Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:02:27.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Dollar of the Middle Ages1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Robert Sabatino Lopez
Robert Sabatino Lopez
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The gold money of the Byzantine Empire “is accepted everywhere from end to end of the earth. It is admired by all men and in all kingdoms, because no kingdom has a currency that can be compared to it.” These boastful words of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a contemporary of Justinian die Great, are a typical expression of die pride of die Greek nation. Cosmas was a monk who tried to demonstrate from the Scriptures that the earth was flat, but in his youth he had been an adventurous merchant and traveler, and well he knew where the true primacy of his nation lay. While die armies of Justinian had not marched as far as those of Trajan, and his law was not enforced in all die countries which had obeyed Theodosius, the monetary empire of New Rome was even greater than that of Old Rome. The gold nomisma (or bezant, as die Westerners later called it) was as peerless as die sovereign whose effigy it bore. Procopius, another contemporary of Justinian die Great, stated: “It is not right for die Persian king or for any odier sovereign in die whole barbarian world to imprint his own likeness on a gold stater, and that, too, though he has gold in his own kingdom; for they are unable to tender such a coin to those widi whom they transact business.”

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , Summer 1951 , pp. 209 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1951

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia Christiana, ed. Winstedt, p. 81 (ed. Migne, p. 116); Procopius, De bello Gothico, III, 33 (ed. and trans. H. B. Dewing in the Loeb Collection, IV, 439); Zonaras, ed. Bonn, XIV, 231. These statements and their background have been discussed more fully in Lopez, R. S., “Mohammed and Charlemagne, 2 Revision,” Speculum, XVIII (1943), 16–18, 21–26Google Scholar.

3 See Gentilhomme, P. Le, “Le Monnayage et la circulation monétaire dans les royaumes barbares en Occident,” Revue numismatique, 5th ser., VII, VIII (1943 and 1945)Google Scholar; Furdonjee, D. J. Paruck, Sasanian Coins (Bombay, 1924)Google Scholar; L. A. Mayer, Bibliography of Moslem Numismatics London, 1939); further bibliography in Lopez, “Mohammed and Charlemagne,” and in Bloch, Marc, “Le Problème de l'or au moyen-âge,” Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, V (1933)Google Scholar.

4 Bede, Historia eccleriastica, III, 8; for the background, see Lopez, , “Le Problème des relations anglo-byzantines du septième au dixième siècle,” Byzantion, XVIII (1946–48), 156 and n. 1Google Scholar.

5 Even Oswald Barron, the supercilious author of the article “Hèraldry” in Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.), while condemning “the folly of the heraldic writers” who have found for all roundels other than golden “names which may be disregarded,” endorses the “ancient custom [that] gives the name of bezant to the golden roundel.”

6 Practically every work that deals with Byzantium stresses the importance of the bezant as a symbol and instrument of power and prestige of the Byzantine Empire. See, to name only a few instances, Diehl, C., Byzance, grandeur et décadence (Paris, 1924), chap, vGoogle Scholar; Runciman, S., Byzantine Civilisation (London, 1933), pp. 177 ff.Google Scholar; Bratianu, G. I., Etudes byzantines d'histoire économique et sociale (Paris, 1938), pp. 59 ff., 221 ff.Google Scholar; for the opinion of foreign contemporaries, see Ebersolt, J., Constantinople byzantine et les voyageurs du Levant (Paris, 1918)Google Scholar.

7 Maurice, J., Numismatique constantinienne, I (Paris, 1908)Google Scholar, xlii (although Zakythinos, probably through a misprint, cites Maurice as giving the weight as 4.48); Mattingly, H., Roman Coins from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire (London, 1928), pp. 226 ffGoogle Scholar. Obviously, techniques were not accurate enough to attain the ideal weight for the majority of coins, but errors by excess balanced errors by defect. The Yale collection has some specimens weighing as much as 4.60 grams; other overweight bezants are found in every important collection, though underweight bezants, especially owing to wear, are more common.

