Gendered Sovereignty: Numismatics and Female Monarchs in Europe

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xli:4 (Spring, 2011), 533–564.

NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS William Monter Gendered Sovereignty: Numismatics and Female Monarchs in Europe, 1300–1800 Many historians know numismatics as a venerable and possibly a valuable auxiliary discipline, but few specialists in European history after the High Mid- dle Ages have bothered to learn anything about it. Even fewer of them have attempted to investigate female kingship as a general Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 European phenomenon, although it was surprisingly widespread; more than two-dozen women became monarchs in at least sixteen different European kingdoms between 1300 and 1800. This article investigates the intersection of these two underdeveloped schol- arly ªelds—early modern European numismatics and comparative female rulership. Coins have provided speciªc and concrete markers of ofªcial, legitimate political sovereignty since the time of the Roman Em- pire. The value of numismatic evidence for providing durable and accurate information about political history was demonstrated almost ªve centuries ago in Guillaume Budé’s De Asse et Partibus (Paris, 1514). Yet, even though numismatists have produced many excellent research tools treating past eras and relatively exotic ar- eas, they have not provided equivalent assistance to researchers in European history between 1500 and 1800. Searching “Numismat- ics” in a major library catalog turns up thousands of entries, the vast majority of which concern ancient, early medieval, or non- western history. Postmedieval European coins seem both too fa- miliar and too abundant to challenge many serious numismatists, and studying them seems too intellectually isolated to tempt pro- fessional historians. Moreover, existing studies are often highly technical, seldom venturing beyond a single country and rarely

William Monter is Professor of History Emeritus, Northwestern University. He is the author of A Bewitched Duchy: Lorraine and Its Dukes, 1477–1736 (Geneva, 2007); “Re-contextualizing British Witchcraft,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXXV (2004), 105–112. The author thanks the staff of the American Numismatic Society, expecially Robert Hoge, for much help and advice. Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify Figures 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8 herein under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included at http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/en:GNU_Free_Documentation_License. © 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc. 534 | WILLIAM MONTER making a priority of decoding the political messages embedded on every coin. It is symptomatic of the history of numismatics that the one extant study with a title that seems directly pertinent to this topic, Frauen auf Münzen (women on coins), was produced by female classicists in Vienna. It never mentions Maria Theresa, a notable local woman, whose efªgy dominated modern Europe’s single

most successful coin, which was still being made in Vienna when Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 their book was published more than two centuries after her death. Unfortunately, the reign of Maria Theresa, like those of Europe’s other most powerful female rulers, occurred during the “forgotten centuries” of numismatics. Kluge’s recent excellent German hand- book about medieval numismatics has no equivalent for the early modern era. In fact, no detailed study of the long period between the Middle Ages and the modern era has appeared since the nineteenth century, and no attempt to survey it seems to have occurred since van Gelder’s report to an international numismatic congress in 1953.1 For political historians of Europe working in any period since the days of the Roman Empire, however, coins offer an unusually clear and precise form of evidence about claims to sovereignty, since minting them was an essential and deeply cherished monop- oly of legitimate rulers. As the repository of a government’s main supply of gold and silver, mints were subject to close scrutiny. Rulers customarily approved the designs on their high-value coins, and a few (for instance, the young Edward VI of England) even designed them personally. The importance of coins as political markers is clear from the accusation by spokesmen for Mary Queen of Scots at York in 1568 that her enemies had “broken into the Ofªce of the Mint [and] taken away the Stamps, the Gold and Silver, coined and uncoined.” In other words, rebels had commit- ted lèse-majesté by stealing her treasure and counterfeiting her coins (exactly as they had done in 1560 during the regency of Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise), even before forcing her abdication in favor of a toddler—whom they were already depicting on their

1 Edith Specht (ed.), Frauen auf Münzen (Vienna, 1988); Bernd Kluge, Numismatik des Mittelalters (Berlin, 2007); Arthur Engel and Raymond Serrure, Traité de numismatique moderne et contemporaine (Paris, 1897) 2v; H. Enno van Gelder, “Rapport sur l’époque moderne (1500– 1800),” in Congrès International de Numismatique (Paris, 1953), I, 103–127. Some surveys of in- dividual countries appeared at subsequent gatherings. NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 535 coins wielding a sword. When counterfeiters were caught, sovereigns punished them in spectacular fashion; around 1570, the Dukes of Lorraine had a special cauldron made exclusively for the purpose of boiling them in oil.2 Legitimate rulers needed new coins to throw to their subjects at their ofªcial proclamation and to circulate afterward throughout their realms. Their mint records survive in abundance in better-

run states. The coins themselves advertise the rulers’ titles and Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 coats-of-arms and often include a personal representation, providing a wonderfully condensed, almost “sound-bite” form of political propaganda. As van Wie demonstrates in surveying the political uses of coinage from the French Revolution to the threshold of the euro, a coin’s face and obverse continue to offer governments an opportunity to send simple political messages to their citizens and the international community through an extremely durable medium, in much the same way as they once served Roman em- perors.3

No study has yet investigated how political propaganda was de- ployed numismatically when the ruling monarch was a woman. Both the inscriptions and the images on coins shed valuable light on how women exercised divine-right sovereignty throughout Latin Christendom during the centuries from the accession of the ªrst major royal heiress in the fourteenth century until the French Revolution undermined divine-right royalty in Europe. The most authoritarian forms of numismatic self-presentation, such as raising swords and riding horses (or doing both at once), were restricted to more macho male rulers; those who preferred to promote themselves as fonts of justice sat on thrones. Female monarchs could take the latter pose but not the former one. Overall, they developed effective strategies for enhancing their sovereignty, originally through their coins and later also through their medal- lions, precisely during these neglected centuries of numismatic scholarship.4

2 William Camden (ed. Wallace MacCaffrey), The History of the Most Renowned and Victori- ous Princess Elizabeth, Late Queen of England (Chicago, 1970), 93; Monter, The Bewitched Duchy: Lorraine and its Dukes, 1477–1736 (Geneva, 2007), 63, n. 21. 3 Paul van Wie, Image, History, and Politics: The Coinage of Modern Europe (Lanham, Md., 1999). 4 In Napoleon’s time, Maria I of Portugal, Europe’s only living divine-right female mon- 536 | WILLIAM MONTER Fig. 1 Early silver coin of Cleopatra VII (Askalon, 50/49 b.c.) (image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License by PHGCOM—at http:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CleopatraVIICoin.jpg—via Wikimedia Commons) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

Female rulers had appeared on coins for well over 1,000 years before they did so in Latin Europe. The ªrst woman to be depicted on numerous surviving coins (at least ªfteen different types have been identiªed) ranks among the most famous women of all time—Cleopatra VII (50–30 b.c.), Egypt’s last Ptolemaic sovereign (see Figure 1). Her coinage extends far beyond Egypt, cover- ing much of the eastern Mediterranean, with inscriptions in Latin as well as Greek. On her most famous Latin coin, from 34 b.c., her visage appears opposite that of Mark Antony (a male/female arrangement not imitated in any European kingdom until 1503 a.d.), and she is called “Queen of Kings” (a title never used by any European woman). Some Greek versions sound even more bombastic by adding “Thea Neotera” (new goddess) after her royal title and name.5 After Cleopatra VII, other women rulers put their names on arch, was shipped across the Atlantic by her son; her corpse returned to Europe to be buried under a constitutional monarchy. So much for divine right. 5 For a useful, well-illustrated introduction to Cleopatra’s coins, see Duane Roller, Cleopa- tra: A Biography (New York, 2010), 179–183; Jonathan Williams, “Imperial Style and the NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 537 Fig. 2 Greek initials of Tamar of Georgia above husband David Soslan (coin dated 1200) (image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License by the Classi- cal Numismatics Group—at http://www.cngcoins.com/—via Wikimedia Commons) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

