Catalog
Zlatnik Vladimir the Great, Type I
| Issuer | Kyivan Rus |
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| Year | 980-1015 |
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| Weight | 4.4 g |
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| Obverse description | Full-length frontal effigy of Grand Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich, depicted apparently enthroned with bent legs, attired in a short princely cloak (korzno) fastened at the shoulder by a round fibula, the garment's hem terminating in beaded fringe. The prince wears a crown or ducal hat surmounted by a cross and flanked by pendant strands of beads. In his raised right hand he holds a staff topped with a cross, while his left hand rests upon his chest, partially concealed beneath the cloak; the trident dynastic symbol (tamga) appears above his left shoulder. A circular Cyrillic legend ВΛАДИМИРЪ НА СТОΛҌ (Vladimir on the Throne) surrounds the effigy in clockwise orientation with letters directed radially toward the coin's centre, enclosed within a beaded border. |
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| Reverse description | Frontal bust of Jesus Christ Pantocrator within a cross-nimbus, depicted in the Byzantine iconographic tradition wearing a chiton, his left hand holding a jewelled Gospel book in a dotted binding while his right hand is concealed within the folds of his garment. The image closely follows Byzantine solidus prototypes of the period. A circular Cyrillic legend ЇСУСЪ ХРИСТИСЪ (Jesus Christ) surrounds the bust in clockwise orientation with letters directed radially toward the centre, enclosed within a beaded border. |
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| Additional information |
One of fewer than a dozen authenticated specimens known to survive, the Zlatnik was Vladimir's deliberate imitation of the Byzantine solidus — almost certainly a political act rather than an economic one. Kievan Rus had no meaningful gold coinage tradition, and these pieces almost certainly never entered general circulation. They functioned as prestige objects, possibly diplomatic gifts or ceremonial payments, produced to signal that Vladimir's newly Christianized realm belonged among the recognized Christian monarchies of Europe.
The SS#1-1 designation places this among the earliest catalogued examples in the Spassky-Sotnikova corpus, the foundational reference for early Rus coinage first systematically assembled in the Soviet period.