8 The latest work on the debasements of Nicephorus Phokas, John Tzimiskes, and their immediate successors is Lopez, “La Crise du besant au dixième siècle et la date du Livre du Préfet,” Mélanges Henri Grégoire, II (Brussels, 1951). It cites most of the earlier works on that subject

9 Stein, E., “Untersuchungen zur spätbyzantinischen Verfassungs- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,” Mitteilungen sur osmanitchen Getchichte, II (1923–25), 11–12Google Scholar. There is some disagreement regarding which emperor was most reckless in the debasement of the inferior types of the bezant. As far as we can judge from the extant coins, the proportion of debased to “hyperpure” types steadily increased from the reign of Michael VII (who became emperor after the Byzantine rout as Mantzikert, 1071) to that of Alexius I (1081–1118, the emperor of the First Crusade). We have specimens of seven different types of the nomisma struck by Alexius I —one is of pure gold; the others are of bronze, billon (base silver), and elcctrum (pale gold). John II (1118–1143), the best of the Comneni, has often been credited with endeavoring to improve the coinage because a comparatively larger number of the extant coins are of gold But others are of electrum or billon, and it would be incautious to regard the proportions of the different types in our museums as reflecting the proportions of coins actually issued. Whatever improvement may have been made was lost under Manuel I (1143–1180) Out of the thirteen known types, five are bronze, seven are alloyed gold, and only one is chiefly gold. Yet we still have a number of gold bezants of the Emperors Andronicus I, Isaac II, and Alexius III, with a majority of bezants of the inferior types. It is worth noting that Nicetas, the Byzantine chronicler, censured Isaac II not for mixing silver with gold—that had become a venial sin—but because “by debasing even the silver he struck bezants of a bad alloy.” De Isaacio Angelo, ed. Bonn, III, 7, p. 584. Actually Isaac's extant coins do not seem worse than those of his predecessor, but there may. have been inferior specimens which have not come down to us.

10 Philological evidence is collected in Zakythinos, Crise, p. 2; further bibliography in Wroth, Catalogue, I, lxxiv, n. 1.

11 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, ed. and trans. V. G. Berry, pp. 41–42, 66–67; Anna Comnena, Alexiad, XIII, 12 (ed. Bonn, II, 243; trans. E. A. S. Dawes, p. 356), and cf. William of Tyre, Historia rerun in partibus transmarinis gcstarum, XI, 11, and XIII, 15 (trans. E. A. Babcock and A. C. Krey, I, 480, and II, 21); Nicetas, De Manuelt Comneno, I, 5. Notwithstanding its depreciation, the bezant probably attained its greatest circulation and renown in Western Europe in the twelfth century, partly owing to trends in foreign trade which will be discussed later.

12 See Zakythinos, Crise, pp. 7–8, and its bibliographic references. The importance of a document of 1250, which shows that the market price of the bezants was lower than that of the anfusi (the Castilian imitation of the Almoravid gold coin) and of the augustals (Frederic II's gold coins), has been rightly stressed by Bloch, “Le Problème de l'or,” p. 26. Less convincing is the inference Bratianu, Etudes, p. 239, draws from a passage of William of Robruck which states that William's valets were unable to buy anything with bezants in a region inhabited by Alans. As William himself points out, this was not so much a symptom of bad repute of the bezant as an indication that linen served as the principal instrument of payment in that region. See Lopez, , “Nuove luci sugli Italiani in Estremo Oriente,” Studi colombiani, alti del convegno internazionale (Genoa, 1951)Google Scholar.

13 Bratianu, Etudes, pp. 221 ff.; Bloch, “Le Problème de l'or,” pp. 25 ff.; Archivio di Stato di Genova, Cartulario di Bartolomeo de Fornari, III, fol. 137 v.; Lopez, , “The Unexplored Wealth of the Notarial Archives in Pisa and Lucca,” Mélanges Louis Halphen (Paris, 1951), doc. VIGoogle Scholar.

14 This witticism is in Reinach's, T. review of Wroth's Catalogue in Revue des études grecques, XXVI (1913), 109Google Scholar. The doleful tale of the bezant under the Palaeologian Dynasty has been recently told in great detail by Zakythinos, whose careful work contains full bibliographic references.

