(sold for $40.0)

1670, Spanish Netherlands. Copper "Sacrament of Miracle Tercentary" Medal. aXF-

Mint Year: 1670 Mint Place Brussels Reference: Dugn. 4276, van Loon III 34/2. Condition: Scratch in reverse and light greenish deposits, otherwise about XF! Denomination: Treasurer of Brussels Medal  - Tercentary of the Blessed Sacrament of Miracle at the church of Saint Gudula in Brussels / Thierry d''Elshout, known as Van Heusden, treasurer of Brussels. Material: Copper Diameter: 32mm Weight: 7.41gm

Obverse: Illuminated Sacarament of Miracle reliquary containing the hosts desecrated in 1370, covered with a mantle and surmounted by three crowns. Below, a hand making an offering. Legend: DEO DVO IVBILANTI MVNIFICA

Reverse: Helmeted coat-of-arms of Thierry d''Elshout, known as Van Heusden, treasurer of Brussels, supported by two rampart lions. Legend: T ABELSHOVT EX HEVSDANA FAM BRVX THE 

Jetons were widely used by government institutions such as state treasuries, revenue services and the bureos, stewardship courts or councils that supervised the royal family´s finances and internal affairs. The production of jetons for such institutions was standardised and regulated. WIn time, they ceased to be used for accounting purposes and became mere instruments of political propaganda.

A chronogram is a sentence or inscription in which specific letters, interpreted as numerals, stand for a particular date when rearranged. The word, meaning "time writing", derives from the Greek words chronos (χρόνος "time") and gramma (γράμμα, "letter"). In the pure chronogram, each word contains a numeral; the natural chronogram shows all numerals in the correct numerical order, e.g. AMORE MATVRITAS = MMVI = 2006.

The Brussels massacre was an anti-Semitic episode in Brussels (then within the Duchy of Brabant) in 1370 in connection with an alleged host desecration at the Brussels synagogue. A number of Jews, variously given as six or about twenty, were executed or otherwise killed, while the rest of the small community was banished. The event occurred on May 22.

The version of the allegations attested from 1403 was that a rich Jew from Enghien wanted to obtain some consecrated hosts to profane, and bribed a male Jewish convert to Christianity from Leuven to steal some. Shortly thereafter, the Enghien merchant was murdered. His widow passed the stolen hosts to the Jews of Brussels, where in the synagogue on Good Friday 1370 some tried to stab the wafers with their daggers, causing blood to pour forth. A female Jewish convert to Christianity was paid to take the hosts to Cologne's Jews, but remorsefully told the story to the parson of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in Brussels, who took possession of the hosts. The Duke of Brabant, on the woman's testimony, ordered the stabbers burnt at the stake and the remaining Jews banished, with their property confiscated.

The supposedly recovered hosts became objects of veneration for local Christians as the Sacrament of Miracle.

The hosts were placed in reliquaries and preserved in the then collegiate church of Saint Gudula, the patron saint of Brussels, an important symbol of the area's Catholic identity. They became a feature of the annual procession on her feast day.

Emperor Charles V and the Habsburgs, as well as their relatives, donated seven stained glass windows on which the miracle is depicted. These were executed by Antwerp glass-maker Jan Hack after creations by Bernard van Orley and Michiel Coxcie. Four of them are still in place today. This compared perceived Jewish anti-Catholicism to the nascent Protestant Reformation, with the miraculous bleeding countering Protestant denials of transubstantiation.

In the early 1580s, during a period of Calvinist rule in Brussels, all Catholic ceremonies were suppressed. From 1579 to 1585 the relics had been hidden in a house in the Korte Ridderstraat. After the end of Calvinist rule in 1585, a procession of citizens and officeholders had retrieved the hosts and carried them back to the church. The re-emergence of the cult in 1585 was primarily as a celebration of the end of Calvinist rule. The Archdukes Albert and Isabella, who ruled in Brussels 1598–1621, made the annual procession a state occasion: 

The Blessed Sacrament of Miracles ... had emerged as doubly miraculous after the end of Calvinist rule in Brussels in 1585 when it became clear that the sacred hosts had survived intact. The annual procession in honour of the Sacrament now became as much a commemoration of the second anti-Calvinist miracle as of the first anti-Semitic one and, after their accession, the Archdukes conscientiously attended the procession every year while also turning it into a veritable state event.

Five windows added in the nineteenth century depict the development of the cult of the Miracle; these were donated by Belgian kings Leopold I and Leopold II and other nobles, this time linking the Miracle to the contemporary Catholic opposition to secularism.

The 1870 quincentenary jubilee of the Miracle would have been marked with extraordinary celebrations, but tension between catholic and liberal circles was increasingly rising. Liberals, including the anti-Semite Edmond Picard, had called for a boycott of the festivities. A pamphlet by Charles Potvin (under the pseudonym Dom Liber) gave rise to a violent controversy with the young priest Hyacinthe De Bruyn, which was also fueled by imminent elections. As a consequence, church authorities decided to cancel these celebrations.

Only 1$ shipping for each additional item purchased!