(sold for $37.0)

1851, Vatican, Pope Pius IX. Large Copper 2 Baiocchi Coin. VF

Mint Year: 1848 Mint Place: Rome (R) Denomination: 2 Baiocchi Reference: KM-1344 ($40 in VF!) Condition: Some deposits, otherwise a nice VF!  Weight: 19.27gm Material: Copper Diameter: 34mm

Obverse: Papal tiara above crossed and tasseled keys above coat-of-arms of the Pope. Legend: PIVS . IX . PON . - MAX . A NN . VI .   Reverse: Value (2) above denomination (BAIOCCHI), date (1851) and mint initial (R). All within wreath.

Blessed Pope Pius IX (May 13, 1792 – February 7, 1878), born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was Pope from June 16, 1846, until 1878. His was the longest reign in Church  History lasting almost 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened  the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed Papal infallibility. The Pope defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, meaning that Mary was conceived without original sin.

The election of the liberal Pius IX created much enthusiasm in Europe  and elsewhere. Celebrations and ovations were offered in several  countries. Although he was not really known and had done nothing on an  administrative level before his election, and although there were no  utterances from him, he was soon the most notorious and popular  person in the world. English Protestants celebrated him as a friend of  light and e reformer of Europe towards freedom and progress It was noted that he was elected without political influences from  outside, in the best years of his life, pious, progressive,  intellectual, decent, friendly, open to everybody.

Pius IX had with thirty-two years the longest reign in the history of the post-apostolic papacy,  celebrating his silverjubilee in 1871. As he lost temporal  sovereignty, the Roman Catholic Church rallied around him, the papacy  became more centralized, to which his impecccable personal life-style  of simplicity and poverty is considered to have contributed. From this point on, the papacy became and continues to become more and  more a spiritual, and less a temporal, authority. Pius IX's pontificate  marks the beginning of the modern papacy.

After starting out as a liberal, Pius IX turned conservative after being thrown out of Rome. Thereafter, he was considered  politically conservative, but a restless and radical reformer and  innovator of Church life and structures. Church life, religious  vocations, new foundations and religious enthousiasm all florished at  the end of his pontificate. Politically, his pontificate ended with the isolation of the papacy  from most major powers of the world: "The prisoner of the Vatican" had  poor relations with Russia , Germany, and the United States of America, poor relations with France and open hostility with Italy.  Yet he was most popular with the faithful in all these countries, in  many of which Pope Pius associations were formed in his support. He  made lasting Church history with his 1854 infallible decision of the Immaculate Conception, which was the basis for the later dogma on the Assumption. His second lasting contribution is the invocation of the ecumenical council Vatican One, which promulgated the definition of Papal infallibility. The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, is a list of 112 short phrases in Latin. They purport to describe each of the Roman Catholic popes. It describes Pius IX as Crux de Cruce, Cross of the cross.