The currency of "deniers tournois" in Frankish Greece / [D.M. Metcalf]

8/9/2019 The currency of "deniers tournois" in Frankish Greece / [D.M. Metcalf]

1/24

TH

NNU L

OF

TH

BRITISH SCHOOL

AT THENS

No. 55

196

THE BRITISH SCHOOL

AT ATHENS

31-34

GORDON

SQUARE

LONDON

W.C.

1

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by

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Committee

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2/24


3/24

THE

CURRENCY

OF

DENIERS

TOURNOIS

IN

FRANKISH

GREECE'

THE base silver deniersof the type from Tours which in the thirteenth century were the common

currency

of

large parts

of

France2

served as the

model for the later

coinage

of

Frankish

Greece.

From the

mid-thirteenth

century

onwards,

for

more than

a

hundred

years,

deniers

ournoiswere

the

standard

coin of

Attica,

Boeotia,

the

Peloponnese,

and some of the

Aegean

islands.

They

were struck in

very

large

numbers

by

the

princes

of Achaia and the dukes of

Athens,

and in

smaller

quantities

by

the rulers of several

other

territories. Three

examples

are illustrated in

FIG. I

d-f,

from which

it can be seen

that the

design

of all the coins was

virtually

identical,

a

b C

d

e

f

FIG. I. Top row. (a) Ninth-century prototype of the denier ournois.A coin of Louis I (814-40) with the

design

of a Christian

temple

and the

legend

XPISTIANA

ELIGIO.

b)

French denier f

Tours,

early

thirteenth

century.

(c)

Denier of Charles

I

of

Anjou,

count of Provence

I246-85,

of the tournois

ype.

Bottom

row.

(d)

Frankish denier ournois

f

Guy

II,

duke of Athens

(struck

I294-13o8

at

Thebes). (e)

The

same,

of

Philip

of

Taranto,

prince

of Achaia

1307-13,

struck at Clarentzia.

(f)

The

same,

ofJohn

II

Angelus

Comnenus

Ducas,

Sebastocrator of Great Wallachia

I303-18,

struck at

Neopatras, probably

before

I308.

except

for

the names of

the

issuing

authorities and

of the

places

of

mintage.

On one

side was

a

cross,

and on the other the so-called 'castle of

Tours',

really

a

degenerated

version of

the

design

of

a

ninth-century

coin

showing

a Christian

temple

(see

FIG.

Ia).

There

is

a

long

series

of Achaian coins

bearing

the

names

of

Prince William

of

Villehardouin,

Charles

I

king

of

Naples,

Charles

II,

Prince

Florent, Isabel,

Philip

of

Savoy, Philip

of

Taranto, Louis,

Maud,

John, and Robert.3 Their dates of issue can therefore be readily determined. Most of the

Athenian coins are from the

reigns

of William

and

Guy

II

de

la

Roche.

All

the

coinages

of Frankish Greece were described

by

Gustave

Schlumberger

n

his

Numis-

matique

e

'orientatin.

Although published

n

1878,

it is still the standard

work,

and

it

was based

1 I

am much

indebted to Mrs. I. Varoukha-Khristo-

dhoulopoulou,

the

Curator of the Greek National Numis-

matic

Collection,

for the kindness with

which

she received

me,

and for her

help

in

discussing

the hoards

of the

Frankish

period.

2

For a

description

see T. N.

Bisson,

'Coinages

and

royal

monetary

policy

in

Languedoc

during

the

reign

of Saint

Louis',

Speculum

xxii

(i957)

443

ff.

3

A list

of the dates of the various

princes

who

struck

deniers

ournois

n

Greece is

appended

to the

catalogue

of

hoards

at the

end

of the

article.


4/24

THE

CURRENCY

OF

DENIERS

TOURNOIS IN FRANKISH GREECE 39

on such

thorough

researches that

it has been

supplemented

or

corrected

at

very

few

points.

Schlumberger

made little

attempt,

however,

to use the numismatic

information

which he had

collected as evidence for

monetary

and economic

history,

nor have later scholars tried to do so.

What is known from

documentary

sources about the use of

coinage4

in thirteenth- and four-

teenth-century

Greece could

be

set out

in a

very

short

space,

since

it

rests

largely

on three

references from the Chronicle of the Morea, Sanudo, and Pegolotti. Neither the coins them-

selves nor the documents throw much

light

on

the

problems

one would like to be able to

resolve.

What was the relative

importance

of the various

mints?

How

long

did the coins remain in

circulation? How

freely

did

they

move

from one

part

of Greece to another? For what kind

of

payments

were

they

used? The answers to these and other

questions

can be

given,

if at

all,

only

through

a

study

of the hoards which have been discovered from time to time in

various

places

in

Greece,

and

which

are

mostly

now in the Athens museum. Some of them are here

published

in

detail for the first time.

They

include in

varying proportions

the

types

which

Schlumberger

listed

and

described;

by

comparing

those

proportions

in different

hoards,

a

good

deal can be

deduced about

the

monetary

affairs of Frankish Greece.

The first

part

of this

article is devoted

to

a

discussion of the

proportions.

The coins

in

any

one tournois

hoard

are a small

sample

of the

currency

which was in use at the

time when the

hoard

was concealed.

That

they

are a random

sample,

at

any

rate

in

certain

significant

respects,

is the

premiss upon

which

any

conclusions about the

currency

must rest.s

There is no reason to think that the

hoarding

would have been

selective,

and the

proportions

are in fact so consistent

among

themselves that

they

could

hardly

have occurred other

than

by

random

hoarding.

One denier tournois ooks

very

much like another.

Many

of them

were so

indifferently

struck that

they

have to be examined

closely

before the name of the

prince

who

issued them

can be

read.

The nominal value

of all of

them was the

same,

and it was so

small,

and the amount of silver

in

the coins was so

little,

that one cannot

imagine

that it was worth

while,

in

day-to-day

transactions,

to do more than

reject

the most

obviously

worn

pieces.

The

study of a hoard-seriessometimes enables one to see that a particularhoard is unusual in its

composition.

It

may,

for

example,

consist of

carefully

selected

pieces,

in

which

case one would

suppose

that it

was

a

savings-hoard. Again,

it

may

consist

very largely

of

a

single

issue,

when

there would be

a

number of

possible explanations, among

them that the coins had not been in

general

circulation since

leaving

the

mint. The

only

candidates,

among

the hoards from

Greece,

for a

special explanation

are the Corinth

find

of

1934,

about which

a

good

deal will be said

below,

and the

Delphi 1894

B

hoard,

which

may perhaps

have been a

savings-hoard.

An actual

example

will show

the

uniformity

of the

hoards,

and

will

demonstrate

that

they

are indeed

reliable

samples

from which conclusions

may safely

be drawn.

Philip

of Taranto

during

his

reign

as

prince

of Achaia struck coins at two

mints,

Clarentzia and

Lepanto.

In the

hoards

they

occur

in

the

proportions

shown

in

TABLE

I.

There

may

be

an

element

of

coincidence

in

them,

but the proportions are so strikingly regular that one feels quite confident in concluding that the

Lepanto

mint struck

between

10

and,

at the

most,

20

per

cent. as much

coinage

as

that

at

Clarentzia over the

years

I3o7-I3.6

4

There are a

good

many

more references to

money,

but

one cannot

safely

base conclusions about the

coinage

on

them,

since some

of them name

only moneys

of

account,

and

others describe

payments

which

may

have been made

in other

coinages

or

in kind.

s

Even a random

sample

must,

for statistical

reasons,

be

of a sufficient size if the

proportions

which it

gives

are to be

reliable. The same

theory

which I discussed

in

'Statistische

Analyse

bei der

Auswertung

von

Miinzfundmaterialen',

Jahrbuch

iir

Numismatikund

Geldgeschichte

x

(1958)

I87 ft.,

can be

applied

to hoards.

