Bulletin of the Academy of Hippone Bone, 1885

NOTE

ON THE DE SFAX

Called GUERMIDE amongst the Arabs.

In the Bulletin of the Academy of Hippone, nº 18, R.P. DELATRE, missionary from Algiers in the chapel of St-Louis of Carthage (Tunisia), gave the description of a medal that the Arabs call Guermide and which is sold in Sfax and in the surroundings of this city. He regards it as an imitation of the gold currency of Venice and he reads one side:

OVCMEl IDOFNOCEN and the other: DIOSIMIVOC ANEOATOV

He does not appear to have tried hard to make the translation of these characters, because he declares surely that they are laid out in an unintelligible manner and that it is easy to see that someone wanted to ridicule the pious subject of the currency of Venice. This medal, which was used as an amulet, offers, indeed, a coarsely made representation of the two subjects which are reproduced on the gold ducats of Venice that one designates with the name of sequins; but, in our opinion, there is nothing in this reproduction to lead us to suppose that mockery is intended. Mr. CAGNAT understands it thus and he thinks that the manufacturers of the or , called guermides , would have been poorly educated people to ridicule the currency of the Doges; that consequently, this copy of the sequins of Venice is p251 no more a mockery than 30 cent tie-pins, imitating upright in the middle of an ellipsoid of stars; there are sixteen of them like the sequin of Venice. Of the another side of the medal [vote] two formless figures laid out of the same manner as those of the Venetian currency and which represent the kneeling doge receiving the banner from the hands of St-Marc, patron of the Republic. The gold ducats of Venice were a dependable currency of good quality and very widespread throughout all the the East; this is what explains the vogue that they had starting from the 13th century, as well as the many imitations that were made of it by various princes and various states. Mr. P. LAMBROS, in an article that he published in the Revue de Numismatique française (Journal of French Numismatics), informs us that the Gattulisii in Metelin, the Justiniani in Chio, and the Génois in Pera, copied the Venetian sequins accurately. The Grand-Masters of St-John of Jerusalem, established in Rhodes, followed the same example. Dieudonné of Gozon (1346) was the first who put on his currencies the emblem on the right of the ducat of the Doges; Antoine Fluvian (1431) imitated it thoroughly with the name of St-Marc and that of Venice. The Grand-Masters who came then, until Villiers of the Ile-d’ Adam (1521), preserved on their currencies the imitation of the Venetian gold ducats; but after the establishment of the knights of the order in the Island of Malta (1530), Jean de Lavalette Parisot carefully reformed the currency and struck new coins which carried the legend: non oes scd fides (1557). After those precedents, there is no reason to be very astonished by the manufacturers of amulets also wanting to imitate the emblem of the gold currency of Venice which, because of its religious character, seems very suuitable to be reproduced on a medal being used as . With regard to the legends, we do not want to suppose for a moment that groups of characters were thus engraved without any meaning, because it would have to be admitted that the manufacturer wanted to impose some on the populations in their selling amulets written, but not meaning anything at all. The same man could not be at the same time both malicious and deprived at this point of judgement and of intelligence. We were able to examine four copper specimens of this amulet and we noted that p252 they differ considerably with regard to the module, the shape of the letters, the quality of metal employed. There is, undoubtedly, enough evidence that these various types do not come from the same workshop and that they could not have been manufactured at the same time. This explanation seems sufficient, we think, to wipe away the last traces of the charge of mockery made on the manufacturers and the people who made use of this talisman. It is undeniable, moreover, that medal-makers living in distinct countries, perhaps extremely far from each other, and living at different times, could intend to make fun of St-Marc. The amulet known as guermîde is always provided with an attachment in the form of a ring to allow to be suspended from the neck. The inscription of the legends is made mainly in Greek characters; hence it is in this language that we sought the significance of the formulas. The letters are regular, but are oddly laid out: some are lying on the side; others are inverted; one also observes Roman characters; the C consistently replaces the Σ. The words are very badly spelled and one can note many abbreviations. We will thus not exaggerate by saying that the manufacturer of these talismans intentionally wanted to make the legends enigmatic for his contemporaries, for us there must be a stronger reason, and there is no place to be astonished if our learned epigraphists hesitated until now to make a translation of it. This same reason could lead us to be taxed with great temerity, and this prospect, if it does not discourage us, is not likely however to encourage us to present the interpretation which we have made. What it is, we will unveil as follows:

On the right one reads: VCOV I E MR. HCVO IDORNOCEN, and on the obverse: DIOESIMIVOC ANIVEOATOV. To better facilitate this reading, we will separate the words in this manner:

VCOV IEM HCV OI DO r NOCEN

DIO ESI MINOC ANIV EOATOV. p253 -YCOV. - The word YCOV which is at the top of the medal, between the two figures, appears to be an apocope [ed. where the last syllable is dropped] of and , and this assumption is supported, since on one of the specimens, this word seems to start with IAC. We already said that C equals Σ. It is obvious that it is the name of there, in the sense of: I am Jesus, implied , I am. IEM. - Word IEM of the beginning of the circular legend, on the left, is, undoubtedly, for , the first person singular present of the verb , and results in: I send, I get. HΣY. - There We have undoubtedly an abbreviation of , , meaning: calm, peace, relief, reduction in pain, suffering. This word must be employed here with the the singular accusative. 0I. - Nominatif masculine plural of , who, which, of which. This is obviously a relative which makes one suppose, necessarily, an implied antecedent; we will suppose that this is , and we will have consequently, with the plural dative , that is to say: , to those who. OΓ. - This is clearly an abbreviation of the verb , and must be intended in the 3rd person of the present plural: . This verb is rendered in [English] as: to test, experience. NOCEN. - Is evidently for , the accusative singular of , meaning disease, physical or moral suffering; could still translate to: plague, curse, calamity. The full construction of this first formula would be, in our opinion, the following one:

and will translate we it as follows: I am Jesus, I bring relief to those who are suffering .

DIO. - The first word that one reads on the other face of the medal is DIO, probably for , which indicates divinité and which also wants to say: divine, majestic. ESI. - The word which comes next is ESI, mis-spelled and which we will read , third person present singular of the verb , meaning to send, get, give, make leave. MIVOC. - Is undoubtedly for or . This word must be taken here in the accusative: , and means: force, strength, courage; It is a contraction of a name. Someone may want to point out to us that MIVOC should be read as MIUOS. But this last reading that we would have liked to adopt, does not make any sense. Undoubtedly V is not the same as the Υ (upsilon), this character is elongated a little in shape; but if one goes back to a few centuries before Christ., that is to say the time when the Greeks made use of the éolo-doriens characters to write their epitaphs and their numismatics legends, one finds in their alphabet the letters Y and V employed to render the sound of w (orig. ou , (Fr.)] and y. Such as it is, we prefer to suppose, for the interpretation which occupies us in this moment, that a v with two posts has been plainly engraved at your base for a v (‘nu’) with the writing that one calls cast [ed. embossed ]. For the rest, v (‘nu’) and v can easily be confused because of their resemblance and one finds examples of this confusion in the old manuscripts where one reads : for (city), for (name of man). ANIV - It is probable that this word is for , the dative plural of , which comes from the verb , meaning: to soften, to weaken, to slacken, and whose derivatives are: (incurable), , without remedy; is composed of av , indicating deprivation, absence, and of , to cure. It is therefore in the sense of: who cannot be cured. EOATOV. - This word must be regarded as a contraction of , which is employed in the plural for , meaning: one and another, one of the others, and by extension: whatever they are; This is obviously a plural dative, it agrees with . We will propose to supplement this second formula in the following way:

and us the will interpret as follows: The divinity sends power to the incurable whoever they are.