coins, sometimes accompanied by bombastic titles, in states that were ofªcially Zoroastrian, Greek Orthodox, or even Muslim. Some were married but nevertheless asserted their primary authority numismatically; Tamar of Georgia (1184–1213) produced the ªrst—and for a long time, the only—coin on which the symbol of a royal wife was literally placed above that of her husband (see Figure 2). Her daughter Rusudan (1223–1245) struck a silver coin with an Arabic text calling her “Queen of Queens, Glory of the World and the Faith, Daughter of Tamar and Champion of the Messiah.” Until the fourteenth century, however, only one Latin Chris- tian woman, Urraca of Léon-Castile (1109–1126), issued coins that identify her as a monarch. Several other women issued coins in high-medieval Europe, but none of them ruled a kingdom. In the 1140s, Matilda of England was never able to wrest control of her father’s kingdom from Stephen, her nephew and rival; her coins identiªed her as “Imp” (empress), from a childless ªrst marriage to a then-deceased Holy Roman emperor. At a lower political level, Berlin’s Bode Museum preserves images of six sovereign

Coins of Cleopatra and Mark Antony,” in Susan Walker and Sally-Ann Ashton (eds.), Cleopa- tra Reassessed (London, 2003), 87–94. 538 | WILLIAM MONTER abbesses in the Holy Roman Empire, most of them on one-sided twelfth-century coins known as brachtetae, in addition to a few late-medieval coins from women rulers in the Low Countries, starting with a late thirteenth-century countess of Flanders.6 The political and numismatic situation of Latin Europe’s female rulers changed signiªcantly after 1300 a.d. During the next ªve centuries, twenty-three women would issue coins as rulers of

various European kingdoms, and all of them (unlike Urraca or Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Matilda) speciªed that they ruled by divine right. Apart from France and (temporarily) a few other hereditary kingdoms, daugh- ters could usually inherit thrones in the absence of legitimate sons. From 1350 to 1450, 12 female candidates emerged among 100 royal successions in 18 autonomous kingdoms scattered throughout Latin Christendom, a ratio of approximately one-to-eight. Al- though this question has not been studied systematically in later periods, between 1600 and 1800, the rate of female succession in Europe’s hereditary kingdoms that permitted women monarchs— England/Scotland, Castile/Aragon (until 1700), Portugal (after 1640), Denmark, Sweden (1593 to 1654 and 1683 to 1720), and the Austrian Hapsburg kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia—was approximately one-to-seven. Perhaps equally important, during these two centuries, female inheritance occurred in almost every realm in which it was permitted, except Denmark.7 After 1300, three famous women governed major states for at least thirty years in widely scattered parts of Latin Christendom— Isabel la Católica in Castile (1474–1504), Elizabeth I in England (1558–1603), and Maria Theresa of Austria in both Hungary (1741–1780) and Bohemia (1743–1780). Only the ªrst ruled jointly with her husband. Three more women ruled important European monarchies by themselves for at least twenty years; four others governed for at least ten years; and another ªve ruled jointly with their husbands for more than a decade. The dominant pattern in the late Middle Ages was for young royal heiresses to in-

6 David Lang, Studies in the Numismatic History of Georgia in Transcaucasia (New York, 1955); Kluge, Numismatik des Mittelalters, 320–329, contains seven examples of twelfth-century bractetae, including #398 and #399 (Emperor Frederick Barbarossa with wife Beatrix of Bur- gundy and Beatrix as abbess of Gelnhausen), #352–#354 (three consecutive twelfth-century abbesses of Quedlinburg all with their images), #387 (an abbess of Nordhausen), and #359 (a Margrave of Anhalt appears with his wife). 7 Armin Wolf, “Reigning Queens in Medieval Europe: When, Where, and Why?” in John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship (New York, 1993), 169–188. NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 539 herit thrones in relatively small kingdoms. They married early, fre- quently played only minor roles in government, and expressed their personal authority more vigorously through ofªcial seals than through coins. But by the eighteenth century, most female monarchs had inherited larger states as adults and either ruled alone or limited their husband’s authority; they displayed their prestige more effectively through commemorative medals (a branch of nu-

mismatics) than through coins. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Any long-term improvements in the autonomy of women rulers were neither linear nor uniform. Many divine-right female monarchs who issued coins did not rule successfully. About one- in-three (a much higher proportion than for male monarchs) suffered some form of political catastrophe. Three women were deposed during the 1380s, and another in 1460. When two women fought a civil war in Castile after 1475, both of them issued coins until the loser was forced into a convent. Juana of Castile, a royal heiress whose name appears on millions of coins after 1506, had no political authority. Female monarchs abdicated involuntarily in 1489 and 1567; another did so voluntarily in 1654. The ªrst woman to claim sovereign status on a few Russian coins, Soªa Alexeevna, was shut in a convent by Peter the Great. In Latin Christendom, a female monarch resigned in 1720, and another suffered an irreversible mental breakdown in 1792. All of these de- velopments had numismatic repercussions. In many parts of Europe, only the most valuable coins made from “noble” metals—gold or silver—carried a ruler’s physical likeness accompanied by his or her ofªcial titles, often with a brief slogan on the reverse. Coins made of “baser” medals (copper, bronze, etc.) also contained rulers’ titles and coats-of-arms but rarely included their efªgies. It is probably not coincidental that many of the most valuable coins issued by male or female monarchs bearing their images should be called “sovereigns” or “royals.” As with male rulers throughout Latin Christendom, coinage afªrmed the divinely privileged status of its occasional female sovereigns through the initials D[ei] G[ratia] (‘by the grace of God’) that followed their names and preceded their titles. However, Europe’s most spectacularly successful early female monarch—Margaret of Denmark, generally accepted as ruler of two late-medieval kingdoms, Denmark and Norway, from 1386 to 1412 and also regent of Sweden from 1396 to 1412—struck no 540 | WILLIAM MONTER known coins bearing her name. Notwithstanding the difªculty of explaining something that did not happen, it seems pertinent to note that Margaret, the younger daughter of a Danish king and widow of a Norwegian king, had no hereditary claim to rule either state. In Denmark (then an elective monarchy), she usually styled herself as the “king’s daughter” or the “rightful heir.” After being regent of both kingdoms for a son who died unmarried at

