Byzantine Economy - Coinage

Coinage

For more details on this topic, see Byzantine coinage.

Coinage was the basic form of money in Byzantium, although credit existed: archival documents indicate that both banking and bankers were not as primitive as has sometimes been implied. The Byzantine Empire was capable of making a durable monetary system function for more than a thousand years, from Constantine I to 1453, because of its relative flexibility. Money was both product and instrument of a complex and developed financial and fiscal organization that contributed to the economic integration of its territory.

The first features of the administrative organization of monetary production were first established by Diocletian and Constantine, and were still in existence at the beginning of the seventh century. During Byzantine history, supervision of the mints belonged to the Emperor; thus the government controlled, to a certain degree, the money supply. Nevertheless, the Emperor and his government were not always capable of conducting a monetary policy in the modern meaning of the term.

Ever since the creation of the Byzantine monetary system by Constantine in 312, its pivot had been golden solidus, a coinage whose nominal value was equal to its intrinsic value, as is proven by the Theodosian Code. Solidus became a highly priced and stable means of storing and transferring values Novel 16 of Valentinian III punished with death anyone who dared "refuse or reduce a gold solidus of good weight." Weight and fineness of the coinage were joined by another element: the authenticity of the stamp, which served to guarantee the other two. Alongside this "real"-value gold coinage, and a slightly overvalued silver coinage, there was also a bronze coinage of a fiduciary nature that made up the second specific feature of the monetary system. At the end of the tenth and in the eleventh centuries, money underwent a profound transformation, followed by a crisis; the denomination affected all metals at different dates, and according to different modalities. The reform of Alexios I Komnenos put an end to this crisis by restoring a gold coinage of high fineness, the hyperpyron, and by creating a new system destined to endure for about two centuries.

In 1304 the introduction of the basilikon, a pure silver coinage modeled on the Venetian ducat marked the abandonment of Komnenian structures under the influence of western models. The system that began in 1367 was constructed around the stavraton, a heavy silver, equivalent to twice the weight of fine metal of the last hyperpyra. By the end of the twelfth century, especially from 1204 on, the political fragmentation of the empire resulted in the creation of coinages that were either "national" (e.g. in Trebizond in 1222, in Bulgaria in 1218, and in Serbia in 1228), colonial or feudal. Venetian coins soon penetrated the monetary circulation in Byzantium. This situation stands in contrast with the monopoly that Byzantine currency had enjoyed until the twelfth century, within its own frontiers, and through its diffusion in the lands beyond - a measure of its political and economic influence.