15 On the Byzantine notions of divine investiture of the emperor and of God-willed superiority of the Byzantine nation, see Grabar, A., L'Empercur dans l'art byzantin (Paris, 1936)Google Scholar; Treitinger, O., Die oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im höfischcn Zeremoniell (Jena, 1938)Google Scholar, mediocre; Dölger, F., “Die Kaiserurkunde der Byzantiner als Ausdruck ihrer politische Anschauungen,” Historische Zeitschrift, CLIX (1939)Google Scholar; Lopez, , “Silk Industry in the Byzantine Empire,” Speculum, XX (1945)Google Scholar; and above all the brilliant essay of Guilland, R., “Le Droit divin à Byzance,” Commentaria societatis philologae polonorum EOS, XLII (1947)Google Scholar.

16 While many of the works that deal with the economic or general history of Byzantium pay incidental attention to some or all of these problems, perhaps the best survey is that of A. Andréadès, the great historian of English and Greek banks and finance, which was posthumously published in Baynes, N. H. and Moss, L. B., eds., Byzantium (Oxford, 1948)Google Scholar. The editors made an effort to bring the bibliography up to date but did not modify the text, which is outdated in some parts. Even the more recent works, however, give no answer to the main questions Andréadès masterfully listed but was forced to leave unanswered.

17 Apart from works on the later Roman times and from remarks scattered in the footnotes of Finlay's classic History of Greece and in other general histories, we have three monographs on Byzaptine prices: Andréadès, “De la monnaie et de la puissance d'achat”; Ostrogorsky, G., “Löhne und Preise in Byzanz,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, XXXII (1932)Google Scholar; Mickwitz, G., “Ein Goldwertindex dcr römisch-byzantinischen Zeit,” Aegyptus, XII (1933)Google Scholar. The latter alone has endeavored to apply the formula of Fisher to Byzantine monetary history—not very successfully, in my opinion, since too many elements are unknown. Notwithstanding the great merit of these pioneer works, it cannot be said that the immense difficulties of the problem have been substantially lessened, nor has the extant material been fully collected and exploited. If we turn to other countries, the state of research is still less encouraging. I do not know of any work on Moslem prices (though incidental mention of prices is frequently found in a good number of books), and I have come across only one noteworthy essay on early medieval prices in Western Europe: Albornoz, C. Sánchez, “El precio de la vida en el reino astur-leonés hace mil años,” Logos, III (1945)Google Scholar.

18 Long waves have been charted and short waves indicated for Italy, 1250–1500, in a remarkable pioneer work by Cipolla, C. M., Studi di storia della moneta, I (Pavia, 1948)Google Scholar, and Savitsky, P. N., “Podʼem i depressiia v drevne russkoi istorii,” Evraziiskaia Khronika, II (1936)Google Scholar, has endeavored to trace cycles of depression and prosperity in Kievan Russia, 981–1237. Short analyses of these essays can be found respectively in Speculum, XXIV (1949)) 559 ff.Google Scholar, and in Vérnadsky, G., Kievan Russia (New Haven, 1948), pp. 128 ffGoogle Scholar. On Byzantine secular trends, see esp. the article of Andréadès; short-range variations are followed to some extent by Ostrogorsky.

19 The above statements are based largely on source material which cannot be adequately cited and discussed here. Each statement would warrant a special article that might conceivably ask most of the right questions but hardly give all the answers.

20 For instance, we do not know the total amount of money in circulation at any period, or the comparative size of gold coinage and silver and copper coinage, or the free market ratio between silver and gold, or the total output of precious metals. We know that moneys of account, equivalent to a fixed number of bezants, were used at all times, but we do not know whether they were pegged to real coins and fluctuated with them or whether they corresponded to unchangeable, ideal weights of precious metal.

21 For the voluminous bibliography of the question, see Dennett, D. C., “Pirenne and Muhammad,” Speculum, XXIII (1948)Google Scholar. It suffices here to mention the most controversial work of the great master, Pirenne, H., Mohammed and Charlemagne (New York, 1939)Google Scholar, and the brilliant essay of Bloch, “Le Problème de l'or,” where Pirenne's thesis is in the background, but the investigation carries much deeper and is enriched with subtle nuances and admirable intuition.

