Sale: Triton XII, Lot: 955. Estimate $300.  Closing Date: Monday, 5 January 2009.  Sold For $300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

GERMANY, Goslar. Anonymous. After 1477. AR Bauerngroschen (2.61 g, 10h). mOnЄτΛ nOVΛ GOSLΛRIЄn, crowned and crested helmet set on shield adorned with eagle / (rosette) SΛИCτ[VS] SImOn (rosette) Єτ IVDΛS, nimbate figures of Sts. Simon and Jude standing facing, holding palm fronds. BBK 11 (a1/B1). VF, toned.

Ex Prof. de Wit Collection; Peus 309 (2 May 1984), lot 1568.

Sts. Simon and Jude are two of the Twelve Apostles: Simon was called “the Zealot” and Jude was known as Judas Thaddeus to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot. Minor disciples, little is known about them apart from later non-canonical Christian hagiography. Both saints shared the same feast day on 28 October and, according to the Golden Legend, a 13th century lives of the saints by Jacobus de Vergine, these two saints traveled together to the Parthian Empire, where they were martyred.

In the city of Goslar, the collegiate abbey-church of Sts. Simon and Jude, built in 1051 by Hermann, the archbishop of Köln in honor of the Holy Roman emperor, Heinrich III, was considered to be the largest one of its kind at the time in the area, and became the model for numerous subsequent regional abbey-churches. Colloquially known as the “Goslarer Dom”, the church itself was dismantled in 1819.