Faces of Money: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Coin shown: Jesus Christ, Nomisma, gold, A.D. 976-1025, Byzantium
 Jesus Christ, ca. 6 B.C. - ca. 30 A.D., needs little
introduction in Western society. He has been the subject of
countless works of art over the millennia, from paintings to tapestries
and statues.
Money and medals too have been used as a medium for displaying His
image, starting with the Byzantines in the last years of the 7th century
AD.
Surprisingly, there was an early movement in the Christian church to
ban the use of images of Christ or any other religious figures as a form
of idolatry, based on the 2nd Commandment forbidding the worship of
“graven images.” For this reason both Jews and Muslims
refrain from displaying images of god or of religious figures.
During the reign of the Byzantine emperor Leo III, this controversy
came to a head in the form of the iconoclast movement, which favored the
destruction of all icons and images of Christ or the Saints. The
controversy lasted from 730 AD to 842 AD before finally being resolved
in favor of icons.
In the meantime, many people had been killed on both sides, and
priceless works of art from the early history of Christianity had been
destroyed.
Since that time Christ has appeared on many coins and medals and
continues to be a popular subject for numismatic works.
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