age sixteen, Margaret then governed both kingdoms alone under Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 the remarkable constitutional title of “mighty husband.” After she had gained control of Sweden and proclaimed the Union of Kalmar in 1397, Danish and Swedish mints turned out coins bearing the name of her great-nephew and adopted successor, whom she renamed a more Scandinavian-sounding “Erik” instead of “Boguslav.”8 Europe’s most important early hereditary female monarch, Joanna I of Naples (1343–1381), was technically queen of Sicily and Jerusalem; she actually governed neither of them, though she did rule two large regions, the regno of Naples in present-day southern Italy and the County of Provence, as well as a few adjoining ªefs in southeastern France. Joanna I also had four marriages, more than any other female European monarch. Her ªrst husband was murdered before their joint coronation, and her third and fourth husbands were excluded from claiming royal privileges by prenuptial contracts. Her coins therefore reºect her political relationship vis-à-vis only one of them—Louis of Taranto, her second husband and cousin, who ruled jointly with her from 1349 (well before his coronation in 1352) until his death in 1362.9 Numismatists separate Joanna I’s reign into three parts, divided by her second marriage. Their evidence becomes progres- sively more abundant and more interesting after 1349. The only known Italian silver coin of the joint reign initiated styles that 8 Vivian Etting, Queen Margrete I (1353–1412) and the Founding of the Nordic Union (Leiden, 2004); on coinage, see Kluge, Numismatik des Mittelalters, 161, 163, 264–265. Norway’s mints ceased all coin production for a century after Margaret took control of Norway. 9 See Elizabeth Casteen, “The Making of a Neapolitan She-Wolf: Gender, Sexuality and Sovereignty and the Reputation of Johanna I of Naples,” unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Northwestern University, 2009). The basic study of Joanna I’s French coinage remains Henri Rolland, Monnaies des comtes de Provence, XIIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 1956), 145–168, 221–237; for her Italian coins, Philip Grierson and Lucia Travaini, Medieval European Coinage...intheFitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 14 (Italy III) (New York, 1998), 227–234. See also Joëlle Pournot, “Mon- naies en Provence et dans le royaume de Naples (1246–1382),” in Isabelle Bonnot (ed.), Mar- seille et ses rois de Naples: la diagonale angevine (1265–1382) (Aix-en-Provence, 1988). NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 541 would become standard for subsequent married female rulers. It shows two seated ªgures, with the husband in primary position on the left, and bears the inscription “Lodovicus z Iohanna Dei Gracia” on the front and “Ierlm z Sicil Rex z Regina” on the back. Their more abundant gold and silver coins from Provence usually bore more modest inscriptions, though one uses “Dei G.” before naming their kingdoms. However, both husband and wife are called

“Rex” (king) on three kinds of silver coins and on all of the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 cheaper types produced in Provence. On every coin, his name in- variably preceded hers.10 Most of Joanna’s coins from her French possessions date from after 1362, when she ruled by herself. She was depicted in various ways. Her crowned head adorns a gold ºorin ªrst minted in 1368. Her early “reines d’or” (golden queens) from 1370, direct imita- tions of French royal souverains, show her wearing a ºoor-length dress while holding both sword and scepter like a male king. After 1372, subsequent reissues of the reine d’or de-feminize her, re- placing her dress with a coat of mail reaching barely to her knees. This coin was produced in bulk; no fewer than 316 of them were found in one Parisian treasure trove. Imitation always offers the best proof of success; her male successor in Provence copied it, changing only the ruler’s name.11 In the century after Joanna’s death, women’s efªgies rarely appeared on coins, whereas the husband-ªrst formulas of her joint reign persisted for many centuries, with rare exceptions. Duchess Johanna of Brabant (1355–1406), her younger contemporary and namesake, also had a complicated numismatic history. Most of her coins name her with a husband or an heir, but one coin describes her as “Duke (Dux) of Brabant by the Grace of God.” After 1375, several young royal heiresses appeared in different parts of Europe. All of them married young, and all of them were named on coins. Only three silver “royals” containing the phrase “D.G. Regina” survive with the name and crowned efªgy of the unfortunate Bea- triz of Portugal (1383–1385), who was married to a foreign king before the legal minimum age of twelve and barely saw her father’s kingdom after his death. Although made in Portugal in

10 Rolland, Monnaies des comtes de Provence, 224–227 (#73–#74, #76–#79). 11 Ibid., 231–232 (#89) (franc à la robe longue, of which the British Museum has three examples), 232–234 (#90–#93). 542 | WILLIAM MONTER 1384, these coins appeared during what modern Portugal still ofªcially considers an “interregnum.”12 Three other girls inherited kingdoms in Sicily (1377), Hun- gary (1382), and Poland (1384), respectively. All of them had husbands who received separate or joint coronations between 1386 and 1392; all of them died childless and were succeeded by their husbands. Jadwiga of Poland (1384–1399), who became a saint in

1997, issued two types of silver coins, and Mary of Hungary Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 (1382–1395), her older sister, struck several gold coins. On the gold ones, both women are named separately from their husbands. Maria of Sicily (1377–1402), who was kidnapped and held captive for fourteen years, issued several early silver coins in her name, carrying a quarter-proªle, which Rethy, the leading authority, claims was “probably borrowed from late-medieval representa- tions of the Madonna.” After her forced marriage to a man half her age, her name sometimes preceded his on their coins—although “some specimens have Maria’s or Martin’s name...onboth sides.” An older woman ruling alone, Joanna II of Naples (1415– 1435) also had irregularities in her coinage. One mint master mis- spelled her name as “Iuhanda Scda [secunda],” and some smaller coins put “regina” in front of her name instead of behind it.13 Europe’s next young heiress, Charlotte of Lusignan, inherited Cyprus, the last Crusader kingdom, in 1458. After she married a prince from Savoy, she and her husband became Europe’s ªrst royal couple to issue separate coins. Before they were deposed in 1463 by her illegitimate half-brother, she issued three types of silver coins, none with her efªgy; her spouse issued ªve types, four of which depicted him seated and enthroned. The only large hoard found in Cyprus from the end of the ªfteenth century contains nearly 200 coins from their reign, with his coins outnumber-

12 Alphonse de Witte, Histoire monétaire des Comtes de Louvain, Ducs de Brabant et Marquis du Saint-Empire Romain (Antwerp, 1894), I, 164–176, esp. 156. See also one gold and three silver coins of hers reproduced in Kluge, Numismatik des Mittelalters, 406–409 (#1037, #1045), 412– 415 (#1062, #1072). For the Portuguese heiress, see César Olivera Serrano, Beatriz de Portugal (Santiage de Compostela, 2005). One of the three known silver coins of Beatriz of Portugal is reproduced in Tesoros del Gabinete numismatico: las 100 mejores piezas del monetario del Museo Arqueológico Nacional (Madrid, 1999), 98 (#31). 13 For Jadwiga, see Marian Gumowski, Handbuch der Polnischen Numismatik (Graz, Aus- tria,1960), 101; for Maria of Hungary, Ladislas Rethy (ed. Günther Probzst), Corpus nummorum Hungariae (Graz, Austria,1958), 103; Kluge, Numismatik des Mittelalters, 144–145 (#1363, #1368); for Maria of Sicily, Grierson and Travaini, Medieval European Coinage, 278– 280, 244–249 (Joanna II). NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 543 ing hers by three-to-one. After Charlotte’s half-brother died in 1474, Catherine Cornaro, his widow, became the island’s puppet monarch for ªfteen years. Because she had been legally adopted by the Republic of St. Mark before sailing to Cyprus to marry its king, her coinage calls her Katarina Veneta (“Catherine of Ven- ice”). When her Venetian employers heard that she might remarry, they forced her resignation, thus making her Europe’s only 14 monarch to be both adopted and deposed by a republic. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 In the mid-1470s, two other women disputed the sovereignty of Castile, a much more important kingdom. Both had been legally disinherited at different times by its previous king Enrique IV, their father and brother. Princess Juana, his ªnal ofªcial heir, was legally underage when he died in 1474 (she was thirteen and unmarried), and her aunt Isabel, his previous heir, promptly claimed the throne. Isabel and Ferdinand, her Aragonese husband, eventually defeated Juana—who soon acquired a Portuguese husband—in a civil war lasting until 1478. During the conºict, both claimants had coins struck (Juana’s in both Castile and Portu- gal) that named their husbands as joint rulers.15 After her triumph, Isabel had her niece conªned in a Portu- guese convent and became a watershed ªgure in both Spanish and European history. Numismatically, she was Europe’s ªrst female ruler in over a century to be shown crowned and seated alongside her husband on their early gold castellanos. In 1497, Isabel “the Catholic” (a title given to her and her husband by a Spanish pope in 1496) became Europe’s ªrst female monarch to be depicted with her husband on high-quality coins called excelentes, that directly challenged the internationally dominant Venetian ducat in size and weight. On them, both monarchs wear crowns and their heads face each other. The success of Castile’s excelente inspired an immediate but smaller imitation by their neighboring Iberian joint rulers, Juan and Catalina of Navarre (1494–1512).16

