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Hungary under Matyas Matthias II – King:
1615 KB Silver Denier / Denar 14mm (0.60 grams)
Reference: ÉH# 870, H# 1141, KM# 40.1 (1613-20)
MAT · D · G · RO · I · S · AV · GE · HV · B · R · K B, Twofold Hungarian coat-of-arms: Árpád stripes and double cross.
PATRO · HVNGA ··, Crowned and glorified Madonna seated on a crescent holds child in her left arm, cross in the right.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 Matthias (24 February 1557 – 20 March 1619) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1612 to 1619, Archduke of Austria from 1608 to 1619, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1608 to 1618, and King of Bohemia from 1611 to 1617. His personal motto was Concordia lumine maior (“Unity is stronger than light”).
He played a significant role in the familial opposition of the Habsburgs against his brother Emperor Rudolf II. After gaining power, he showed little political initiative of his own. The course of his politics was determined by Cardinal Klesl until his fall in 1618. As a consequence of his failed religious and administrative policies the Bohemian Revolt, the initial theatre of the Thirty Years War set off during the final year of his reign.
Matthias was crowned King of Bohemia on May 23, 1611 and was, after Rudolf’s death on January 20, 1612, elected Emperor. On December 4, 1611, he married his cousin Archduchess Anna of Austria, yet the union failed to produce children. Matthias allegedly fathered an illegitimate son named Matthias of Austria with an unknown mother.
The court and administration were gradually moved from Prague to Vienna after 1612. The new emperor was less interested in art than Rudolf II and most court artists soon turned their backs on his court. Matthias maintained however a close relationship with the painter Lucas van Valckenborch. For the private crown of his brother Rudolf II, he had a sceptre and an orb made. The Emperor’s wife founded the Capuchin Church and the Imperial Crypt in Vienna as the future burial site of the Habsburg family. Matthias has allegedly found a spring in the area of today’s Schönbrunn Palace. It is said that it became the eponymous name of the area and the palace from his remark: “Look, what a beautiful spring”.
After Matthias’s imperial accession, his kingship was dominated by Klesl, who hoped to bring about a compromise between Catholic and Protestant states within the Holy Roman Empire in order to strengthen it. Matthias had already been forced to grant religious concessions to Protestants in Austria and Moravia, as well as in Hungary, when he had allied with them against Rudolf. Matthias imprisoned Georg Keglević who was the Commander-in-chief, General, Vice-Ban of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia and since 1602 Baron in Transylvania, but soon left him free again. At that time the Principality of Transylvania was a fully autonomous area of Hungary, but under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, where it was the time of the Sultanate of Women.
Matthias’s conciliatory policies were opposed by the more intransigent Catholic Habsburgs, particularly Matthias’s brother Archduke Maximilian, who hoped to secure the succession for the inflexible Catholic Archduke Ferdinand (later Emperor Ferdinand II). The Protestant Bohemians, concerned about their religious freedom, fiercely opposed all Catholic officials, appointed by Matthias and the Habsburg Archduke (elected King of Bohemia in May 1618) in particular. The dispute came to a head in the Bohemian Protestant revolt. This provoked Maximilian to imprison Klesl and revise his policies. However, old and ailing, he was unable to prevent a takeover by Maximilian’s faction. He died of natural causes at age 62 on March 20, 1619, and Ferdinand, who had already been crowned King of Bohemia (1617) and of Hungary (1618), succeeded Matthias as Holy Roman Emperor.
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/220px-Sandro_Botticelli_-_The_Virgin_and_Child_(The_Madonna_of_the_Book)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) A Madonna, meaning ‘my lady’. The Madonna and Child type is very prevalent in Christian iconography, divided into many traditional subtypes especially in Eastern Orthodox iconography, often known after the location of a notable icon of the type, such as the Theotokos of Vladimir, Agiosoritissa, Blachernitissa, etc., or descriptive of the depicted posture, as in Hodegetria, Eleusa, etc.
The term Madonna in the sense of “picture or statue of the Virgin Mary” enters English usage in the 17th century, primarily in reference to works of the Italian Renaissance. In an Eastern Orthodox context, such images are typically known as Theotokos. “Madonna” may be generally used of representations of Mary, with or without the infant Jesus, is the focus and central figure of the image, possibly flanked or surrounded by angels or saints. Other types of Marian imagery have a narrative context, depicting scenes from the Life of the Virginn, e.g. the Annunciation to Mary, are not typically called “Madonna”.
<pthe earliest="" depictions="" of="" mary="" date="" still="" to="" early="" christianity="" (2nd="" 3rd="" centuries),="" found="" in="" the="" catacombs="" rome.="" these="" are="" a="" narrative="" context.="" classical="" "madonna"="" or="" "theotokos"="" imagery="" develops="" from="" 5th="" century,="" as="" marian="" devotion="" rose="" great="" importance="" after="" council="" ephesus="" formally="" affirmed="" her="" status="" "mother="" god="" Theotokos (“God-bearer”) in 431. The Theotokos iconography as it developed in the 6th to 8th century rose to great importance in the high medieval period (12th to 14th centuries) both in the Eastern Orthodox and in the Latin spheres. According to a tradition recorded in the 8th century, Marian iconography goes back to a portrait drawn from life by Luke the Evangelist, with a number of icons (such as the Panagia Portaitissa) claimed to either represent this original icon or to be a direct copy of it. In the Western tradition, depictions of the Madonna were greatly diversified by Renaissance masters such as Duccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, Caravaggio and Rubens (and further by certain modernists, such as Salvador Dalí and Henry Moore) while Eastern Orthodox iconography adheres more closely to the inherited traditional types.
 Hungaryy is a sovereign state in Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Romania to the east, Serbia to the south, Croatia to the southwest, Slovenia to the west, Austria to the northwest, and Ukraine to the northeast. The country’s capital and largest city is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and the Schengen Area. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
 Following centuries of successive habitation by Celts, Romans, Huns, Slavs, Gepids, and Avars, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád in the Honfoglalás (“homeland-conquest”). His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000 CE, converting the country to a Christian kingdom. By the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541-1699), Hungary came under Habsburg rule, and later formed a significant part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918).
Hungary’s current borders were first established by the Treaty of Trianon (1920) after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, and 32% of ethnic Hungarians. Following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary came under the influence of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship (1947-1989). The country gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal opening of its previously-restricted border with Austria in 1989, which accelerated the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
On 23 October 1989, Hungary again became a democratic parliamentary republic, and today has a high-income economy with a very high Human Development Index. Hungary is a popular tourist destination attracting 10.675 million tourists a year (2013). It is home to the largest thermal water cave system and the second-largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Hévíz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grasslands in Europe (the Hortobágy National Park).
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