Sale: CNG 61, Lot: 2183. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 25 September 2002.  Sold For $4500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PAPAL-BYZANTINE ROME. JUSTINIAN II. First Reign (685-695) and POPE ST. SERGIUS (687-698). AR 1/8 Siliqua (0.26 gm). Struck circa 687-695. Crowned and beardless facing bust, wearing chlamys / Full monogram of Rome, S in upper left field. O’Hara/Vecchi, 21(this coin); SB 1308A; Berman 6 (Pope Stephen II or III). EF, flan chip, slightly off-center, but nicely toned and of refined portrait style. Unique. There were 31 coins in the O’Hara/Vecchi Hoard, and this was the most aesthetic and stylistically pleasing coin in the entire hoard. ($4000)

Ex Leu-NAC Auction, (May 1993), 596.

Although Pope Sergius was appointed by the personal intervention of the Byzantine exarch, he was a strong defender of Roman rights, and the ensuing efforts of Justinian to have him deported to Constantinople weakened the imperial position in Italy. [New Paragraph] Through the pontificate of Sergius the Italo-Byzantine territories continued to have less connection with the empire. The exarchate of Ravenna showed signs of an autonomous entity, the Romagna. The duchy of Rome submitted to the pope, leaving only Naples, Calabria and Sicily loyal to Constantinople, which with the adoption of the iconoclastic heresy widened even further the rift between the papacy and the Byzantine emperor.