22 See, for instance, Wroth, Catalogue, I, xxxi ff.

23 Besides special works on Moslem numismatics, see Mez, A., The Renaissance of Islam (Calcutta and London, 1927)Google Scholar, chaps, xxiv, xxvi—the German original and the Spanish translation are better; Lopez, “Mohammed and Charlemagne,” pp. 28 ff.; Cambridge Economic History, II, chap, iv, sees. 1, 3.

24 See Bloch, “Le Problème de l'or,” pp. 12 ff., 19 ff., and its bibliographic references.

25 General bibliography on Byzantine agriculture is appended to Ostrogorsky's chap, v of Cambridge Economic History, I, itself an outstanding survey of the problem; see also Charanis, P., “The Monastic Properties and the State in the Byzantine Empire,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, IV (1948)Google Scholar. While waiting for the corresponding chapter on Byzantine trade in Cambridge Economic History, II, one can find some references in Runciman, S., Byzantine Civilisation (London, 1933)Google Scholar, superficial; Charanis, P., “On the Social Structure of the Later Roman Empire,” Byzantion, XVII (1944–45)Google Scholar; and the often-cited works of Bratianu, Zakythinos, and Lopez. On interest rates, see Cassimatis, G., “La Dixième vexation de l'empereur Nicéphore,” Byzantion, VII (1932)Google Scholar, with bibliography; Bratianu, Etudes, pp. 208 ff.; Andréadès, “De la monnaie et de la puissance,” pp. 104 ff. The latter discusses some interesting references on the standard of living. In the time of Leo VI (early tenth century) an itinerant merchant from the interior of Asia Minor was regarded as a substantial citizen when he had 1,000 bezants and very rich when he had 1,500. The sum seems small to Andréadès, but it would have been extraordinarily great in Western Europe. On the other hand, a Moslem itinerant merchant would probably have felt much the same way as his Byzantine colleague.

26 For Italy, see Cipolla, Studi, pp. 75 ff.—he takes his stand for inflation—and, for England, see Evans, A., “Some Coinage Systems of the Fourteenth Century,” Journal of Economic and Business History, III (1931)Google Scholar. There is no good work on the Moslem credit organization and its possible connection with inflation, but some information may be obtained from Fischel, W. J., The Jews in the Economic and Political Life of the Medieval Islam (London, 1937)Google Scholar, with bibliography.

27 Yet it is worth noting that the only banker or money changer who ever sat on the Byzantine throne, Michael IV (1034–1041), reigned during a period when the weight of the bezant was no longer stable. It is true that he did not owe his crown to his profession and that there are no indications of greater depreciation of the bezant during his reign.

28 On Ibn al-Furat, see Fischel, The Jews; the passage of Abu al-Fadhl in translation is included among the excerpts in Lopez, R. S. and Raymond, I. W., Mediaeval Trade in the Mediterranean World (to be published by Columbia University Press), I, 2Google Scholar.

29 The well-known passages of Villani are discussed by Cipolla, Studi, pp. 121–23, who gives some interesting quotations from other towns, which point the same way.

30 Besides the works quoted above, n. 25, see the important essay of Lefebvre des Noëttes, “Le Système d'attelage du cheval et du boeuf à Byzance,” Mélanges Charles Diehl, I (Paris, 1930)Google Scholar. Obviously, every generalization calls for many qualifications. For instance, self-sufficiency was more pronounced than in any modern agrarian economy but far less pronounced than anywhere in the early medieval West or in some Moslem countries. Constantinople and, to a smaller extent, Salonika, Trebizond, and other large cities were great markets for the foodstuffs and other raw materials coming from all parts of the empire. Periodical markets in the smaller towns and villages facilitated the exchange of cheap industrial products with agricultural surpluses.

