Geta to make peace. The brothers agreed and met in her apartments. While they hashed out their differences, armed men broke into the residence and hacked Geta to death in front of his brother and mother.

Gold aurei depicting young Caracalla and Geta as Caesars, or junior emperors. The brothers ruled jointly as Augusti before Caracalla had Geta murdered in 211.

Caracalla quickly claimed that he had had nothing to do with his brother’s death – that, in fact, the assassins had attempted to kill both of them. But few people, least of all his mother, believed Caracalla’s story. Romans had probably been running betting pools about which brother would kill the other first. Caracalla had the motive and the opportunity, and his subsequent actions would all but prove his guilt. The new sole emperor of Rome proceeded to damn his brother’s memory and remove his name and image from all official accounts and works of art (hence the defaced family portrait.) Fortunately for Caracalla, the Praetorian Guard and the members of the legions claimed to believe his story. This probably had nothing at all to do with the huge bonuses he gave them after Geta’s death.

Caracalla was the sort of emperor you might imagine he’d be. After taking care of his brother and performing some wholly ineffective damage control, the Augustus picked up with the entire court and went on an extended tour of his provinces. Cassius Dio and Herodian both inform us that Caracalla pulled little pranks on his provincial subjects – for example, ordering one town to build a theater or some other kind of expensive structure for his arrival and then passing the town without stopping. Caracalla’s super-fun antics didn’t just involve financially ruining and wasting the labor of his subjects, though. When the Emperor arrived in Alexandria, we’re told that he killed ten of thousands of its male residents and subjected the city to martial law. The historians claim that Caracalla did this because the Alexandrians had long mocked him for killing his brother (they also compared him, unfavorably, to the city’s founder Alexander the Great and the mythical Achilles.) That reason is pretty believable, considering the sort of guy Caracalla seems to be: quick to anger and not especially level-headed.

Even in his official bust, Caracalla looks furious.

Caracalla extended his wild successes to foreign affairs. In 215 the young Emperor, still a bachelor, accepted a marriage proposal from the king of Parthia in modern-day Iran for his daughter’s hand. Caracalla then went to Parthia under the pretense of marrying the girl. When he arrived at the wedding party, Herodian tells us, Caracalla ordered his soldiers to murder all the Parthians and proceeded to wreck havoc throughout the countryside. He also broke off the marriage (by murdering his new bride.) What a nice guy.

Under the circumstances, Caracalla couldn’t have hoped to last very long on the throne. Despite giving frequent bonuses to his troops (and all the booty they could carry out of Parthia) dissension began to brew. In 217, the Emperor was stabbed by a centurion while taking a leak on the side of the road. This regicide was ordered by Macrinus, Caracalla’s praetorian prefect, who then became Emperor of Rome for 14 months before being murdered himself (do you see a pattern here?)

A gold aureus depicting Septimius Severus on the obverse and his family – wife Julia Domna and sons Caracalla and Geta – on the reverse.

Some historians have recently tried to bump Caracalla’s reputation up from Caligula-level monster to practical, tough and realistic ruler, as they have with the earlier Emperor Domitian. They’ve pointed out that Cassius Dio, one of his biggest critics, was a senator closely involved with the imperial administration in the time of Severus and was later ignored by Caracalla. It’s entirely true that some of the old historical accounts are dodgy (even Caligula probably didn’t commit every horrific act that guys like Suetonius have attributed to him.) Still, there’s not much reason to believe that Caracalla was all that great for the empire he ruled for six years. We know he murdered his brother, we know he killed a whole lot of Alexandrians and we know that Caracalla’s authoritarian military style, adopted from his father, continued the kind of political instability that would do serious damage to Rome for decades afterwards. Even if he wasn’t the embodiment of evil, there is no doubt that he left a pretty rotten legacy behind for his imperial successors to deal with.

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Roman silver coins were minted in large quantities and are quite affordable. I bought the Severus and Geta coins above from a well-known local dealer for a total of fifty dollars. Prices vary depending upon condition and type, but you should be able to find plenty of denarii for around twenty dollars each.

The gold aureus is a different matter. Aurei are made of almost pure gold. Moreover, aurei were typically only minted for special occasions and for special purposes, such as handing out donatives to troops. For this reason, the gold aureus is much more expensive than the typical Roman silver or bronze. I haven’t yet seen an aureus that I could afford to buy (although I haven’t really looked, to be honest.) And anyway, if you really want a coin that is affordable and likely saw a lot of use in its time, a Roman silver or bronze piece is your best bet.

