Les frontières de l’éternité? le cas d’un nom de monnaie : santalene

This contribution examines written and numismatic evidence related to coins known in medieval Italy as ''coins of St Helena''; such coins can be identified as Byzantine coins whose images were wrongly read by medieval devout people as images of Constantine and Helena, venerated like saints. The role of Late Roman and Byzantine coins as ''icons'' continued well into the 16th century, and here the author offers a full comment of a papal bull issued by Pope Sixtus V tranforming into relics the gold Byzantine coins of the 'Lateran hoard' discovered in 1586 (specimens of which are still preserved in a number of Italian churches as ''coins of St Helena'').