6

Twenty per

cent.,

which

may

seem an

unnecessarily

high

upper

limit,

is

suggested

because of the

greater

occur-

rence of the

Epirote

coins in their local

region,

discussed

below.


5/24

40

D. M. METCALF

Since the earliest

types

of

tournois

re still to be found in hoards

deposited

late

in

the fourteenth

century,

and as

they

seem to occur in

roughly

the same

proportions

in all but the latest

hoards,

it does not

look as

though

the old coins ceased to be used to

any great

extent. Three

of

the

com-

mon

types

which

can be attributed without

any

doubt are

compared

in TABLE

,

in

order

to

Hoard

Mint of

Clarentzia

Mint of

Lepanto

Delphi, 1929

Attica

(?), '95'

Orion,

'959

Tritaea,

'933

Atalandhi,

194o

Patras,

1955

Elevsis,

1952

100

100

100

I00

100

100

100

IO

'3

14

'4

II

'4

16

TABLE

I. Proportions

of coins of

Philip

of Taranto from

his two mints of Clarentzia and

Lepanto (Schl.

XIII,

26

only).

The

figures

have been

adjusted

so

that

Clarentzia

=

ioo in each case.)

show how earlier

and later coins occur

in

hoards of

early

and

late

deposit.

The inconsistencies

in

the

figures

are

partly

the result of

regional

variations

in

the

currency,

discussed below.

They

do

not

reveal

any

trend,

however,

for the

early type

to be

scarcer,

or the late

type

to be

commoner,

in the hoards of late

deposit.

This

suggests

that

during

most of the fourteenth

century

there was

in

general hardly

any

wastage according

to

age

from

the

tournois

currency.

Hoard

Deposit

1280-7

(Thebes,

XIII,

2-3)

1294-1307

(Lepanto,

XIII,

20)

1307-13

(Clarentzia,

XII,

s21)

Delphi, 1929

Attica

(?),

1951

Orion,

1959

Tritaea,

1933

Atalandhi,

1940

Delphi,

I894

B

Delphi,

I894 R

Patras,

1955

Elevsis,

1952

Delphi, 1894

A

I311?

I3I8-20

1320-5

1320-35

I325-30

I325-40

I339-44

1343-55

I365-8o

1400-20

30

28

3'

21

41

34

33

27

28

32

36

33

26

42

22

27*

30*

35

35

36*

34

39

43

37

38

39

37

38

37

32

TABLE 2.

Proportions

of

types

of different dates of

issue,

in

hoards of

early

and

late

deposit. (The

three

figures

for each hoard add to loo. The

figures

marked

*

are

estimates made

by reducing

the

total for

XIII,

20

and 26

by

one-eighth.)

If

coins,

once

they

were

issued,

remained in

circulation,

then

the

age-structure

of the hoards

should

give

a

good

idea of the

relative

output

of the mints over the

years.

The

age-structure

of

the

Orion hoard is illustrated

in

FIG.2. Three features which are noticeable from the

graph

are

that the

volume

of

coinage

falls off

around

1310o,

well before

the

date

of

deposit:

that

there

is a

sudden and

very large

increase in the

years

1316-18:

and

that the

number of

coins

per

year

before

I28o

is

relatively very

small.

Leaving

aside the first

two,

let us look at the third of these

unexpected things.

There are

various

possible

reasons for

the small

numbers of

early

coins.

After

sixty

years'

use it

might

be

that most of them were so worn that

they

would

not be


6/24

THE

CURRENCY

OF DENIERS

TOURNOIS

IN

FRANKISH GREECE

41

hoarded.

A

comparison

with earlier

hoards shows that the

proportion

is,

perhaps,

somewhat

low

in

the

Orion find

(see

TABLE

3),

but that it

does not differ

from the

general

run

sufficiently

to stand out on the available evidence.

If the

graph

reflects

the

mint-output

accurately,

the

straightforward explanation

is that

the volume of

coinage

struck

in Frankish Greece

increased

ten- or

twenty-fold

very

soon after

1280.

Other

possible

reasons are that

Schlumberger's

date of

I250 for the beginning of the tournois oinage may be in error-as I think it is-or that there may

Hoard

Deposit

Before1278

(XII,

zz-st)

1289-13o0

(XII,

18-19)

Delphi, 1929

Attica

(?),

195I

Orion,

I959

Atalandhi,

1940

1311?

1318-20

1320-5

1325-30

35

'9

25

33

100

100

100

100

TABLE

3. Proportions

of the earliest Achaian

tournois,

elative

to

those of Isabel

and

Florent,

in hoards of

early deposit.

have been a recall of

the

coinage,

so that

only

a

few

stray

finds of earlier date

remained

in

the

currency.

The latter is somewhat awkwardto dismiss.

Any

such recall must

presumably

have

been

before about

128o.

The first

four substantive Achaian

issues,

from the

years

before

1289,

occur

in

quantities

large enough

to

be

statistically

at all reliable

in

only

five

hoards

among

those so

far

published.

Their

numbers,

as

well

as

the

proportions,

are set out

in

TABLE

4,

SO

s to

Hoard

Deposit

William

XII, II XII,

12

Charles

XII,

i6

Charles

I

XII, 17

Quantities

Xirokhori,

'957

Delphi, 1929

Orion,

1959

Delphi, I894 B

Delphi,

x894

A

Proportions

Xirokhori,

'957

Delphi,

1929

Orion,

1959

Delphi, 1894

B

Delphi, 1894

A

I285-7

1311?

1320-5

1325-40

1400-20

I285-7

1311?

1320-5

1325-40

14o00-2o0

152

13

7

3

39

21

68

54

3

95

127

8

6

o

i8

42

46

o

766

2

2

13

Io

Io7

II

'5

'4

24

715

'9

13

90

4I

I00

I00

I00

I00o

100

TABLE

.

Quantities

and

proportions

of the first four

issues of

Achaian tournois.

(Schl.

XII,

17 =

Ioo.)

providean examplewhere the reader can see the kind of evidence on which the tables through-

out

the article

are based.

The

coins

attributed to

Charles

I,

which are

regularly

much fewer than

those

of

Charles

II,

outnumber

them

in

the Xirokhori

find, where,

also,

Charles

II's coins are

more

numerous,

compared

with those

of

William,

than

they

normally

are.

The

obvious

explanation

is that this

hoard,

while

containing

a

preponderance

of

recent

issues,

was concealed

before

many

of Charles

II's

coins

were

current,

that

is,

early

in his

reign.

The virtual absence

of

early

coins

from

Delphi

1894

B

suggests

that

it

may

have been

a

savings-hoard

consisting

of

good

coins

carefully

selected;

at

any

rate,

Delphi

1929,

Orion,

and

Delphi

1894

A

seem

to be uniform

enough

for a

special explanation

to

be needed

for

Delphi

1894

B. If those three

hoards

are

accepted

as

typical,

one

can

say

that the total

output

of

coinage

under

William

was about the


7/24

42

D. M.

METCALF

same as that

under

Charles

II,

while Charles I's issues were between

Io

and

25

per

cent.

as

great

in

quantity.

