ЗЛАТЕН СОЛИД НА ЮСТИНИАН ВЕЛИКИ СЪС СИМВОЛИТЕ НА ТРИУМФИРАЩАТА СВЕТСКА И ЦЪРКОВНА ВЛАСТ
GOLDEN SOLID OF JUSTINIAN THE GREAT WITH THE SYMBOLS OF THE TRIUMPHING MUNDANE AND CHURCH AUTHORITY

Summary/Abstract: The golden solidus of Justinian the Great, minted in the period 542 – 552, turned a new page in palaeography enhancing an iconographic issue the research of which is yet to follow - the relation of the Golgotha cross of the New Sun in the form of stavrophorion with the augurian lituus is unscrambled as the shepherd’s crook of the Good Shepherd. Minted in the X oficina of the Byzantine court, the coin commemorates the triumph of the Byzantine emperor over the Goth-Arians in Italy. The symbols of the secular and ecclesiastical power were presented by the Roman goddess of victory Victoria, which legitimizes the royal-priestly prerogatives of the god-appointed ruler in connection with the revived ancient tradition of the Roman Empire (Renovatio imperii). The Golgotha cross appears as a precious stavrophorion for the first time in the coins of Theodosius II (408 – 450) and expresses the imperial Orthodox propaganda, as evidenced by the mosaics of: "St. Pudentiana” in Rome and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, “Sant’Apollinare in Classe”, the Episcopal Chapel and other churches in Ravenna. The Byzantine propaganda against the Arians in the capital of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Ravenna is evidenced in the mosaic of the Baptistery of the Arians from the first quarter of the 6th century, in which John the Baptist is represented with a pastoral crook instead of the precious Golgotha cross, as it is in the Baptistery of Orthodoxy. The golden solidus of Justinian the Great expresses the same propaganda.

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