14 On the late ªfteenth-century hoard, see D. M. Metcalfe and A. G. Pitsillides (eds.), Cor- pus of Lusignan Coinage: The Gros, Sixains and Caritzas of Cyprus 1382–1489 (Nicosia, Cyprus, 2000), 1–13, 167–170. 15 Compare Tarsicio de Azcona’s Juana de Castilla, mal llamada La Beltraneja: vida de la hija de Enrique IV de Castilla y su exilio en Portugal (1462–1530) (Madrid, 2007), with his massive biography of Isabel—Isabel la Católica: Estudio crítico de su vida y su reinado (Madrid, 1993; orig. pub. 1964). 16 Their largest coin was worth twenty excelentes (several reproduced in Tesoros del Gabinete Numismatico, 101–104 [#34–#37].) One of Juan and Catalina’s gold Navarrese escudos 544 | WILLIAM MONTER The most impressive numismatic evidence of Isabel’s excep- tional clout as a ruler comes from Italy rather than Spain. In 1503, the kingdom of Naples, which the “Catholic kings” had successfully conquered from France, mainly with Castilian resources, received new coins. For their new Neapolitan ducat, Isabel and Ferdinand adapted the design of their excelente by placing the Biblical verse “What God has joined man does not separate” on

the reverse. This slogan applied to the political uniªcation of the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 kingdoms of Naples and Sicily while also making a clear reference to the sacrament of marriage that united its new rulers. Simulta- neously, their silver carlino had a radically different design, not seen in the Mediterranean world since the days of Antony and Cleopa- tra. It displayed the crowned head of each monarch on opposite sides, with a continuous inscription that began on his side (“Ferd- inand and Isabel by the Grace of God”) and concluded on hers with their new titles, “Kings of Spain and also of both Sicilies”) (see Figure 3). This coin apparently continued to be struck for two years after Isabel’s death in 1504, until Ferdinand visited Naples.17 The double-headed 1503 Neapolitan carlino had one slightly earlier numismatic precedent, though it is not a coin with ofªcial exchange value. In 1477, Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482), the richest heiress of any ªfteenth-century European state, married Maximilian of Austria, the son of the Holy Roman emperor. Dur- ing his wife’s lifetime, Maximilian’s name never appeared on any of the numerous coins struck throughout her possessions in the Low Countries. However, an unusual early medallion commemorating their wedding was made in 1479—with busts of each spouse on opposite sides, both facing right—and indicating their ages. Having no obverse or reverse, it is the earliest and most perfect metallic example of the principle of gender symmetry applied to married European rulers.18 was found in a Spanish settlement on Hispaniola that was abandoned in 1498. See [n.a.], La moneda en Navarra (Pamplona, 2001), 184. 17 Grierson and Travaini, Medieval European Coinage, 334–336 (#929); reproduction in Tesoros del Gabinete Numismatico, 105 (#38). 18 The American Numismatic Society (ans), the basic catalog of which is available at www. numismatics.org, possesses more than 150 silver coins from four of Mary of Burgundy’s pro- vincial mints (including one dated a year after her death)—more than their holdings from Isabel of Castile, her famous contemporary, although Mary’s reign lasted only ªve years and Isabel’s thirty. The ans has twenty-ªve silver coins per year from Mary’s reign, but only sixty- ªve silver coins (and one gold coin) from her father’s eleven-year reign and only forty-eight silver coins from the twelve-year regency for her son Philip the Fair. Fig. 3 Ferdinand and Isabel’s Neapolitan Carlino (1503) (Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 546 | WILLIAM MONTER In 1496, Spain’s “Catholic monarchs” arranged a double marriage with Maximilian and Mary’s son and daughter, with fateful consequences for European political history. Eight years later, Isabel was dead and the crown of Castile passed to her oldest surviving child, who was married to Maximilian’s son. He went to Castile in 1506 to claim its throne but died before he could mint coins. His widow Juana, the actual “proprietary” heiress, lived for

another forty-nine years but refused to perform any governmental Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 responsibilities. According to historians, her son Charles inherited all of Spain after Ferdinand’s death in 1516. But did he? Charles undoubtedly governed all of his mother’s vast possessions in Europe and America for the next thirty-nine years. But throughout Eu- rope’s most powerful monarchy, now enriched by fabulous amounts of American treasure, millions of coins struck between 1516 and 1555 reºected a bizarre constitutional situation. The names of both mother and son were present on all of these coins, as they were on every ofªcial Spanish state decree, but their order was inconsistent. For example, the mother’s name came ªrst on coins from Spanish Italy, but her son’s name came ªrst on those from Spanish America. Our most impressive numismatic testi- mony from Spain itself is a gigantic 100-ducat coin (virtually a medal), made in Aragon in 1528 and now exhibited in the French National Library (see Figure 4). On it, as on most of their Spanish coins, the name and efªgy of the “proprietary” ruler (Juana), who is conventionally described as insane, precede those of the actual ruler (Charles), conventionally described as a political colossus dominating all of Europe.

The midpoint of the long period from 1300 to 1800 divides Eu- rope’s coin-issuing female monarchs into equal-sized groups, but after 1550, numismatic evidence about women monarchs improved in precision, quality, quantity, and legibility. Probably the greatest aid to historians is that dates on coins, which have appeared sporadically for centuries, became general on European coins during the 1550s, thus offering more exact political information about the sovereigns who issued them. By the mid-1550s, when Juana ªnally died in Spain, and Europe had three reigning female monarchs (in Scotland, England, and Navarre), not only had the use of dates become general on European coins, but the use of neo-Roman commemorative medals (which were also NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 547 Fig. 4 Juana “the Mad” Preceding Emperor Charles V (1528) (image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License by geocities.com via Wikimedia Commons) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

usually dated) also began to spread widely outside Italy. The integ- rity, physical appearance, and readability of coins also gradually improved as a few technological innovations spread unevenly through Europe. Water-powered stamping mills produced perfectly round coins of uniform thickness during the mid-sixteenth century, and better dies replaced the skilled artisans who had man- ually ªnished coins. During the Thirty Years’ War, many coins had milled edges to discourage the practice of clipping them, thus making the inscriptions around preserved coins more legible (England, for example, ofªcially introduced machine-made milled coins, using equipment from France, in 1663, although some hand-ªnished coins remained in circulation until the eighteenth century).19 Numismatic portrayals of such mid-sixteenth-century female monarchs as Mary Tudor or Mary Queen of Scots before and after their marriages offer important political messages about depicting 19 James Mackay, A History of Modern English Coinage: Henry VIII to Elizabeth II (London, 1984), 89–91. 548 | WILLIAM MONTER Fig. 5 Mary Tudor Gold Sovereign (1553) (image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Li- cense by The Classical Numismatics Group—at http://www .cngcoins.com/—via Wikimedia Commons) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

female sovereignty. In 1553, a beautiful gold sovereign honored Mary Tudor, the ªrst never-married adult woman to acquire a European throne (see Figure 5) (Scotland promptly imitated this coin on a smaller scale for its eleven-year-old female monarch). After England’s monarch married the Spanish crown prince in 1554, English coinage introduced a new design with a single crown ºoating above their two heads but touching neither— an image that eloquently captured the ambiguous location of sovereignty when a monarch was both female and married (see Fig- ure 6). As early as 1555, this new conªguration was imitated by Navarre’s new joint monarchs, Jeanne III (1555–1572) and Antoine de Boubon; it was copied again in 1558 when Mary of Scotland married a French crown prince.20 The reign of Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1567) provides unusually rich numismatic information. She was Europe’s youngest female monarch; coins acknowledged her status before her ªrst birthday. She became Europe’s only female monarch to remarry while on the throne and the only one to produce an heir from a second marriage. Her ªrst two husbands had vastly different legal rights in Scotland, as its coinage reveals; her third marriage had no