As Charles II's

reign

was

comparatively

short,

there was thus an

increase

in

mint-output

from about

I285.

(But

see

the

notes on the

types:

should the attribution of

XII,

I6

and

17

be

regarded

as

certain?)

If these

early

coins

were

strays

which had

escaped

a

general

recall of

the

coinage,

I

doubt

whether the proportions would tally so well. Nothing final can be said until some more hoards

deposited

before

I3oo

have been

discovered and

published,

but

the available evidence

already

suggests

that there was no recall. The

beginning

of the Athenian

tournois

ssues, therefore,

seems

to have coincided with a

large

increase in the volume of the

coinage

of

Frankish

Greece.

The

column-graph

in

FIG.

2

represents

an even more

striking

rise in

mint-output during

the

sole

reign

of

Maud,

which lasted

only

for

twenty

months

(July

1316-March

1318).

It is

reason-

Coins/Year

25

20

15

10

5

Deposit

?

1250

1260 1270

1280 1290

1300 1310

1320

1330

FIG. 2. COLUMN-GRAPH

SHOWING

THE

AGE-STRUCTURE OF

THE

ORION HOARD ACCORDING TO

SCHLUMBERGER'S

ATTRIBUTIONS. (Note

that

some

of these are

questioned below.)

able to

suppose

that the

Orion hoard was

deposited

quite

early

in

John's

reign,

so that the

large

number of

Maud's coins

might

be

no

more than

a

preponderance

of recent issues.

In

hoards

which

were

certainly deposited

many years

later,

however,

the

same

unexpected proportions

are

found.

There is

no known reason

why

the

coinage

of this short

reign

should

be so

abundant,

and

the

graph

in

fact

provides

an

argument

for

attributing

some

of Maud's

coins to her

joint

reign

with

Louis of

Burgundy

(1313-16),

and others to

the first

three

years

of the

reign ofJohn,

before

Maud was

finally deprived

of

her

fief.

If

the

coinage

in

the name of Maud

was

struck for

eight years,

the

proportions

in

which it

occurs

in

the

hoards

appear

more reasonable.

They

fit

in

better, also,

with the

pattern

of a

decline in the

output

of

coinage

in

the second

decade of the

fourteenth

century.

Coins in the name of Isabel, like those of Maud, are commoner than would be expected from

the

length

of

her

sole

reign;

it seems

possible

that

they,

similarly,

were struck

during

much or

all

of

the

period I289-1307.

Quite

the

most

intriguing

fact

revealed

by

a

comparative study

of

the hoards

is that

coins

issued

at the

mint of

Lepanto

in

the

years

around

I300

could still be much commoner

in

the

currency

of the

near-by region

than

they

were

elsewhere,

forty

years

later.

The

regional

circula-

tion

of

coinage

often

provides

interesting

clues

to

the

purpose

for

which

it

was

used,

especially

when

the

output

of a number of

different

mints

can be

distinguished.

Whereas,

broadly

speak-

ing,

the

tournois of

Athens,

Achaia,

and

Epirus

circulated

freely

in each

other's

territories

throughout

the

whole

of

Greece,

they

did

not,

even over a

long

period,

become

completely


8/24

THE

CURRENCY

OF DENIERS TOURNOIS IN FRANKISH

GREECE

43

intermingled

in the

currency.

In the Patras

hoard,

for

example,

the coins of the mint of

Lepanto

(which

is

only

a

short

distance

away,

across the Gulf of

Corinth)

are

unusually heavily

repre-

sented

(see

TABLE

5).

If

they

were still concentrated in their

region

of issue after

forty years'

circulation,

how

much the more so must

they

not have been

shortly

after

they

were struck? The

figure

of5o

for the

Epirote

coins

in the small Tritaea hoard

helps

to confirm that the

proportion

in the Patras hoard is not accidentally large. These two proportions may be contrasted with the

figures

of 26 and 21 in the

provenances

farthest from

Lepanto.

Similarly,

the two

early

hoards

from

Delphi, deposited only

a

few

years

after the issue of the

type,

show a low

proportion.

Here

the

explanation

is that

the coins

had not had time to circulate

beyond

their

region

of

issue in

large

numbers.

The

Delphi I894

B

hoard,

in

this as

in

other

respects,

is somewhat

puzzling.

The relative

proportions

of Athenian

and Achaian coins

vary,

as can be seen

by

a

study

of

TABLE

,

almost

entirely according

to the time-interval between the date of issue and the

date

Hoard

Deposit

Clarentzia

1278-1307

(XII,

16-20o)

Lepanto

1294-1307

(XIII,

20)

Thebes

128o-13o8

(XIII,2-9)

South-westernrea

Tritaea,

'933

Patras,

1955

Central rea

Delphi, 1933

Delphi, 1929

Delphi,

1894

B.

Delphi, 1894

r.

Delphi,

1894

A.

North-eastern

rea

Orion,

1959

Atalandhi,

1940

1320o-35

I343-55

1301-5

I3II?

I325-40

I339-44

14oo00-20

1320-5

1325-30

69

86

44

52

89

7'

76

66

71

50

59

22

29

31*

36*

43*

26

21

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

TABLE

. Proportions

of the coins of the three chief mints from the

years 1278/80-

1307/8

in hoards from different

regions. (Thebes

=

ioo.

The

sign

*

indicates an

approximation, assuming

that

seven-eighths

of

the

Epirote

coins of

Philip

are

of

type

XIII,

20.)

of

deposit.

In

the

earliest hoards

in

the

list,

namely

those from

Delphi,

which was outside

Achaian

territory,

the

figures

for the Clarentzia mint are at their lowest. In later

hoards,

the

distance

from Clarentzia does not seem to be

of

much

account.

Thus

the

proportion

is

higher

in

the distant

Orion hoard than

in

the

roughly contemporary

Attica

find,

and

again

it is

higher

in the

distant Atalandhi hoard

than in

the

contemporary

Tritaea hoard.

The

beginning

and

end

of

the

reigns

of the rulers of Achaia and Athens coincide

quite

con-

veniently, so that it is possible to compare the output of the Athenian and Achaian mints over

almost

exactly

the same

period

(Athens

I280-1308;

Achaia

I278-1307).

The more

equal pro-

portions

of the later

hoards,

which were drawn from a

currency

that had had time to become

more

fully intermingled,

are the better

guide.

If we

say

that Clarentzia was

striking 70-80

coins

for

every

Ioo

from

Thebes,

we shall

probably

not be

far

wrong.

The

output

of each of the mints did

not, however,

remain

steady throughout

these three

decades. If the

figures

are broken down

further,

it can be seen that between

I278/80

and

I287

the

dominance

of the Athenian mint was much

greater

than over

the

period

as a

whole;

from

I287

to

1294

it

apparently

almost ceased

production;

and from

I294

to

1318

its

output

was in

keeping

with the

average.


9/24

44

D. M.

METCALF

Even the

hoards from

the

Peloponnese

do not

show

proportions rising

significantly

above the

figure

of

70-80

which

has been

mentioned. There is

one

exception,

the

Xirokhori find. It

was

concealed not

long

after

1285,

that

is,

at the

time when the

Athenian

mint was

striking perhaps

as much

as three times

as

much

money

as the

Achaian. Yet

for

I

oo

Athenian

coins

of

1280-7

the

hoard contains

234

Achaian of

the

years

I278-85.

It

seems

that the

coinage

issued at Thebes

had not had time to penetrate very much into the western Peloponnese.

