Denier - Béla II

Béla II came to the throne blind — both eyes gouged out on the orders of King Stephen II when Béla was a child, a dynastic mutilation intended to disqualify him from rule. That he reigned for a decade regardless is a minor political miracle. His coinage reflects the compressed, irregular fabric typical of Hungarian bracteate-influenced striking of the period, and the multiple catalog references here — ÉH, Huszár, Éremhatározó, and the CAC corpus — speak to ongoing scholarly disagreement over die groupings within this reign.