20 See Tesoros del Gabinete numismatico, #60 (Mary Tudor medal, 1554). Compare ans #1974.26.66 (silver shilling of Philip and Mary, 1554); #1961.7.20 (silver Jeanne III and Antoine de Bourbon of Navarre, 1555); Nicholas M. McQ. Holmes, Scottish Coins in the Na- tional Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh: Part I, 1526–1603 (New York, 2006), #984 (gold Mary Queen of Scots and Dauphin Francis of France, 1558). NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 549 Fig. 6 Philip-and-Mary “Floating Crown” (1554–1558) (image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License by The Classical Numismatics Group—at http://www.cngcoins.com/—via Wikimedia Commons) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

numismatic consequences, because it lasted barely a month before her dethronement. Numismatists divide her reign into ªve unequal phases: early years (1542–1558), French marriage (1558– 1560), widowhood (1560–1565), second marriage (1565–1567), and second widowhood (1567). Scotland’s National Museum possesses more than 2,000 coins from her reign, constituting a better treasure trove for her than for any of her female contemporaries. An unusual and important feature, suggesting the weak grasp of Scotland’s ofªcial government during her reign, is that this total includes hundreds of counterfeits, most of them minutely described.21 Almost 300 of Mary Stuart’s coins in this collection are gold or silver (her highest-value “crowns” are gold and her “ryals” or royals are silver). Coins in “noble” metals bearing her efªgy, which began to appear when she was eleven years old, show the pattern revealed in Table 1. Efªgies appear on 30 percent of her gold coins (seventeen of ªfty-six)—nearly all of them dating from Scotland’s days as a French protectorate under the regency of Mary of Guise—and on 9 percent of her silver ones (22 of 238). But only two of these forty efªgies are joint portraits, one with each husband. The gold “Francis-and-Mary” coin may have been made (or at least de- 21 On the counterfeits from Mary’s reign (including more than 350 from one location), see Holmes, Scottish Coins, 8, 23–25, 46. The vast majority of known counterfeit coins, especially the millions of “Maria Theresa thalers” dated 1780, come from subsequent periods. 550 | WILLIAM MONTER Table 1 Mary Stuart Coinage in National Museum of Scotland period gold coins (effigies) silver coins (effigies)

Girlhood 1543–1558 55 (16) 110 (3) French marriage (1558–1560) 1 (1) 59 (0) Widowhood (1561–1565) 0 18 (18) 2d Marriage (1565–1566) 0 46 (1) 2d widowhood (1567) 0 13 (0) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 signed) in France rather than Scotland; a single gold “crown” made during her ªrst widowhood exists in London but not in Scotland. The silver ryals from her second marriage are even more in- structive. The only one with a portrait shows face-to-face busts of Mary and Henry Lord Darnley, her younger husband, in custom- ary order, but with no crown visible; its inscription follows custom by putting his name ªrst. But these coins were rapidly with- drawn from circulation and replaced with new varieties without efªgies, on which, for the ªrst time in European history, the wife’s name precedes her husband’s. Europe’s most famous sixteenth-century female monarch was undoubtedly Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603). She was not only the ªrst woman monarch anywhere in Europe who never married; she also reigned for forty-ªve years, much longer than any of her female predecessors. However, Elizabeth’s reign is most noteworthy in numismatic history for her retreat from the new stamping-mill technology that was introduced in 1560 by Elie Mestrell, a French Protestant. Although this process produced coin blanks of uniform thickness, skilled hammerers at the royal mint feared the novelty, ªnally ousting Mestrell in 1572; ironically, he was hanged for counterfeiting in 1578. Elizabeth’s reign also saw England’s ªrst locally made commemorative medals, although its greatest military achievement, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, was celebrated more often by medals made in the Netherlands. Camden noted the sarcastic quote from Virgil’s Aeneid on one of them, “Dux foemina facti” (this was done under a woman’s leadership).22

22 For Mestrell, see Mackay, Modern English Coinage, 31–32, 35–36; for the contrast between Elizabeth’s aging on coins and her frozen youthfulness in later portraits, Roy Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London, 1987). Ten Dutch medals are described NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 551 Europe’s next female ruler was created near the end of Eliza- beth I’s reign by her sister’s former husband. In 1598, the dying king Philip II of Spain gave his oldest daughter Isabel Clara Eugenia joint sovereignty over the Hapsburg Netherlands, on condition that she marry her cousin Archduke Albert of Austria. It was a peculiarly limited and conditional concession. Although technically the Infanta was a proprietary heiress, she and her hus-

band had no control over a large permanent Spanish army protect- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 ing their lands. Moreover, these provinces were to revert to the Spanish Crown if the couple had no living children when either of them died; they so reverted in 1621. The various joint portrayals of “the Archdukes” on coins from their reign reºect their uncer- tain and tenuous sovereignty.23 The Archdukes employed two different numismatic systems of depiction. The ªrst, from 1599 to 1612, began with gold ducats that copied the century-old pattern of Spanish excelentes with two crowned heads facing each other, but with the old Burgun- dian symbol of the Golden Fleece on the reverse. Their silver ºorins used the same arrangements, as did their “triple real.” After their general monetary reform of 1612, they began a fresh system headed by gold “double sovereigns” that represented both of them crowned and seated on thrones, with him holding a sword and she a scepter. Their “single sovereign” showed both of them from the waist up, facing right. Their new top-value silver ducaton, equal to a half-sovereign, introduced an iconographical novelty. It depicted both busts facing right but with Albert in the foreground, obliterating at least half of his wife’s head; the crown is on the reverse, with Belgian lions holding the Golden Fleece. After Albert died and Spain resumed direct rule, Europe saw few joint husband-and-wife reigns. In their earlier series, the Archdukes had produced Europe’s last numismatic images both of facing crowned heads and of parallel seats on thrones; their later series introduced joint busts with a husband overshadowing an heiress. After Albert died and Spain resumed direct rule, Europe saw only one more joint husband-and-heiress reign. The reign of the Archdukes in Belgium coincided with the by Edward Hawkins, Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Death of George II (London, 1885), I, 145–148 (#111–#118), 153 (#127 and #128). The citation to Virgil in Camden, History, 328, cannot be found on any of these medals. 23 See Monnaies des Pays-bas méridionaux d’Albert et Isabelle à Guillaume Ier (Brussels, 1981) 1– 64. 552 | WILLIAM MONTER neighboring regency of Marie de Medicis in France (1610–1614). Judging from the cycle of large canvases about her “apotheosis,” which she later commissioned from Peter Paul Rubens, she was Europe’s most extravagantly self-promoting female regent. Al- though no regent could issue coins, Marie de Medicis had small jetons made that she could throw to crowds at her 1610 coronation; no French regent had ever done so before. On a per-year ba-

sis, she also commissioned more commemorative medals during Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 her regency than any other French ruler until Louis XIV. The obligatory widow’s veil that she wore on these medals sometimes shrank to a mere ornament, and her son, the king, sometimes dis- appeared completely. With far less justiªcation than the apologists for Elizabeth I of England, this regent boasted of her political success in 1612 by expanding Virgil’s remark about Dido in the Aeneid to Tanti dux femina facti (“a female leader accomplished so much).”24 Europe’s next female monarch, Christina of Sweden (1632– 1654), was its last divine-right absolute monarch to inherit as a girl (age six) and became its ªrst of either sex to abdicate voluntarily while still young (twenty-eight) and politically successful. Her early coinage is noteworthy primarily for displaying her with a crown at her side, usually on a table, because she was too young to wear it. In 1647, after she had reached her majority, and when her kingdom stood at the zenith of its political power in Europe, Christina approved a new design for Sweden’s silver coinage that replaced her crown with the laurel wreath of a military victor. This heroic neo- classical motif—used on coins of every French king since 1550 and on some issued by Christina’s famous father, Gustav Adolf—had previously been taboo for female rulers (see Figure 7).25 The next three women to receive coronations—Mary II of England (1689–1694), her sister Anne (1702–1714), and Ulrike- Eleanors of Sweden (1718–1720)—all governed what is now called early constitutional monarchies. Their actual political authority was greatly reduced in comparison with that of their most