Our translation will appear perhaps a little whimsical and yet it absolutely does not present anything incredible, if one seriously considers the gross errors invented amongst p255 all people to exploit ignorance and , in all ages and until at our days. In antiquity amulets were attributed with the capacity to cure, heal from diseases, divert evil spells. They were regarded as infallible remedies and were employed to relieve physical ills. The precise direction of the word amulet, that the the East provided us is: to carry; it derives, some say, from the Arabic hamel which has the same meaning; but the use comes from even further away. Pétrone mentions a gold ring of a constellation of iron stars, which had certain properties; this is the ring that he takes to Trimalchion: annulus totus aureus sed plane ferreis veluti stellis ferruminatus (Satiricon, xxxii). Ovide quotes a certain magic formula that he calls Carmen auxiliare and which we reproduce here: Neve parant valeant a se data gramina, carmen Auxiliare canit, secretasque advocat artes. (Metam . liv. vii, v. 137.) Aulu-Gelle reports what follows: this was a very widespread belief; a worried man with a fit of sciatica, feels the pain decrease when someone nearby plays a soft air on the flute: Ischiaci cum maxime doleant tum si modulis lenibus libicen incinat minui dolores. (Noctium atticarum commentarius, I. IV, ch. 13.) Plini says that the use of amulets was born from the medicine which employed them in all cases where it was unable to discover the true cause of a disease, and in his time these cases were frequent. If the ancients had an unlimited confidence in the effectiveness of the amulets, the Arabs of today never fail to resort to it each time they feel a little indisposed; It is the marabout of the tribe who has the monopoly of the manufacture of talismans on which he inscribes the various names of Allah, the verses of Coran and other secret recipes that he has. It manufactures them for all the cases which can arise: against fever, scale, rabies, the sterility of women, abortion, falls from a horse, shots, sabre blows. He provides the specific ones, either to excite, or to repress the heat of the desires in love, etc These amulets are called, by the Arabs, Telsem , in Greek, ; from this last p256 word came the word for talisman; they are fastend in very small leather bags, generally embroidered with gold or silver, and one carries them suspended from the neck, or attached to a cord passed through a scarf around the body. The Christian religion never defended the use of amulets which was however covered by a certain tolerance by the emperors of the Lower Empire; and the Fathers of the Church, far from excluding their use, approved and encouraged them with all their authority. Saint Augustin, appointed bishop in 395, tells us that the priest Enchaire, who lived in Calame, was cured of a stone which tormented him for a long time, by the relics of the glorious martyr St-Etienne: veteri morbi calculi laborabat et per mémoriam martyris gloriosissimi Stephani salvus factus est . He further informs us that Lucille, bishop of Sinite, a city in the vicinity of Hippone, was also cured instantly, by the same St-Etienne, of a fistula which made him suffer very much: fistula cujus molestia jam diù laboraverat, sanata est. (De civitate Dei, I. xxii, chap. viii.). Saint-Gérôme, who lived until in 420, agrees to be in conformity with the use of the amulets. ( Matt ., iv, 24.) Saint Gregoire the Great, crowned pope in 590, manufactured amulets against evil spells and enchantments, against nettles which mostly harm children . (Episl . I, xii.) The library of Blois has a very curious book of hours, because one finds there at the end a speech of St-Blaise, against inflamation and soreness of the neck, the throat and the nape of the neck . Albert Jacquemart, in his History of furniture , mentions, amongst other stones with magic emblems, a superstitious amulet which represents Christ giving blessings, and on which one reads: sortilèges vires et fluxum tollo cruoris , which results in: I remove the force from magic spells and stop the flow of blood. To finish, we will quote a completely modern example which well proves that the reign of fetishes is not close to finishing: the Belgian Review of Numismatics published, a short time ago, a medal of Saint-Benoit, struck for the abbey of St. Trond, in the country of Liege. This part enjoys of a very great celebrity in the world of believers to divert any species of evil spells from families and animals; also, each person while not very pious seeks to have it. In 1879, 25,000 of them were requested from the abbey of Solesme, in Hainaut. p257 On a side of the medal is found Saint-Benoît, dressed in the cowl of the , and St. Scholastique, his twin sister. On the other are represented the two patrons of the abbey of St. Trond: St. Trudon and St. Trond. In the background, one sees the cross of St. Benoit with several groups of letters of which the rather odd arrangement does not make it possible everyone to perceive the sense of the formulas. In the inscription, one reads on a ribbon the device:

IN NOMES DOMINE Lastly, in the legend, two groups of characters are shown: IHS and VRSNSMVSMQLIVS.

The first of these groups designates Christ, and the other, composed of fourteen letters, is the expression of the two following Leonian verses:

Vade retro Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana, Sunt mata quae libas, ipse venena libas.

Here is the translation: Withdraw yourself, , do not come to advise me your vanities, the beverage that you pour is evil, drink your own poisons. Did one ever see something so flat with a similar legend? Extremely fortunately it remains mysterious for a great number of people and this is obviously the cause of all the vogue given to the medal of St. Benoit. It should be admitted again that even the most reasonable people must hasten to purchase one when they find the opportunity, only with an aim of possessing a similar curiosity. This last reason must also contribute for much of the flow of these goods. We considered it useful to provide these many quotations to establish how extensive was the belief in the amulets. They were useful against evil spells, influences of the , entrancement. They were preversatives from any evil ( ); they were used especially in the treatment of various diseases ( ). The medal of which we gave description above, if one revalls the formulas, was to be employed either to give strength to the incurable, or to get relief from those which test physical or moral suffering. Its fame p258 must have extended widely, - this is well proven by the specimens that one finds in various countries, – and one must suppose that it had a marvellous virtue, since the manufacture of this talisman occupied the workmen of several different workshops.

Captain C. MELIX .

( Retrieved on October 29, 2009, from http://www.archive.org/details/bulletin02algegoog Bulletin of the ACademy of Hippone, Bone, 1885)