How

many years

was

it,

one

wonders,

after

its date of

issue,

that an

Athenian

coinage

assumed

roughly

the

same

proportions

in

Achaia as

existed

between the

outputs

of the two

mints?

If

one could

follow the

movements of the coins

struck

in

the

year

130oo,

what

percentage

of the

coins

from

Clarentzia

would

have

found their

way

to

Attica

in

twelve

months? in

five

years?

There is

not

enough

suitable

evidence to be

able to

say very

much.

Epirote

coins at

Delphi

had

reached about the

same

proportion

after

ten

years'

circulation

as

they

had on the

north-eastern

coasts after

twenty-five

years

(TABLE 5).

The

proportion

of Achaian

coins in the

currency

of central

Greece

seems still

to have been

increasing

after

they

had

been in

circulation

for

twenty

years.

Several

more

large

hoards

of

early

deposit

from

localities

appropriate

to the

problem

will

have to be

published

before

it will be

possible

to estimate

the rate of

circulation

at all

accurately.

Perhaps

something

of the order of

20

per

cent. of the

currency

of Achaia

would be

carried into

Athenian

territory,

and

vice

versa,

in ten

years.7

The

coins of

the minor

mints,

Neopatras,

Arta,

Tinos,

and

Chios,

which

normally together

make

up

less than

2

per

cent.

of a

hoard,

were

quite probably

commoner than

that in their

respective

regions

of

issue. Even

so,

their

role

in

the

monetary

history

of

Frankish

Greece

was

obviously

a small

one. There

is at

present

no

way

of

guessing

how much of the

currency

of the

outlying

regions

was

supplied by

the local

mints. The

discovery

of a

large

tournois

hoard,

deposited

in

the second or

third decade

of

the

fourteenth

century,

in

Thessaly,

or north-western

Epirus,

or the

Cyclades,

or

the coasts of

Asia

Minor,

could

hardly

fail to

add some

interesting

information

to

our

knowledge

of

the Frankish

currency.

At Neopatras, the most active of the minor mints, coins were struck for John II of Great

Wallachia.

He

began

his

reign,

in

1303,

as a

child,

and was

placed

under the

protection

of

Guy

II

of

Athens,

whose

own

interest

in a

flourishing coinage may

account

for

the

volume of the

Wallachian

copies.

It

seems

likely

that the death of

Guy

in

1308

and the Catalan

Company's

raid

of

1309

brought

their

issue to an end.

TABLE 6

shows the

proportions

of

coins of

Neopatras

to the

contemporary

issues of

Guy

II

(1294-1308)

in

various

hoards.

The

figures

suggest

that

the

volume

of

John's

coinage

was,

roughly,

between

2

and

5 per

cent. of the

Athenian.

If

its

issue

was

confined to the

years

1303-8,

the

output

of the

mint

per

annum must

have

been at

least

5

per

cent. of the

Athenian

amount.

The

mint

of

Tinos,

which

was

working

in

the same

period,

seems,

by

comparison,

to have

issued

far

less

coinage.

A hoard of unknown provenance, discovered in i858, yielded Lambros some Chiote tournois,

together

with the then

unique

coin

of

Damala.8 No other hoard

is

known in

which more than

7

The

following rough

calculation will

show how a cer-

tain rate

of

regional

circulation

would

be reflected in the

proportions

of

the

types

in different

areas.

Assuming

that

the mints in

territories A and B issued

similar

quantities

of

coinage,

Iooa

and

Ioob,

and that the rate

of

regional

exchange

was

20

per

cent. of the

currency

each ten

years,

the

subsequent

occurrence of the

coinage

of that

particular

date would

be: after

Io years,

in

territory

A,

8oa+20b,

in

territory

B,

2oa+

8ob. In the next

o years

the

process

of

mingling

would

be

slower,

since

the

coinage

moving

from A to B

would be

I6a

plus 4b,

and vice

versa.

Thus,

after 20

years,

A

=

68a+32b,

B =

32a+68b.

After

30

years,

A =

6Ia

+

39b,

B =

39a

+

6ib.

After

40 years,

A =

56a+44b,

B

=

44a+56b.

These

figures, although

they

are

very

much

of a

simplification,

draw

attention

to

the

differences

which one should

expect

between

hoards

deposited

shortly,

and

those

deposited

a

long

time,

after

the

issue

of

the coins

they

contain.

8

See

P.

Lambros,

Milanges

de

Numismatique

i

(1877)

246

ff.,

and

Schlumberger,

under the

appropriate types.


10/24

THE

CURRENCY

OF

DENIERS

TOURNOIS

IN

FRANKISH

GREECE

45

one Chiote coin

was

present,

so

that

it is

a

matter for

regret

that the

1858

hoard was not

properly

published.

It

may simply

have

been

a

very large

hoard similar

in

composition

to

those from

Orion and

Atalandhi,

but it seems

more

likely

that

it was of

an eastern

Aegean

provenance,

and

was

drawn from

a

currency

in which

Chiote coins formed

an

appreciable

proportion.

The

evidence

from

the

find is so

vague

that

it would be considered

worthless

were

it not the best

that there is.9

There were

four coins of the

mint of

Arta

in the Atalandhi hoard.

The

large

deposits

of

Delphi

1894

B

and

A

each

contained

only

one similar

piece,

while

there were

two

in

the Patras

hoard.

Thus,

there was

an

unusually

high proportion

of

the

type

in the Atalandhi

find.

If

the

discovery

of

another

north-eastern

hoard

brought

more coins

of Arta

to

light,

the

numismatic

evidence

would

point

to trade

along

a route

between Arta

and

Thessaly.

Hoard

Deposit

Neopatras

(XIII,

17-19)

Tinos

(XIII, 29)

Delphi, 1929

Attica

(?), '95'

Attica, 1950

Orion,

1959

Delphi,

1894

B

Delphi, I894

r

Patras,

1955

Elevsis,

1952

Delphi, I894

A

1311

1318-20

1318-25

132o-5

I325-40

I339-44

I343-55

1365-80

1400-20

I.6

4'7

(20)

1.7

2.5

2 I

(8.3)

4.3

2 0

0 2

(8.3)

1.4

TABLE

6.

Proportions

of

coins

of

Neopatras

and Tinos to those of

Guy

II

(XIII,

9

=

zoo)

in hoards of various dates.

(The figures

in

brackets

are

based

on

quantities

which are

too small to be

reliable.)

The

battle of the

river Kifissos

in

1311

brought

to an end the

Frankish

coinage

of

the

duchy

of Athens, and marked the beginning of the decline in the currency of denierstournois n the

whole

of Greece.

Although

that

decline

is

an

interesting topic

for

study,

the

problems

to be

resolved

in the

first

place

are

those of

the

period

before

131

I,

when

the

monetary system

was

supplying

the

needs of

a

prosperous

economy

in a secure

state,

and when as

many

as three

large

mints

were at work.

Unfortunately,

the

distribution

of the evidence

does

not match

that

of

the

interest,

since

almost

all the hoards

come

from the

fourteenth

century,

and

provide

only

retro-

spective

evidence

about

the earlier

period.

The

importance

of the

Delphi

hoards

and,

even

more,

of the

Xirokhori

hoard

arises

from

their

early

date

of

deposit.

They

are

early,

however,

only

in

relation

to

the other

finds. The

Xirokhori

hoard

was not concealed

until

tournois

had been

in

circulation

for

at least

twenty years.

