Munster in 30 Artworks, No 24: The Judas Coin (Dekadrachm of Syracuse), Limerick
Munster in 30 Artworks, No 24: The Judas Coin (Dekadrachm of Syracuse), Limerick
Most people know Judas Iscariot as the poster boy for betrayal. In the last week of Jesus’s life, after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Judas arranged with the authorities that he would give him away by kissing his cheek in the garden at Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Jesus was consequently seized by an angry mob, charged with subversion and masquerading as a king, and sentenced to death by crucifixion.
Judas’s betrayal was all the more shocking as he was one of the twelve apostles, and had long been one of Jesus’s closest followers. According to the Gospel of Matthew, he was paid thirty pieces of silver for his duplicity. However, he was soon filled with remorse, and returned the reward before dying by suicide. The authorities considered it inappropriate to return the blood money to the treasury, using it instead to purchase the Potter’s Field, where strangers whose bodies went unclaimed would henceforth be buried.
What became of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver is open to debate, but one is claimed to have ended up in the collection of the Hunt Museum in Limerick. “The coin in question was probably made in Syracuse, on the island of Sicily,” says Karen Wilson, Head of Collections at the museum. “It’s a dekadrachm, or ten-drachma coin, and is very valuable anyway, apart from any association it might have with Judas. It’s beautifully made; Syracuse was a noted centre of coin production, and it’s likely that only a small number of these coins were pressed from the same mould. It may have been that they were presented as tokens, perhaps to warriors after victory in a battle.”
The coin was among the religious artefacts donated to the museum as part of the Hunt Collection. John Hunt was an English antiques dealer and archaeologist whose German wife, Gertrude Hartmann, shared his enthusiasm for art and antiquities. They settled in Lough Gur, Co Limerick in 1940, and were involved in the establishment of the Lough Gur and Craggaunowen visitor centres, as well as the restoration of Bunratty Castle. They moved to Dublin in 1954.
Over their lifetimes John Hunt died in 1976, Gertrude in 1995 – they acquired more than 2,000 works of art and antiquities. These included paintings by Pablo Picasso, Pierre August Renoir and Jack B Yeats, and sculpture by Henry Moore. The entire collection is now held in trust on behalf of the people of Ireland, and housed at the museum in the former Customs House on Rutland Street in Limerick City.
“The Hunts were quite religious,” says Wilson, “and there are any number of crucifixes, rosary beads and Christian works of art in the collection.” Among them is a selection of ancient Irish monastic bells and a unique 9th century Antrim Cross.
The Hunts would probably have picked up the Judas coin while touring Europe in the 1930s, buying work from antique shops, churches and other collectors. It’s easy to see how it might have caught their eye. “It’s very dramatic. There’s the head of a goddess-like figure on the front, and a chariot drawn by four horses on the back.”
The figure is thought to be Arethusa or Persephone, who is depicted with four dolphins frolicking about her head. The image on the reverse shows Nike, the goddess of victory, about to crown the charioteer with a wreath. “Neither image has any association with Judas Iscariot, of course.”
The coin is set in a gold band with an inscription in Latin that seems to date to mediaeval times, when there was a roaring trade in antiquities relating to early Christianity. “It was a time of great religious fervour, a time we associate with pilgrimages and a demand for relics. The Latin inscription is what establishes the association with Judas. It reads ‘Quia precium sanguinis est’, which translates as ‘This is the price of blood.’”
The coin itself is much older than the gold band, though not so old as to have actually been in circulation in Jesus’s time. “It most likely dates to the 5th century AD, rather than the early Christian era,” says Wilson.
The museum staff are often asked about the coin, “but there’s so much to see that many visitors might not be aware of it until they come in".
No one seems puts out by the fact that the coin is unlikely to have been one of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver after all. “Whatever its origins, it’s still a beautiful object, and really intriguing.”
- Further information: huntmusuem.ie