24 Mark Jones, “The Image of a Queen Regent,” in Tony Hackens and Ghislaine Mou- charte (eds.), Proceedings of the XIth International Numismatic Congress (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1993), V, 304–305, n. 17, 308. Her most bombastic medal is described in Fernand Mazerolle, Medailleurs et graveurs français du XVe siècle au milieu du XVIIe (Paris, 1903), II, 161 (#798). 25 Bertel Tingstrom (ed.), Svensk numismatisk uppslagsbok: Mynt i ord och bild 1521–1968 (Stockholm, 1968; orig. pub. 1963), 145–150. Laurel wreaths appear on a few Renaissance medals—for example, some in the Netherlands honoring Philip II after his victory at St. Quentin. NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 553 Fig. 7 Christina of Sweden with Laurel Wreath (1647) (Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

recent female predecessors, but they continued to use the tradi- tional Dei Gratia on coinage inscriptions. All three women were married to foreign princes when they claimed their thrones, and none had any living children. Nevertheless, their numismatic behavior vis-à-vis their husbands was extremely different. These relationships can be expressed schematically. The coins of Mary II perfectly reºected her submission to her Dutch husband. Ironically, on their high-value coins, these exemplars of militant Protestantism used the same ‘husband-ªrst’ overshadowing- proªles motif introduced seventy years earlier by Belgium’s dubi- ously sovereign but militantly Catholic Archdukes (see Figure 8). At the opposite extreme, the coins of Mary II’s sister Anne omitted her husband’s name or efªgy. The Swedish queen’s coins began like Anne’s but ended like those of William and Mary. Because the war of the Spanish Succession ªlled most of her 554 | WILLIAM MONTER Fig. 8 Guinea of William III and Mary II (1691) ((image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License by The Classical Numismatics Group—at http://www .cngcoins.com/—via Wikimedia Commons) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

twelve-year reign, Anne became Europe’s ªrst female monarch with her efªgy inscribed on numerous medals (Elizabeth’s Eng- land made only a handful late in her reign, and Christina’s Sweden produced about a dozen). Anne, though partially crippled, was often portrayed as a goddess of war on medals that commemorated every signiªcant victory of British or allied forces on land or sea. By 1708, she was depicted wearing a laurel wreath, a motif that became general by 1710. Louis XIV had created a separate government ofªce to make suitable medals commemorating his victories, and his enemies could not resist the chance to mock him. A few medals (made on the Continent rather than in England) carry the slogan “Ludovicus Magnus, Anna Maior” (Louis the Great, Anne the Greater) as early as 1706. On one struck in 1710, the reverse uses a French slogan about adapting to feminine tastes and depicts the old “Sun-king” trying to dance on crutches while Anne plays the tune (see Figure 9).26 Sweden’s Ulrike-Eleanora, whose claim to succeed her childless brother was disputed by supporters of her eighteen-year-old nephew (the son of her older sister), wanted a joint reign like Eng- land’s had been in 1689, but she was prevented by her kingdom’s

26 The ans has 100 examples of approximately eighty designs from Anne’s reign, many made in Germany. The laurel wreath motif can be traced in the separate edition of plates to Edward Hawkins, Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1911), II, Plate 127, #4 and especially Plate 132, #5, 10–13. The Latin slogan “Ludovicus Magnus, Anna Maior” also appears on ans #0000.999.3176 and #3177; the dancing Louis XIV and the French slogan were re-used on a Dutch medal struck during peace negotiations in 1712 (Hawkins, Medallic Illustrations [1911], II, Plate 135, #5), Fig. 9 Queen Anne Humiliating Louis XIV (1710) (Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 556 | WILLIAM MONTER representative assembly. Hence, her coins omit any reference to her husband, Duke Frederick of Holstein. However, after only ªfteen months of rule, she abdicated in his favor, though she claimed the right to resume ruling if she outlived him (he outlived her). Later, in 1727 and 1731, she became regent while her husband was abroad; on each occasion, because Ulrike-Eleanora was both a former monarch and Sweden’s heir-apparent, her proªle

reappeared brieºy on Swedish coins—in exactly the same subordi- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 nate position as did Mary II’s on English coins.27 The numismatic importance of Europe’s next female monarch, Maria Theresa (1740–1780), was vastly greater. Starting as the sovereign archduchess of Austria after her father’s death, she soon became the only woman in European history to receive formal coronations in two different kingdoms, Hungary (1741) and Bohemia (1743). She is best known as “empress,” a courtesy title from her husband’s election as emperor in 1745 (women were in- eligible for this position). Only after 1748 were her possessions in present-day Italy, Belgium, and Luxemburg secured by treaties. Thus, by the middle of the eighteenth century, she ofªcially held six royal Crowns, an archduchy, no fewer than sixteen duchies (headed by Burgundy), and various lesser independent lordships. Her coins were produced in what are today six nations of the Eu- ropean Union, and numismatists have identiªed more than 2,000 different variants struck during her reign. Because she held so many possessions, many smaller coins required abbreviations on their inscriptions. Some of the coins from the eighteenth-century Hapsburg Netherlands read, “M.T.D.G.R.IMP.G.H.B.REG.A. A.D.BURG” (Maria Theresa by the grace of God Roman Em- press in Germany, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduchess of Austria and Duchess of Burgundy). The only words even partially spelled out are “Empress,” “Queen,” and “Burgundy,” the location of her local mint.28 None of these 2,000 varieties was a joint coin with her husband, Duke François-Etienne of Lorraine, who became Grand Duke of Tuscany after 1737 and ªnally Kaiser Franz Stefan after 1745. Although François-Etienne, the well-beloved father of her sixteen children, appeared on opposite sides of some of her med-

