Abstract
A systematic study of the Armenian manuscripts allowed us to identify in twelve Gospels created in the scriptoria of Cilician Armenia, Siwnik‘ and Vaspurakan from the mid-13th c. to 1592, images of gold coins and state seals. As prototypes for coin images, only gold coins from circulation were used — these were the Byzantine solidus of mid-10th — mid-11th cc., the dinar of Sultan Kay-Khusraw II, the Florentine florin, the dinars of Abu Sa‘id Ilkhanid and the Venetian ducat; but in Vaspurakan, lacking gold coins in monetary circulation during the 14th-15th cc., the images of gold coins were replaced by drawings of state Mongolian seals. The appearance of gold coins in the most important places of the Gospels is explained in Mkhit‘ar Gosh’s Lawcode (completed after 1184), in which gold coins, due to their pure nature, are interpreted in neoplatonical sense as a symbols of Christ’s divinity. A review of the discovered artistic tradition and its comparisons with synchronous traditions of illuminations allows us to indicate that it was in Cilician Armenia that real coins were first depicted, moreover, with such a degree of detail, which makes it possible to unambiguously determine their type. The identification of this artistic tradition significantly expands our understanding of the symbolic role of coins in medieval society.
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