The

origin

of

the tournois

oinage

and

its relation

to

the

early

issues

in

other

styles

are

the most

important, and difficult, two problems in the monetary history of Frankish Greece. Schlum-

berger

submitted

without

reservation

that

tournois

were

first struck in Achaia in

125o

as

a

result

of an

audience

which

William of Villehardouin

had

with

King

Louis IX

in

Cyprus

in

I249;

the

coinages

in other

styles,

he

said,

were

struck

doubtless before

that

date. This

view needs to be

re-examined

in some

detail,

since

it involves a number

of difficulties

which

Schlumberger

did

not take

sufficiently

into

account.

The

text which

he

accepted

as crucial

comes

from

Marin

Sanudo's

Istoria del

regno

di

Romania,

where

it is recorded

that

William

sought

and obtained

permission

to issue

coinage,

with the

9

A similar

shred

of evidence

for the

circulation

of

later

Chiote

coins

(not

tournois)

s

provided

by

the

parcels

auctioned

in the

Hoffmann

sale

(Collection

H.

Hoffmann:

Mddailles.

Drouot, May

I

Ith,

I898,

lots

2826

ff.).


11/24

46

D.

M.

METCALF

following

words:

'Signor

Sir,

tu sei

maggior Signor

di

me,

e

poi

condur Gente dove vuoi e

quanta

vuoi senza denari: io non

posso

far

cosi.'Io

William's

request

of the

right

to strike his own

coins

(Achaia

was

certainly

not without a

currency

of

foreign

coins after

the

conquest

and

before

the

autonomous issues

began)

was

made

on

the

grounds

of his

need to

pay

his

military

forces.

Hopf

concluded from the

text,

logically

enough,

that all the Achaian

coinage

was

struck

after

I250.

Schlumberger's nterpretation,which was that the coins not in the tournoistyle were

struck before

I25o,

seems

inconsistent,

since William's

argument

would have

been

very

dis-

ingenuous

if

he were

already issuing

coinage.

Sanudo was

writing

about

an

incident which

had

happened

sixty

or

seventy

years

before. It

is

likely

that

he

may

have

had

good

sources

of

information,

even

if he was not

working

from

a

document

giving

a

contemporary

verbatim

report

by

an

eyewitness,

and in

any

case one should

never dismiss

puzzling

evidence without

good

reason. On the other

hand,

even

if

William

secured the

king's permission

in

I249

to strike

coinage,

he

may

not

necessarily

have used the

arguments

which Sanudo sets

down,

and even

if he

did

they may

not

have

expressed

all the

advantages

of

a

coinage

as

the

prince

saw

them,

or

as

they

in fact were. For

example,

it

seems

clear that the Frankish

coinage

in

general

was

used

mainly

for

purposes

of

commerce,

rather

than for

paying

the

military

forces.

Medieval

coinage

provides

a

good many

instances of two

authorities,

whose

territorieswere

adjacent

to

each

other,

issuing

coins

very

similar

in

fabric, value,

and

design.

Sometimes the

copying

of a

type

led

to

resentment,

and

a document

may

have survived

through

which one

authority

makes

a

complaint,

or seeks to

limit the circulation of the rival

coinage

or to ensure

that its intrinsicvalue is maintained at

a

certain standard.

At other times a

jointly

issued

coinage

resulted from

an

agreement

between

the

authorities,

which

may

be attested

by

the survival

of

a written

reference,

or which

may

be known

only

from

the

evidence

of the

coins.

It

is a

not

uncommon

experience

in numismatic

study

to realize that

a

parallel coinage

has been

'sitting',

unobserved,

in

front

of

one's

eyes:

thus,

for

example,

the

significance

of the obvious

parallels

between the Achaian and Athenian coinages,about which unfortunatelyno survivingdocument

comments,

has

escaped

consideration

n

the

past.

As

well

as deniers

ournois,

oth

series include

coins modelled on Genoese denariwith

a

gateway

as

their

type.

Whether

or not the Frankish

parallel

coinages

were

authorized

by

a formal

agreement,any problempresented

by

the Achaian

series

obviously ought

to be studied in the

light

of

the Athenian

coinage

as well.

The Athenian

coinage

in

what

may

for convenience be called the

'Italian'

style

is more

varied than the

comparable

series

from Achaia.

As

well as

the 'Genoese

Gateway' type,

it

includes others which show a

fleur-de-lis,

a

monogram,

a

castle,

or

the de la Roche arms.

Most

of these coins

are

of

copper,

unlike the

tournois,

which are

almost

always

of

billon

(base

silver). They

were

perhaps

all of the same nominal

value,

but it is not known

how

many

of them

went to a denier ournois.

It is certain that coins in the 'Italian' style were issued in the territoryof Athens, if not in

Achaia,

well after

I25o,

and it is also

certain,

leaving

aside Sanudo's

statement,

that such

Athenian

coins were struck

after the

beginning

of the tournois

oinage

in Achaia. Before his visit

to France in

I259-60,

Guy

I

(1225-63) styled

himself

megaskyr

f

Athens,

but afterwards duke.

The coins which have

G.DNS

dominus)

nd

G.DVX

n their

legends

must

have been issued before

and after

I260

respectively.

Guy

II,

who became duke as a

child,

was

known

as Guiot. The

10

M.

Sanudo,

Istoria del

regno

di

romania,

d.

K.

Hopf,

in

Chroniquesrdco-romaines

niditesou

peu

connues

187o)

1o2.

11

e.g.

Luschin's

recovery

of the

Konventionsmiinzung

t

Ptuj;

see A. Luschin von

Ebengreuth,

'Friesacher

Pfennige.

Beitrige

zu ihrer

Miinzgeschichte

und zur Kenntnis ihrer

Gepriige', .Numismatische

eitschrift

1922,

89

fft.,

and

I923,

33

ftf.


12/24

THE

CURRENCY OF DENIERS TOURNOIS

IN

FRANKISH GREECE

47

coin

in

the 'Italian'

style

with

GVIOT

n the

legend (there

is also a rare

tournois

ype

with

the

same

name)

doubtless

belongs

to

the

years

of

his

minority

(1287-94).

There was never much

doubt

that the Achaian tournois nscribed G.PRINCEPS

ere

struck before

1278,

and the Xirokhori

hoard makes the

dating quite

certain.

The same hoard

makes

the

dating

of the Athenian tour-

noiswith

the

legend

G.Dvx

o

I280-7

equally

indisputable.

In

the

duchy

of

Athens,

then,

'Italian'

and tournoisoinageswere being struckat the same time, and unless their circulation was very

limited,

which

is

improbable,

tournois nd 'Italian'

coins must have been in

use side

by

side

in

parts

at

any

rate of Achaia.

The

Achaian issue

of

the

'Genoese

Gateway'

type

was

found

in

unexpectedly large

numbers

during

the

American

excavations

of

Acrocorinth.

Bellinger

asso-

ciated the fact with the

building

and

repairs

which William

(1246-78)

carried out on

Acro-

corinth,

and

suggested

an attribution of the

type

to his

reign

on

those

grounds.IZ

This

piece

of

evidence

suggests

that the

type

should

probably

be dated to after rather

than before

1250.

Enough

has been said to indicate that the

two

main kinds of

coinage

were

not

straightforwardly

successive,

as

Schlumberger thought.

Only

once

have

coins in the 'Italian'

style

been

recorded

from a Frankish

tournois

oard,

and

then there were

merely

two

among

2,500

coins in a

fourteenth-century

hoard

(Delphi

1894

B);

nor has a hoard of

'Italian'-style

coins ever been

published.

