Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/517

 ii s. iv. DEC. 23, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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assemblies. An account with a woodcut is in The Graphic, 15 April, 1899 ; and another with a woodcut in The Daily Mail, ante, 4 January, 1899. The specimen which the Academy examined was bought by M. Boyer d'Agen for two soldi at Rome in 1897, and its Syro-Chaldaic legend means the same. In or about 1898 MM. Falize Freres, goldsmiths of Paris, published a pamphlet on the Boyer d'Agen medal.

In 1899 Mr. Jenuer of Liverpool sent a long and interesting letter to The Banner of Israel (19 April, 1899) with cuts of three medals. He suggests they were struck by early Christian Israelite missionaries to Britain. The inscriptions on two of these are different from any others, and seem too much injured to be clear, and one has the usual instruments of the Passion.

The one I bought in 1905 is of black bronze, and the dealer said it might be 200 years old. It is the size of a crown, very much worn ; the obverse and reverse are the same as on Dr. Walsh's (p. 258, pi. iii. fig. 26) found near Cork.

Such is all that I have found about these curious Messianic medals. I have not read the account in 'The Amulet,' 1830, but I think the above pretty well covers the ground, and it leaves me with the impression that the medals were made in the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, as pretended Christian antiquities, but at different dates by different people, who have fancifully varied the in- scription. The bust on them seems taken from the celebrated head on an emerald given by a Sultan to a Pope, and frequently engraved. L. M. R.

I have a similar medal to that re- ferred to by J. T. F. I have seen a silver specimen, but mine is of copper. Modern ones have been done by electro- type process. It is, I would suggest, the production of some monastery in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and sold to believers as a true likeness of the Saviour. It is certainly not the work of a Jew rather of one with but an elementary knowledge of the holy tongue.

The X behind the head is the initial letter of U*JnK = our Lord; the word in front of the head is *B^= Jesus (not 1"). The obverse inscription is rM?O/= Messiah, T/O = King, &O = has come, DlWlO = in peace. The rest of the inscription is somewhat obscure, and I would put forth the following explanation tentatively : D*1K1=and man; as the final letter is D

instead of 0, it is not improbable that the author of the inscription had in mind the suggestion that B'IK are the initial letters of DIN = Adam, 111 =D avid, IWb= Messiah. There existed an idea that the soul of Adam entered the body of David, and then the body of Jesus. The 1=and may be / a stop. The next word is again DTK = Adam, >M?y= became, <i n=living ; i.e., Adam, for his disobedience, was adjudged t guilty of death, but regained everlasting life by means of this transmigration of his soul.

ISBAEL SOLOMONS.

Replicas of this medal were on sale in London a few years ago. On a paper given with the medal it said :

" This medal is a facsimile of a remarkable coin made in the first century of the Christian era, and contains a unique portrait of the Saviour. The original was discovered in the Campo del Fieri (The Jew Market) in Rome. The obverse contains a portrait of Christ ; the reverse side an inscription in Hebrew characters which reads : ' The Saviour has reigned, He came peacefully ; having become the light of man, He lives (or lived).' It is well known that the first Christians in Rome, owing to the terrible persecutions to which they were submitted, were compelled often to meet in secret. Such a coin, it is believed, was used as a token to admit members to their meetings in the Catacombs, and was carried by early converts as a means of recognition without exchange of words."

This find at Rome was made by M. Boyer d'Agen in the spring of 1897, and a pamphlet giving an account of the medal was published by MM. Falize Freres of Paris. It was, however, shown by M. Battandier in the Rente de V Art Chretien, 1897, p. 418, that the medal was not an " original," as was supposed. In an article in The Echo about 1898 it war, stated that " the so-called newly found portrait of Christ has been known to experts in this country for nearly a century," and that there are numerous specimens in bronze and lead in the cabinets of collectors in various parts of the king- dom, including the Bodleian Library. The first known specimen was found in 1812 by a farmer's daughter in County Cork when digging for potatoes.

The inscription on this was rendered " The Messiah has reigned. He came in peace, and being made the light of man, He lives." Experts of the day believed it to be a genuine " tessera " or amulet " struck by the first Jewish converts to Christianity, and worn by them as a pious memorial of their Master."

The Reliquary and Antiquary for October, 1904, pp. 260-69, contained an account of these medals, and pointed out that a similar