27 Tingstrom, Svensk numismatisk uppslagsbok, 174–175. 28 Tassilio Eypeltauer, Corpus Nummorum Regni Maria Theresiae: Die Münzprägungen der Kaiserin Maria Theresia und ihre Mitregenten Kaiser Franz I und Josef II (Basel, 1973). NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 557 als, he was not on any of the coins issued within his wife’s territo- rial possessions until she ordered her mints to strike half of their coins in his name after he became Holy Roman emperor. It is un- likely that this even division was strictly observed, because his coins usually comprise only a small fraction of major surviving col- lections. Also telling is the fact that her ceremonial gold coins included a 10-ducat model, whereas his never exceeded 5 ducats,

and those of their son Joseph, who became emperor and co-regent Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 after his father’s death in 1765, never exceeded 3 ducats. Maria Theresa’s proªle appears on every silver coin down to a kreuzer and every copper coin down to a pfennig.29 Moreover, as noted earlier, Maria Theresa’s ªnal silver thaler of 1780 continued to be produced for centuries after her death, becoming by far the world’s single most internationally popular coin. It was adopted as ofªcial currency by Ethiopia from the nineteenth century until 1945, and, largely for this reason, it has been massively counterfeited not only by other major European powers but even in places as distant as India. No assessment of the numismatic importance of Maria Theresa’s reign should overlook her commemorative medals. Two years after her death, Maria Anna, Maria Theresa’s eldest daughter, compiled a “metallic history” that was published anony- mously in Vienna in German and French editions. It contains Maria Anna’s drawings and descriptions of no fewer than 291 medals connected with her mother’s reign, divided by her widowhood in 1765 (see Table 2). The insigniªcance of Maria Theresa’s ofªcial “co-regents,” her husband and son, emerge clearly from this metallic history. Even when her husband recorded his greatest political triumph by becoming emperor in 1745 (an event that ac- counted for half of his medals without her), she added two separate medals explaining her new title as empress. Her personal motto, “justitia et clementia” (equity and clemency) appears on her ªrst acknowledgment as sovereign (#14). Five years later, a cele- bration of her success, showing a cornucopia spewing laurel wreaths and coins between a sword and an olive branch, expanded it to “Justitiam et clementiam compatitur felicitas” (happiness accompa- nies justice and clemency). Her Hungarian coronation (#24) inspired the slogan “Nec Prius Regibus Impar” (not unequal to pre- 29 The ans holds six of François-Etienne’s and twenty of Maria Theresa’s Hungarian coins from 1745 to 1765. Eypeltauer, Corpus Nummorum Regni Maria Theresiae, 28. 558 | WILLIAM MONTER Table 2 Maria Theresa Medals 1740–1765 1765–1780

Total (average/yr) 183 (7.3) % 108 (7.2) % Husband or son Josef alone 20 (11%) 7 (6.5%) Other family events 36 (19.7%) 35 (32.4%) Coronations/installations 23 (12.6%) 0 (32.4%) Battles and military orders 13ϩ4 (9.3%) 0 ϩ 1

Diplomacy/treaties 7 (3.8%) 6 (5.6%) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Religious events 5 (2.7%) 5 (4.6%) Locations Hungarian Crown 13 (7.1%) 13 (12%) Bohemian Crown 9 (5%) 1 (0.9%) Italian possessions 7 (3.7%) 29 (26.8%) Netherlands 9 (5%) 20 (18.5%) vious kings), evoking Louis XIV’s famous “Nec Pluribus Impar” (not unequal to many). Her Bohemian coronation (#33) pro- claims her as “Patriae Mater” (mother of the fatherland). That year, her ªrst medal honoring military service (#38) proclaimed her as “Mater Castrorum” (mother of the barracks), a title that still deco- rates the main entrance to Austria’s military academy.30 After her husband’s death in 1765, only three medals (#197– #199) dealt with her personally; more than half of them commemorated achievements of her children (forty-ªve) or her brother-in-law (eighteen). In both periods, the largest group of medals celebrated various public acts beneªting her subjects, but after 1765, these medals became more frequent, and the achievements that they celebrated seemingly smaller. The earlier period included seventeen medals honoring military victories or bravery in combat, but only one after her husband’s death. A few in each period marked diplomatic successes. The most interesting from the later period (#255) employed the phrase “antiqua jura vin- dicata” (old rights vindicated) in connection with the ªrst partition of Poland in 1772. On it, Joseph II and Maria Theresa receive homage from the provinces of Galicia and Lodomerice seized

30 See Gunther Probst-Ohnstorff (ed.), Schau- und Denkmünzen, welche unter der glorwürdigen Regierung des Kaiserinn Königinn Maria Thersia geprägt worden sind (Graz, Austria, 1970; orig. pub.Vienna, 1782), 19 (#14), 31 (#24), 43 (33#), 49 (#38). NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 559 Fig. 10 Maria I and Pedro III of Portugal (1779) (Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021

from Maria I of Hungary by her sister Jadwiga of Poland, a usurpa- tion conªrmed in 1412 but ªnally “restored” in 1773.31 Maria Theresa’s long and broad reign does not close the numismatic history of Europe’s old-regime female monarchs. The last of these was Maria I of Portugal (1777–1792), whose possessions included a gold-rich colony in Brazil. In order to preserve Portugal’s autonomy, her parents married her to her father’s younger brother, who became D. Pedro III at his wife’s accession. Until his death in 1786, Portugal had Europe’s last “absolutist” joint monarchy. Its numismatic record emphasizes Pedro III’s subordi- nate status. He was Europe’s only crowned king to be depicted on gold coins with his proªle overshadowed by that of his wife, and

31 Ibid., 35–36 (#27–28), 46–47 (#36), 102–103 (#81), 164–166 (#129–#131), 169–170 (#133–#134), 172 (#136), 175 (#139), 177–180 (#141–#143), 190 (#150), on military victories ; also 167–168 (#132, new military order), 263–267 (#197–#199), 361–362 (#255). 560 | WILLIAM MONTER the accompanying inscription marks the ªrst time since 1566 that a wife’s name precedes that of her husband (see Figure 10). Numismatic propaganda served different purposes for the autocratic empresses who ruled the “Westernizing” eighteenth- century Russian Empire almost continuously after the death of Peter the Great. Unlike the four female heiresses of eighteenth- century Western Europe, none of these four women had inherited

her throne. Because post-Petrine Russia had no law of succession, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 each tsar named his successor. Except for the ªrst empress, Peter’s widow Catherine I (r. 1725–1727), none had acquired her authority legally. Peter’s niece Anna (r. 1730–1740) was chosen by Mus- covite aristocrats who tried to limit her authority, but she quickly assumed autocratic powers. Her two most important succes- sors, Peter’s daughter Elisabeth (r. 1741–1762) and Catherine II (r. 1762–1796), both seized the throne through coups d’état. More- over, unlike their eighteenth-century Western European female counterparts, these Russian empresses remained unmarried throughout their reigns: The ªrst two were widows; Elisabeth never had a husband; and Catherine II immediately made herself a widow. All four of these empresses issued a range of gold, silver, and copper coins that provide valuable information about the increas- ing authority and status of the Russian Empire, especially those issued during the longest, and most important, reign of Catherine II. After 1774, Russian-made coins replaced Moldavian coins, and “Russianized” Georgian coins employing imperial double eagles were minted during the last ªfteen years of Catherine II’s reign. Her government opened new mints in both Siberia and the old Genoese port of Kaffa in the newly conquered Crimean peninsula. The efªgies on the high-value coins of the empresses suggest continuity; all of them displayed the same right-facing proªle, with almost identical accompanying inscriptions. Their most remarkable feature was the extent of imperial cleavage exposed, but reproducing these parallel proªles would serve little purpose; numismatics has never been considered an auxiliary discipline by pornographers.32 These Russian empresses, with the exception of Catherine I,

32 Béatrice Coullaré (ed.), Médailles russes du Louvre, 1672–1855 (Wetteren, 2006). See also Evgenia Shchukina, “Catherine II and Russian Metallic Art,” in Magnus Olausson (ed.), Catherine the Great & Gustav III (Helsingborg, Sweden, 1999), 313–319; P. Ricaud de Tiregale, Médailles sur les principaux événemens de l’Empire de Russie, depuis le règne de Pierre le NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 561 also struck their own medals with their own distinctive story to tell. The largest collection outside Russia contains seven medals for Anna, including one in Latin celebrating her military and political triumphs. Since Elisabeth was preoccupied with raising Russia’s imperial status above that of the European monarchies, she preferred propaganda medals in Latin; only three of her seventeen medals (including two from her coronation) are in Russian.

