by Augi Garcia

 

In Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece was a fleece that imbued its owner with many magical powers. The winged ram from which it came was carrying Phrixus and Helle to safety when Helle fell off into the sea, a sea thereafter known as the Hellespont. Phrixus sacrificed the ram and hung its fleece in a wood guarded by a dragon. The adventures of Jason and the Argonauts were associated with a quest for this magical treasure. In 1430 the scholarly and pious Philip the Good of Burgundy decided to institute a chivalric order to celebrate his marriage to the Portuguese princess Isabelle of Aviz. He founded the Order of the Golden Fleece (Spanish: La Orden del Toisón de Oro; French: L'ordre De La Toison D'or; German: Der Orden Vom Goldenen Vlies).

Philip modeled his new order on the English Order of the Garter, to which he had been elected in 1422. Membership in the Order of Fleece was restricted to a limited number of knights, initially 24 but increased to 30, and finally 51, in 1516. The Ordinances of the order explicitly denied membership to "heretics", and so it became an exclusively Catholic award during the Reformation. ( Some thought the choice of the pagan Golden Fleece as the symbol of a strongly Christian and Catholic order a little odd.).
Knights of the Order wore the badge of the Golden Fleece suspended from a heavy jeweled collar. The motto of the Order, "Pretium Laborum Non Vile" ("Not a bad reward for labour"), was engraved on the front of the central link, with Philip's motto "Non Aliud" ("I will have no other") on the back. A golden ram hung at the bottom.

With the absorption of the Burgundian lands into the Habsburg Empire in the 16th century, the sovereignty of the Order passed to the Habsburg kings of Spain, where it remained until the death of the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, Charles II, in 1700. When he was succeeded by Philip of Anjou, a Bourbon, there followed a dispute between the Houses of Habsburg and Bourbon over the succession and other matters of sovereignty. As far the Order of the Golden Fleece was concerned, this was resolved by the division of the Order into separate Spanish and Austrian branches.

The Order of the Golden Fleece is of interest to numismatists because it became a standard feature of milled Spanish and Spanish Colonial coinage in the 18th century. Very rarely used on silver issues, it was reserved for the larger gold coins ( four and eight escudos) to frame the crowned Bourbon arms. On the eight escudos pictured below, a Colombian issue of Charles IV, we see the Golden Fleece surrounding the Bourbon arms. Finding these milled Spanish gold coins on an unknown shipwreck is often a vital clue in identifying the wreck. When a quantity of very rare 1750-51 Chilean 8 escudos were recently found on a wreck in Montevideo’s harbor, this led to the identification of the ship as the Nuestra Senora de la Luz, lost in 1752.

 

 

- NUEVO REINO, Carlos III, 8 Escudos 1783, Assayer JJ. Draped and cuirassed bust r. Rev. Crowned arms surrounded by chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Calico 886.      - MEXICO, Felipe V of Spain, 8 Escudos 1734. Assayer F. Cuirassed bust to r. Rev. Crowned arms surrounded by chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Calico 426.     - CHILE, Fernando VI. 8 Escudos 1751. Assayer J. Cuirassed and draped bust to r. Rev. Crowned shield of arms surrounded by chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Calico 731

- Jason, a highly personal, dreamlike reinterpretation by the Symbolist Gustave Moreau, 1865     - Neck Chain of a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece Burgundian-Netherlandish After 1430 Gold, painters enamel Wt 508 g SK Inv. No. XIV 263

 

 

The following coins were recovered from a shipwreck, that is to date “unidentified” but known as "The Golden Fleece Wreck". It has been determined that the shipwreck occurred circa 1550 in the international waters of the Caribbean Sea. The estimated date of this wreck was determined by a number of factors. The coins recovered from this wreck are characteristically the late series of Carlos y Juana also many of these silver “splashes” (ingot) are stamped with the C (for Charles) below a crown, this mark is known as the “Crowned-C” and helps indicate that they were in production during the reign of Charles I (1515-1556).

Gold bars and pieces of gold bars were also salvaged at this time, and these pieces bear a stamp that shows a castle between the figurative Pillars of Hercules with the collar of the Order of the "Golden Fleece" hanging below the castle. This stamp was also linked to Charles I, who was credited with reviving the medieval Order of the Golden Fleece in Spain in the early 1500’s. The gold bars from this ca.—1550 wreck present the first evidence of the “Golden Fleece” marking on bullion from the New World. And lastly, the coins and some of the ingots resemble those found from the 1554 Fleet but some of the markings on the gold bullions appear to slightly pre-date the 1554 Fleet.