Sale: CNG 61, Lot: 2192. Estimate $7500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 25 September 2002.  Sold For $4000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LOMBARDIC KINGDOM OF ITALY. AISTULF. 749-756. Æ Follis (2.12 gm). Struck 751/2. Ravenna mint. +DNAIST-VLFYS RX Draped bust of Aistulf to front, bearded, hair centrally parted and wearing small diadem surmounted with cross, holding globus cruciger / Large cross between ANNO and I (year 1); above, cross and in exergue, RAV. MEC 324. E. Ercolani Cocchi, Le monete del museo nazionale di Ravenna, 1984, 336. The fourth and finest known example and the only one not in a public collection. VF, Olive-green patina. ($7500)

Ex Italo Vecchi Auction 12 (5 June 1998), lot 1151.

Aistulf’s expulsion of the Byzantine forces from the exarchate and capture of Ravenna in 751 was followed by demands of suzerainty over Rome itself as part of his enlarged dominion. When Pope Stephen III’s appeal for help from the eastern emperor Constantine V was answered with only a letter of remonstrance sent to Aistulf, Stephen made the momentous move of appealing to Pepin the Short, king of the Franks, on whom in 754 was bestowed the imperial title of patricius Romanorum.