Propaganda on coins

Wow, I’ve neglected this blog for a while. I’ve been extremely busy with work and such, but now that things have settled down, I hope to get back to the subject of coins more often. They’re a lot more interesting than most of the subjects I have to take on as a copywriter, that’s for sure. Anyway, down to business.

Usually, coins are nothing more than bits of metal we use to exchange for goods or services or to keep as a store of wealth. During wartime or serious political upheaval, however, coins often take on a whole new meaning. The coin’s symbols and mottos carry ideological messages that can make these bits of metal potent propaganda tools.

When the Germans occupied France in 1940, they initially had no plans in place to create a new currency. As a consequence, the coins of the French Third Republic bearing the national symbol of Marianne and the national motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité were minted up through 1941, during the first year of German occupation. That year, the regime switched over to a new design that featured the double-headed throwing axe, the fascist-ish symbol adopted by Marshal Pétain. These new coins basically acted as propaganda for his collaborationist Vichy government.

Although it was underground, the French resistance was able to make it own mark on WWII French currency. The franc above has been counterstamped twice with the Cross of Lorraine, the symbol of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces. These little stamps of resistance on coinage circulating in France would have sent a powerful message both to the occupying forces and to the people living under occupation. The Cross of Lorraine made appearances not only on coins, but also as graffiti on French collaborationist banners celebrating the Vichy regime. It was also featured on the flag of the Free French Forces and was flown by Free French vessels when fighting at sea.

A WWII period French tank bearing the Cross of Lorraine.

Thousands of miles away, another struggle had cropped up. This time, though, it was a struggle against the Allied Forces. India had been governed by British forces in various forms since the 17th century, and by the 1940s a massive independence movement was underway. The Axis powers took advantage of this state of affairs and joined up with a branch of the increasingly popular pro-independence fighters.

The result was the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (meaning Free India.) The PGAH was established in Singapore by a group of Indian exiles led by Subhas Chandra Bose, a former president of the pro-independence Congress Party who had fallen out of favor in 1939. After a fruitless two-year stay in Nazi Germany, Bose took off to Singapore via Tokyo and took control of the Indian National Army with the full support of the Empire of Japan.

The INA fought alongside the Imperial Japanese army in Burma during the later part of the war. As the political arm of the Axis-aligned movement, the PGAH claimed control over all of British Indian (although, in reality, it merely held the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.) When Bose died in 1945, the movement fell apart, but not before stirring up post-war anti-British sentiments in the mainstream of Indian society that led to the collapse of the British Raj in 1948.

The PGAH left behind a decidedly mixed and often debated legacy. It also left behind some British rupees bearing its PGAH counterstamp. As a government-in-exile, the PGAH didn’t have the means to issue its own rupees, but it could sure as hell deface the British-issued coins. Poor George VI has had his eyes stamped over in the above specimen. I wonder if that was intentional?

Here in the US, we have our own examples of coin-stamp propaganda. This pre-civil war penny bears the inscription “Vote The Land Free”, a motto of the Free Soilers. In the 1840s, the issue of slavery was exploding throughout the country. Newly elected statesmen such as Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois were carrying on a constant battle over the spread of slavery in the growing United States. Parts of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase were undergoing the legal transformation from territories to full states, and the US had recently won the West from Mexico.

The question facing Congress and the country was whether these states should allow the institution of slavery. Lincoln and other Radical Republicans stood firmly against the spread of what they called “slave power” (meaning essentially the power of slaveholders.) Douglas, many other Democrats and some moderate Republicans instead supported a policy called popular sovereignty, which called for the residents of new states to vote on the issue for themselves.

One of the results of this conflict was the short-lived Free Soil Party, formed in 1848, which campaigned on an anti-slavery platform. As a part of their efforts to turn out the vote, Free Soil supporters stamped the old US large cents with the slogan “VOTE THE LAND FREE.” The Free Soilers were unfortunately not able to prevent the pre-Civil War unrest we now call Bleeding Kansas, fought between citizens in Kansas and Missouri who supported each side of the issue. The most famous of the fighting Free Soilers was John Brown, who was hanged in 1859 after leading a failed armed abolitionist revolt.

John Brown, better known as “that guy on the Kansas album cover.”

Do people stamp coins with political slogans where you live? If so, you might want to hold onto a few examples – they could be very historically valuable decades down the road.