They are not as rare, however, as

the

evidence of the hoards

might

mislead one

to

suppose,

for

among

the

many stray

finds in

the

American

excavations

at Corinth and

Athens,

they easily

outnumber

the

deniersournois. he vast

majority

of

the

tens of thousands of coins of

all

periods

which have been

discovered

there,

nearly

all one

by

one,

is made

up

of

pieces

of small

value. When

someone

dropped

a

gold

or

silver

coin,

he went on

looking

for

it until

he found it: if a

petty

coin was

dropped,

it

seems that

it

was not

always

thought

to be worth a

protracted

search.

The

high proportion

of coins in the

'Italian'

style

among

the

stray

finds,

and their absence from

the

hoards,

shows that

they

were

used

as

a

petty

coinage.

The

currency

of

Frankish

Greece

during

most of the second half of the thirteenth

century

probablyconsisted of a standardcoinage of billon with a petty coinage of copperin use along-

side it. The

copper

coinage

may

have

remained

in use for

many years

after

it ceased to be

struck,

as the

two

coins

in

Delphi 1894

B

must have done.

One

may

doubt whether there was a time

before the introduction of the

Achaian tournois hen

the little

copper pieces

were the

standard

coinage.

It

may

turn out that the lack

of

evidence from

the

years

1250-85

is not

complete,

for there is

one

hoard,

discovered

in

Corinth

in

May 1934,

which

was

deposited

some

years

after

1253.

It

consisted

largely

of

French deniers

ournois,

ogether

with a few

English

and Venetian

coins,

and

one

gold

nomisma

f the

empire

of Nicaea. On

publication,

it was

described as a crusader's

hoard. Half a dozen

crusading

hoards are known from

the

Balkans.

They may

be characterized

by

saying

that each

deposit

is

recognizably

a sum of

money put together

at some

place

in

western Europe, and carried more or less intact to the East. Thus, for example, a hoard dis-

covered

(again)

in

Corinth,

in

1907,

consisting

of

119

coins of Clermont and one of Le

Puy,

together

with

one

Byzantine

nomisma,'3

bviously

was the

money

of a

crusaderwhose home was

in

or near

Clermont;

one

may

even

go

on to

guess

that

at the

beginning

of his

journey

he made

his

petitions

to

our

Lady

of Le

Puy,

and

kept

a

maille

du

Puy

as a

souvenir

of

the

pilgrimage.'4

The

currency

of

France in the

1250's

and

I260's

was

in a

state

of

rapid change,

and

it is

merely

unfortunate that if the

Corinth

1934

hoard

had been

put

together

at some

particular place

in

12

See Corinth

ii/

i:

Acrocorinth...

1926,

66

ff.,

by

A. R.

Bellinger.

13

See Corinth

Reports

VI:

Coins,

r896-1929,

by

K. M.

Edwards,

1932.

'4

On the

dispersal

of the mailledu

Puy

as a souvenirof

pilgrimages

ee Blanchet-Dieudonn6v.

x5,

246.


13/24

48

D. M.

METCALF

France,

there

would

be less

chance of

recognizing

the fact than if its

deposit

had

been

fifty

or

a

hundred

years

earlier.

It

seems

possible

that the Corinth

find

was not

a

crusader's

hoard,

but

was,

in

fact,

a sum

of

money

intended for

local

currency.

While

any

find which can be associated

with the

Crusades

is of

lively

interest,

the Corinth hoard would be

of

much

more

significance

if it

could be

shown

not to be so, for it would suggest that the currency of Frankish deniers ournoisreplaced or was

supplemented by

an earlier

currency

of French denier ournois.If the coins

were

shown to be a

sum

drawn from the local

currency,

the hoard would

virtually prove

that

Frankish

tournoiswere

not

yet

current at

some

date

after

1253

when the hoard was concealed.

Clearly

it will be

impor-

tant to

demonstrate

the character

of the hoard as

fully

as

possible;

at

present,

the

two

explana-

tions for it

which

seem most

likely

are that the

money

was drawn from the local

currency,

or

that it

had

recently

been

brought

to Greece

by

a merchant or traveller

from

Provence. The

presence

of

Venetian

and Nicaean

coins favours the

former,

but until at

least one

more hoard

from the

i250's

or

I260's

has come

to

light

in

Greece,

nothing

conclusive can

be

said. There

are,

in

the

meantime,

two

arguments

which

suggest

that

the hoard of

I934

may

well

have

been

destined to be added to the

currency

of

Corinth,

even

if

it was not drawn from

it.

(i)

French

tournois ccur in

very

small

proportions

in some of the Greek hoards.

They

made

up

I

8

per

cent.

of the

Xirokhori

hoard,

I'4

per

cent. of the Attica

195I

hoard,

0o2

per

cent.

of the Orion

hoard,

and

0.3

per

cent. of the

Delphi I894

B hoard. On the

other

hand,

similar coins

have

been

found

at Corinth

in

very

much

larger proportions.

Over the

years

1896-1939,

141 stray

finds

of the French

types

listed in

TABLE

7

were

discovered,

while the Frankish tournois

amounted to

only

twice as

many.'s

The

early

Frankish tournoisare

relatively

commoner

among

the

stray

finds than

they

are in the hoards.

This is no doubt

partly

because the

chances of a

coin's

being

lost are

proportional,

inter

alia,

to

the

length

of time for which it remained in

circulation;

it has

already

been shown

that coins did

not fall

out of use to

any great

extent. This

factor,

it

will be

realized,

may completely

dominate the

pattern

of

proportions

among

a

series of

stray

finds.

Although the quantity of French tournois rom the Corinth finds may, therefore, give an exag-

gerated

impression

of their

place

in

the

currency,

it

suggests strongly

that at some time

they

were

commoner

than

one would have

supposed

from the Frankish hoards.

(2)

Some of the

stray

finds

are

coins which

are

known

to

have

been struck after

1251,

and others are

only

a little

earlier.

Many

of

the coins

of Louis

IX,

which are

not

easy

to date

exactly,'6

are

probably

also from

the

same

time,

so that a fair

proportion

of the French tournois annot have been

brought

to

Greece

until

after the middle of the

century,

and must have been current there in the

I250's

or later.

The

single

coin

of

Philippe

III

among

the French tournois

n

the Xirokhori hoard

shows that

the French coins were still

finding

their

way

to Greece after

I270,

but also that the

movement

had

largely

come to an end

by

that date. The

eight

French

coins

in

the

Delphi I894

B

hoard,

deposited

after

c.

1325,

were all struck before about

I270.

The unexpectedly high proportion of Provengal coins in the same hoard and in the Corinth

hoard

and

stray

finds

suggests

that some

quite

permanent

connexion between

Provence and

Greece

may

have

played

a

part

in

Frankish

monetary

history.

In

the

large

French

hoards

of

Saint-Clair-sur-Elle'7

and

Sierck,'8

the

proportions

derived from which

are

in

reasonably

close

15

Because

of

the

summary

form in which

the finds were

published,

it is not

possible

to

give

complete figures.

Excluding

the

tournois

f

William

of

Achaia,

but

including,

no

doubt,

some

non-tournois

oins from

Athens,

there were

299.

16

Coins

with

TVRONVS

IVIS

ere

probably

struck late in

the

reign

of Louis

IX

(Blanchet-Dieudonn6

ii.

229).

In

any

case,

the

hoard

has

not

yet

been

published

in

detail.

