September 27, 2013
Artifact: Erasmus of Rotterdam Medal
Weight: 13.7 g
Date: 1531
Significance: This silver medal was minted in Germany in 1531 in honor of the Dutch Renaissance humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). The obverse side (left) has a bust of Erasmus while the reverse side (right) has a man’s head on a cubical boundary stone atop grassy ground, which was Erasmus’s memento mori device.* The Latin inscriptions on the medal and their meanings are: IMAGO AD VIVA EFFIGIE EXPRESSA meaning “His image modeled to the living features”; CONCEDO NVLLI TERMINUS meaning “I, Terminus [Death], yield to none”; and MORS VLTIMA LINEA RERVM meaning “Death is the final goal of all.”
This medal, along with some 700 other coins and medals from CHI’s Reformation Era & Anniversary Collection, has now been photographed. CHI hopes to have a catalog of this extensive collection published for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation (2017).
Photo(s) by Daniel Harmelink
* memento mori is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death.