Catherine II, by birth a minor German princess, reversed this pol- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 icy in an attempt to establish her political credentials as a pa- triotic Russian. Hence, her collected medals include eighty in Russian but only six in Latin. Catherine II created so many medals that they were occasionally exported in bulk; a set of 188 in silver and bronze went to Vienna in 1790. By the end of her reign, her two engravers (one to depict her on the reverse and another to engrave the subject) had together created no fewer than 250 medals.33

Without any evidence beyond coins and medals, scholars would face serious misunderstandings about some of Europe’s female monarchs during the ªrst half of the period from 1300 to 1800. For example, little would be known about Margaret of Denmark, Eu- rope’s most brilliantly successful late-medieval female ruler, who created Scandinavia’s second and last political union in 1397. Technically, this childless widow was not a ruling monarch, and her strange constitutional title of “mighty husband” seemed un- suitable to engrave on coins after the phrase Dei Gratia; instead, by 1400, all Scandinavian coinage carried the name that she had chosen for the boy-king who became her adopted heir. Conversely, posterity might assume that Juana “the Mad” of Castile was a powerful monarch instead of a prisoner in Tordesillas, although scholars would need to explain why her name sometimes followed that of her son, as in Spanish America. Imagine also the difªculties that a one-woman dynasty, the royal “house of Venice,” would

Grand jusqu’à celui de Catherine II (Potsdam, 1772). The best introduction to Russian coinage is Bernhard F. Brekke, The Copper Coinage of Imperial Russia, 1700–1917 (Malmo, Sweden, 1977). 33 Coullaré (ed.), Médailles russes du Louvre, 85–87 (Anna), 88–95 (Elisabeth), 96–127 (Catherine II). See also Evgenia Shchukina, “Catherine II and Russian Metallic Art,” in Magnus Olausson (ed.), Catherine the Great & Gustav III (Helsingborg, Sweden, 1999), 313– 319; P. Ricaud de Tiregale, Médailles sur les principaux événemens de l’Empire de Russie, depuis le règne de Pierre le Grand jusqu’à celui de Catherine II (Potsdam, 1772). 562 | WILLIAM MONTER have presented in king lists for ªfteenth-century Cyprus. Never- theless, it is worth noting that all three of the most potentially mis- leading numismatic problems involve atypical situations when widows became sovereigns while lacking either de jure (Margaret) or de facto (Catherine and Juana) authority. Even in the earlier period, numismatic evidence sheds valuable light on the single most important issue affecting the rank and

status of Europe’s female sovereigns, their political relationship to Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 a husband. As early as the reign of Joanna I of Naples, sharp differ- ences emerged between coinage of an unmarried (or widowed) female ruler and a married one. Isabel of Castile, has special importance for two reasons: (1) Her reign was the longest that any married woman ever had, and (2) her husband had his own hereditary kingdom. The numismatic evidence from Isabel’s reign provides our clearest indication of a sharp legal difference between two adjoining kingdoms of southern Italy, both under Spanish rule. In Naples, conquered by a joint effort of the “Catholic kings,” Isabel’s name and efªgy appeared on coins as joint ruler of a newly reunited kingdom of the “Two Sicilies,” whereas coins from Sicily itself, which was part of Ferdinand’s inheritance when he married her, ignore her. Numismatics from the second half of the period offer both richer and extremely reliable evidence about female rulers, married and otherwise, particularly after 1550, when dates began ap- pearing regularly on coins. Coins identify Elizabeth I as Europe’s most durable woman ruler, and dated coins reveal precisely when Maria Theresa acquired each part of her extensive titles and possessions. Moreover, signiªcant numbers of medals offer an increas- ingly elaborate overview of what a power-hungry female regent like Marie de Medici considered to be her major political accom- plishments. Seventeenth-century numismatic evidence from female rulers shows a mixed pattern, whereas after 1700, it suggests a sharp in- crease in the political autonomy of Europe’s female monarchs. In the 1600s, the two women whose efªgies on coins were overshadowed by those of their husbands were not genuine heiresses. Archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia’s sovereignty was conditional and ended long before her death; England’s Mary II was a dynastic usurper whose father never abdicated and outlived her. Midway between them, the only woman who was a legitimate royal heir- NUMISMATICS AND FEMALE MONARCHS | 563 ess, Christina of Sweden, sported a laurel wreath on her coins. Af- ter 1700, during the reign of Mary’s younger sister Anne, neither the efªgy nor the name of her husband ever appeared on English coins. Similarly, the name of Maria Theresa’s husband never appeared on her coins. Although the efªgy of Pedro III of Portugal, the husband (and uncle) of Mary I, Europe’s last old-regime royal heiress, did appear on Portuguese coins, it was overshadowed by

his wife’s efªgy and her name preceded his on the inscriptions. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Two other types of numismatic evidence, coin survivals and medals, conªrm the decreasing authority of husbands of eighteenth-century royal heiresses. Late-medieval hoards in Cy- prus suggest that the coins issued by the husband of a female monarch were more important than those naming only an heiress, because they were more likely to be preserved. Three centuries later, coin survival rates in Maria Theresa’s lands favor the heiress over her husband, even though he held the higher formal rank of Holy Roman emperor. So far as medals are concerned, the efªgy of Prince George of Denmark never appeared on any British ones during Queen Anne’s reign except to commemorate his death in 1708—the exact reverse of the situation under Anne’s older sister. Many English medals show William III without Mary II, but the only one that shows Mary without William commemorates her death. Maria Theresa’s husband appeared on several medals after he was crowned Holy Roman emperor in 1745 (thus making his wife an empress), but the couple were never shown together.34 Europe’s female monarchs of the old regime used numismatics in effective ways to enhance their ofªcial sovereignty. Throughout the entire period, most royal heiresses were married, and despite a persistent and widely circulated literature that preached wifely subservience, their coins (and, later, their medals) testify otherwise. Even in the Middle Ages, the name of certain husbands of heiresses (including Maximilian of Austria, an emperor’s heir) were omitted from her coins, and even Juana la loca,

34 Prince George appears on only two of Queen Anne’s medals in the ans— #0000.999.37143 and #0000.999.37203, commemorating his formal appointment as commander-in-chief in 1702 and his death in 1708. Conversely, the smaller ans sample of English medals from 1688 to 1694 includes several of William without Mary. The one of Mary without William (#0000.999.28957) commemorates her death. Both samples match the even larger series of plates in Hawkins’ Medallic Illustrations. 564 | WILLIAM MONTER an inactive “proprietary monarch” took priority on Spanish coins over a son who was an emperor as well as a king. Numismatic evidence further suggests that the status of Eu- rope’s female sovereigns vis-à-vis their husbands improved over time. When both spouses issued separate coins in the ªfteenth century, they had equal value and far more of his than hers survived. When this phenomenon happened again three centuries

later, more of her coins than his survived, and some of hers had Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/41/4/533/1699146/jinh_a_00155.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 higher value than any of his. Since pictures are proverbially worth a thousand words, the ªnal numismatic example involves iconographical precedence. When married sovereigns were ªrst depicted on seventeenth-century coins in proªle facing right (both couples, both ªrst cousins, being exceptionally devout, one Cath- olic and one Protestant), the husband overshadowed his wife. In the next century, this parallel-proªle arrangement reappeared twice, but both contexts emphasize the wife’s importance. On the ªrst occasion, she was still overshadowed, but, having long ago abdicated in favor of her husband, she was a mere regent with no right to appear on coins at all. A half-century later, the wife’s pro- ªle overshadowed that of a husband who was also her paternal uncle—and, like Christina of Sweden, Portugal’s female ruler (whose reign was very peaceful) wore a laurel wreath.