Denier - Béla II Klippe

Béla II ruled Hungary partially blind — blinded as a child by order of King Stephen II to prevent him from claiming the throne — and his decade-long reign was marked by a brutal settling of scores at the Diet of Arad in 1131, where scores of nobles implicated in that mutilation were killed. The klippe format of this denier, struck square rather than round, reflects the primitive cutting methods of Hungarian minting in this period rather than any deliberate aesthetic choice.