17

A.

Dieudonn6,

Revue

numismatique908,

499

if.

18

E.

Gariel,

Mdlanges

de

numismatique

ii

(1882)

80 ft.,

and

E.

Caron,

ibid.

240

f. The

quantities

of the

royal types

were

given

in

kilogrammes,

so

that

the

figures

which I have

given

are

only approximate.

Nor have I

attempted

to

correct

any

attributions in the

light

of

subsequent

research,

in

either this or the Saint-Clair hoard.


14/24

THE

CURRENCY OF

DENIERS

TOURNOIS

IN

FRANKISH GREECE

49

agreement

with each

other, Provengal

coins made

up

less

than

2

per

cent. of

the

total,

among

the

types

listed in

TABLE

7. By

contrast,

the

figures

for the three Greek sources are all over

8

per

cent. Charles

I

of

Anjou,

count of

Provence,

was also

prince

of

Achaia,

from

1278

to

I285.

Both

in

Provence and

in Achaia he

struck

deniers ournois.The administrative link between the

two

territories,

which no doubt occasioned various official

journeys

and

may

have stimulated

trade,

is sufficient to explain the occurrence of Provenal currency in Greece.

Conclusionsof wider

significancespring

to mind.

By

the

treaty

of Viterbo

in

1267

William of

Villehardouin

willingly accepted Angevin overlordship

of Achaia.

Might

not the

Achaian

tournoiswhich bear his name have been issued

only

after that date? Were the coins inscribed

G.

PRINCE.ACH,

for

example,

modelled

not on those of Louis IX but on the

Provengal

coins

reading

K.COMES.P.?

If the

beginning

of the Achaian tournois

coinage

could be

placed

as late

as

1267,

several

aspects

of the numismatic evidence

which on

Schlumberger's dating

seem rather

French

royal

and

eudal)

tournois

types

Corinth

'934

Corinth

finds,

1896-1939

Xirokhori

'957

Saint-

Clair

(1257-)

Sierck

(c. 1325)

Tours,

late

XII-early

XIII c.

Philippe

II,

1180o-I223

Louis VIII and

IX,

1223-70

Philippe

III,

127o-85

Charles of

Anjou,

count of

Provence,

1246-85

Raimond

VII,

marquis

of

Provence,

I222-49

Alphonse,

marquis

of

Provence,

1249-71

-

count of Toulouse

-

count

of Riom

count of Poitou.

i8

8

63

2 4

6

0o5

1.4

0.5

100

(369)

22

64

9

2 8

2I1

100

(14I)

17

2

6o

17

7

100oo

(42)

16

5

77

0o5

I'I

O'I

0.3

o0I

100

(1853)

22

8

6o

9

0o7

I'I

0o5

0o5

0o2

100

(c.

13,ooo)

TABLE

7. Proportions

of

French

deniers

ournois rom the Corinth

1934

hoard and from various other sources.

(The figures

in

brackets

in

the bottom

row are the numbers of coins on which the

proportions

are

based.)

unsatisfactory

or

unexpected

would

fit better into

place.

The

apparently

very

low

output per

annum of the Clarentzia mint under William would be increased

by

the altered attribution.

The interval before the

duchy

of Athens

began

to

copy

the

Achaian

type

would

be

lessened. The

lack of

early

hoards would be

explained,

as would the use of French tournois

up

to

c.

127o.

The

treaty

of

Viterbo,

by

which

Achaia became an

Angevin

fief,

draws attention

to another

puzzling

feature of the anecdote from Sanudo's

Istoria.

William

is

represented

as

asking

his

feudal overlord for a

grant

of the

right

to strike

coinage.

He held his

fief

of

Achaia, however,

not

from the

king

of

France,

but from the Latin

emperor

of

Constantinople: why

should

he

have

made

his

request

to

King

Louis?

There

is,

until more hoards are discovered and

published,

a

lack

of conclusive evidence about

the

origin

and

early history

of the

deniers ournois n Greece. Sanudo's narrative does not com-

mand

confidence,

and all the numismatic evidence there is

points

to a later

date.

The

treaty

of

Viterbo seems

a

very plausible

occasion;

I

submit,

provisionally,

that the tournois

oinage began

soon after that

date.

On

this

view,

Sanudo was in error. His anecdote

may originally

have been

intended to

explain

the

similarity

between

Frankish

coins

and the

very

common

tournoisof

Louis IX. The

memory

of that

king's monetary

reforms

may

have lent some colour to the

confusion.

The first clue about the economic

background

to the

currency

of

deniers ournois

n

Frankish

Greece is to

be

found

from the

stray

discoveries at Corinth and Athens.

Their

proportions

are

B

8491

E


15/24

50

D. M.

METCALF

set out

in TABLE

8.

In

the

light

of the

hoard-evidence,

which is

fairly

consistent no

matter

what

the

provenance

of

the

hoard,

the

stray

finds indicate a

remarkably great

difference

between

the

currency

of the two towns. In

Athens,

Athenian

tournois

ar

outnumber

the

Achaian,

while in

Corinth the

position

is

reversed,

and it

is

Achaian

coins which

are

the

more

plentiful.

In order

to contrast the evidence of the hoards and

stray

finds more

conveniently,

TABLE

9

has been

prepared, in which the proportions in rows (c) and (g) of

TABLE

8 are adjusted to compare as far

Corinth

finds,

1896-1939

Athens

inds,

1931-49

Achaiancoins

(a)

Charles

I

and II

(b)

Florent, Isabel,

and

Philip

of

Savoy

(c)

TOTAL

Achaia

I278-1307

(d) Philip

of

Taranto,

Maud

and

John

Athenian

oins

(e)

William

(f)

Guy

II

(g)

TOTAL Athens

I280-1308

I9

30

49

io

?

24

'7

?

4r

Ioo00

(288)

6

II

'7

8

8

67

75

IGO

(263)

TABLE .

Proportions

of

tournois f Achaia

and Athens

among

the

stray

finds from

Corinth and Athens.

(On

queried

figures

see

note

in

text.)

as

possible

with

the ratio of

mint-output

of

70/80

:Ioo

suggested

above for Clarentzia and

Thebes

in the

years 1278/80-1307/8.

The form of

publication

does not allow this to be done

exactly,

as

the

number

of tournois f William de

la Roche is not

always

stated. If the facts

diverge

from the

approximation,

they

cannot alter the

point

I am

making,

and would

probably

be

in

the direction

to

strengthen

it.

The

stray

finds show

that in the

currency

of the town itself of

Achaian coins

of

1278-3o707

Athenian oins

of

128o-r3o8

Corinth

inds

Hoard-evidence

Athens

inds

Io20

70/80

23

I00

I00

I00

TABLE

9.

The

evidence

of the hoards and of the

stray

finds

compared:

the

proportions

of Athenian

and

Achaian coins of

1278/80-1307/8. (See

note

in

text.)

Athens the local issues

were

far more

heavily represented

than

in

the

currency,

or at

any

rate

the

hoards,

from Attica. One

may

draw the

conclusion that the local transactions

of the market-

place made up an important proportionof the exchangesin which money passedfrom hand to

hand, or,

in other

words,

that

over

a

given period

an

important

proportion

of the

currency

which

happened

to be in the town of Athens

stayed

in

Athens,

while a much smaller

proportion

was

carried

into the rest of the

country

and into other

towns. This

suggests

that the deniers

tournoiswere to

a considerable

extent,

perhaps

primarily,

a

city-coinage,

and that the use of

coinage

was

to a similar extent concentrated

in

the towns.

