With the official name Konstantinato

  With the official name Konstantinato , or commonly konstantinato , there is a Byzantine, Venetian and Cypriot gold coin, according to F. Hasluk, whose type resembles a hagiography of the Emperors Saint Constantine and Saint Helen with the Christian cross between them.

There are many folk traditions about these coins that developed mainly during the Byzantine period. According to them, pregnant women wore costantinata both for the protection of fetuses and for the ease of childbirth. Children were also brought to Constantine as talismans against Baskania . It was also believed that the costantinates accelerated the fermentation of the flour mixture and the yogurt .

In general, the beliefs about the Constantines go back mainly to the canonized faces they depicted in combination with the discovery of the Holy Cross by Saint Helen. The consequence of this was that the costantinate was considered in some cases even of equal value to the honest wood .

In particular, there was a tradition that when Saint Helen found the Cross, she cut it in two and left one part of it in Jerusalem , while the other was taken to Constantinople . And the sawdust from this cutting was put into a melting pot with other precious metals from the alloy of which the constantinates were cut.

A similar tradition can be found among the Greek Vlachs in Macedonia as well as in Bulgaria and in Russia, who may have come from a Byzantine synaxari.

And among other traditions that developed in the Aegean islands and in the Peloponnese, hemostatic properties during childbirth were also attributed to constantinata, considering that their possession cures the “turning (dissolving) of the navel”. In the Greek Revolution of 1821 , the occupation of Constantine by the Greek revolutionaries was considered a talisman for “bad volley”. Also that it cured fever, epilepsy and jaundice. In Mani, to this day, the constantinates are considered valuable family heirlooms, and even when they are considered to be miraculous, they are placed on the icons, while in many places, their owners present them to the churches every Maundy Thursday and operate them.

Continuation of the above traditions is to offer even today to babies gold coins, (at births and baptisms) or more commonly the golden cross that was established later replacing the Constantine.