The role of the towns in the

geo-

graphical pattern

of

monetary

circulation

no doubt

explains

the

length

of time for which local

coins could be

more common

in their

region

of issue than

elsewhere,

and also the

gradual

pro-

gress by

which

their

proportions

n

the hoards

approached

those of the relative

output

of the

mints.


16/24

THE

CURRENCY

OF DENIERS TOURNOIS

IN FRANKISH

GREECE

51

The

purchasing power

of a

denier

tournois

cannot

be

expressed

at all

accurately

in

terms of

present-day

coins,

since

money

is

used

in the

exchange

of so much wider a

range

of

commodities,

whose relative values

may

be

very

different from those of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-

turies. All the

same,

it is

helpful

to know that a denier

was,

very

roughly,

worth rather more than

sixpence

of current

British

money,

while a Venetian

grosso

(which

looks about the same as a

modern sixpence) would by the same calculation purchase roughly as much as seven shillings

and

sixpence

will

today.'s

Thus the Xirokhori hoard was the

equivalent

of

perhaps

+75,

and

the

Orion hoard of

+20.

In

comparison

with

many

medieval coins the tournois

was

of low

value.

Chio

s

~Orion

Arta

Neopat

ras

ElatinrL

A

Lepanto ADeih

4'beA

Pat~rai

E

evsi~~it

i

At

a

Cci~rentloa

Corinth

>_PclHAIAS

Z

lno;

,7irokhori

.Sporta

FIG. 3.

MAP TO SHOW

THE PROVENANCE OF

HOARDS OF DENIERS

TOURNOIS,

AND

THE

MINTS

AT

WHICH

THEY

WERE

STRUCK.

(Mint

towns are marked

by circles,

and

find-spots by triangles

(hoards)

or

by

three

dots

(stray

finds).)

It was suited to the

needs

of

the

market-place

rather

than those of

the

merchant,

so

that,

although

it was

supported

by

a

copper coinage

of even

lower

value,

it

was

little better

than

a

petty coinage.

The

use

of

the

Venetian

grosso

n Greece

may

be

partly

explained by

the

need

which

was felt for a coin of

higher

value than the

tournois,

a

need which

had been met in

France

by the

introduction of the

gros.

The

geographical

distribution of the

hoards

provides

other clues

about the use of

coinage.

From the

map (FIG.

3)

one can see

that

nearly

all

the

hoards come

from a

relatively

small

part

of

Greece,

namely,

the area

extending

from Corinth

and the

shores of

the Corinthian

Gulf,

through

Attica and

Boeotia,

to Atalandhi and the

region

of the Gulf

of Volos on the

north-east.

The 'laws'

which

govern

the

deposit

of

hoardszo are

very

different

from those

which

apply

to

stray

finds:

how far can one assume that the main

region

of

circulation of

the

tournois

was that

indicated

by

the distribution

of

hoards?

In

general,

more

archaeological

discoveries

are

reported

19

For the basis of these calculations see C.

Clark,

The

Conditions

f

Economic

rogress

1951).

20

See B.

Thordeman, Numismatic

Chronicle

948, 188 f.


17/24

52

D.

M.

METCALF

from Attica and central Greece than from other

parts

of

the

country.

May

not the list of hoards

reflect

nothing

more than this? It is well

known,

if

regretted,

that

far more hoards of tournois

have been discovered than have found their

way

to

the National Museum

in Athens.

Especially

in

the

past,

many

have

been

put

into

the

melting-pot,

to secure the miserable amount of silver

which

they

contain.

Fortunately,

there seems

to be a

way

of

showing

that factors such as these

have not obscured the evidence. The list of tournoishoards can be compared with that of Byzan-

tine

scyphate

bronze hoards of the twelfth

century.

From the

point

of view of the

peasant

or the

antique-dealer

there

is not

very

much to choose between tournois nd

scyphate

bronze,

and their

original purchasing power

was

of a

similar

order. When one

sees, therefore,

that

scyphate

bronze

hoards have

been

reported

mostly

from northern Greece and from the

Aegean

islands

and

the

Peloponnese,

and

hardly

at all from central

Greece,

while the

pattern

for

tournois

s

just

the

opposite,

one

may

feel able to

accept

the evidence of the hoards at its

face

value.

The

proviso

must be made that the limits of

the

region

over

which tournoishave

been found

are

somewhat wider than

those of

the area where

they mainly

occur.

Many stray

finds have

Excavations Byzantine oins

Frankishand Venetian

Levantine oins

Sparta,

I924

Sparta, 1925

Athens,

1931-49

Corinth,

1896-1929

Corinth,

1930-5

Corinth,

1936-9

100

500

100

100

500

I00

6

6

IO

9

8

IO

TABLE

IO.

Frankish

coins

at

Sparta: quantities compared

with those

of

Byzantine

coins. The

proportion

of Venetian Levantine coins is

probably

small in

every

case

except

Corinth,

1936-9.

been discovered, for instance, during the excavations of the British School at Sparta. If their

quantities

are

compared

with

the

Byzantine

coins from the same

source,

and these

proportions

with the ones from Corinth and Athens

(TABLE

IO),

a

slight

difference is revealed.

The

Frankish

currency may

not have been in use for so

long

in

Sparta

as

in

central

Greece.

The

evident

reliability

of the

proportions

is,

once

again,

most

striking.

The classes of coins

which

can be

compared,

however,

are

too

large

for

very

useful

conclusions

to be drawn: one

would like

to

have seen these

forty-two

Frankish and Venetian coins from

Sparta published

in

full.

They

might,

for

instance,

show

an

interesting preponderance

of

Achaian

issues.

A

remarkable number of tournoishoards has been found

at

Delphi, deposited

at

various dates

in the fourteenth

century.

In

one

sense,

the

explanation

lies in the

prolonged

and

extensive

excavations which have been made

there,

but on the other hand

Delphi

must have been a site

near which a great many deposits were concealed over the years, seeing that there are half a

dozen which

their

owners failed to recover.

The

route

from

Boeotia to the Gulf of Corinth seems

to have been in common

use,

on the numismatic

evidence,

during

the fourteenth

century.

One or

two other hoards-Tatoi

and

Kapandriti,

for

example-may

be

associated

with

routeways.

The

largest

group

of

find-spots,

however,

if

they

are divided

according

to

type,

con-

sists of those associated with

ports.

Corinth, Elevsis,

and Patras fall into this

class,

and it

may

be not

without

significance

that the

Xirokhori, Atalandhi,

Kapareli,

Orion

and, indeed,

Delphi

hoards were concealed so close to the sea. The economics of

commodity-transport

in

the Middle

Ages

are

reflected

in

the distribution of these coin-finds from Greece: there was

hardly

a

place

in

the

duchy

of Athens that was as much as

twenty

miles from the sea.


18/24

THE

CURRENCY

OF

DENIERS

TOURNOIS

IN FRANKISH GREECE

53

The

weight

of

the evidence

links the

currency

of deniers ournoiswith

the

duchy

of Athens and

especially

with the

coast

from

Athens to Corinth and its hinterland. The

period

of

greatest

mint-output

in

Greece as a whole coincides with the

vigorous

administration of

the Athenian

duchy by

William and with the

majority

of

Gu

The currency of "deniers tournois" in Frankish Greece / [D.M. Metcalf]

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Transcript of The currency of "deniers tournois" in Frankish Greece / [D.M. Metcalf]