31 Besides the works quoted above, n. 25, see on shipbuilding Bréhier, L., “La Marine impériale, Byzantion, XIX (1949–50)Google Scholar; on textiles, Lopez, “Silk Industry”; on commercial contracts, the excellent work of Ashburner, W., The Rhodian Sea-Law (Oxford, 1909)Google Scholar, which, however, far from exhausts the subject. Once more, every generalization needs qualification. “One of the highest average standards of living” does not mean that everybody was well off; Ostrogorsky, “Löhne,” pp. 295 ff., stresses the wretched conditions of the poorer workers in the towns where the competition of slave labor seems to have been more serious than in the country. Yet the poverty of the Byzantine worker was probably better than the destitution of laborers in other parts of the world; moreover, the indigent and the sick were assisted by public charity, on which see Diehl, C., La Société byzantine à l'époque des Comnènes (Paris, 1929)Google Scholar. Again, the fact that some tokens of capitalistic developments have been traced only in the silk industry may be owing to the inadequacy of sources on some other industries that may have made some progress in that direction.

32 Besides the works quoted above, n. 25, see Cambridge Economic History, n, chap, iv, sec. 1; Lewis, A. R., Naval Power and Trade in the Mediterranean (Princeton, 1951), with bibliographyGoogle Scholar; Lombard, M., “Mahomet et Charlemagne,” Annales (économies, sociétés, civilisations), III (1948)Google Scholar. Prices, of course, were only one of many determining elements in the currents of trade. For instance, the Byzantine Empire did not need to import timber and needed a smaller number of slaves, but it could have imported from Catholic Europe other materials which the Moslems did not need.

33 On the distribution and displacement of gold, see the brilliant essay by Lombard, M., “L'Or musulman du VIIe au Xle siècle,” Annales (économies, sociétés, civilisations), II (1947)Google Scholar, which is founded on a great wealth of solid information even though the author does not quote his sources. Lombard is preparing a book on the same subject; meanwhile, some bibliographic references may be gleaned from Bloch, “Le Problème de l'or”; Mez, Renaissance; Lewis, Naval Power; Heffening, W., Beiträge zum Rechts- und Wirtschaftsleben des Islamischen Orients, I (Hanover, 1925)Google Scholar; Sabbe, E., “L'lmportation des tissus orientaux en Europe occidentale au haut moyen-âge,” Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire. XIV (1935)Google Scholar; Sapori, A., Studi di storia economica medievale (2d ed.; Florence, 1946)Google Scholar; etc. On the commercial policies of the Byzantine Empire, see Lopez, , “L'Evolution de la politique commerciale au moyen âge,” Annales (économies, sociétés, civilisations), IV (1949)Google Scholar, with bibliography.

34 See, above all, Lombard, “L'Or musulman.” While agreeing with the author on most points, I think that he has concentrated too exclusively on gold, neglecting the currents of silver trade. Commerce between northern Europe and the eastern Moslem states was chiefly based on die silver standard, as innumerable hoards of Moslem coins in Europe and many remarks of Moslem travelers point out. See also the remarks of Lewis, Naval Power, p. 127 and n. 1. The extreme rarity of Byzantine silver in hoards prior to the Comnenian period has struck the numismatists, who have been at a loss to find an explanation; silver exports to the eastern Moslem world and, through it, to China where the silver standard prevailed can supply the explanation. On the other hand, both written sources and hoards of southern and central Europe and England bear witness to the abundance of Moslem gold—and the rarity of bezants up to the late tenth or early eleventh century.

35 Some of these remarks have been indirectly suggested by the discussion of Italian monetary trends in Cipolla, Studi. The bibliography on Italian-Byzantine trade in the later Middle Ages is extremely voluminous and cannot be quoted here; Luzzatto, G., Storia economics d'ltalia, I (Rome, 1949)Google Scholar, gives some firsthand references, to which one can add the bibliography of Renouard, Y., Les Hommes d'affaires italiens (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar, which will give the layman some starting points.

36 See Grueber, H. A., Catalogue of the Roman Republican Coins in the British Museum (London, 1910)Google Scholar, intro.; Heichelheim, F., Wirtschaftsgeschichie des Altertums (Leiden, 1938) chaps, viii, ixGoogle Scholar; Lopez, , “Byzantine Law and Its Reception by the Germans and the Arabs,” Byzantion, XVI (1942–43)Google Scholar; idem., “Continuità e adattamento nel Medio Evo, un millcnnio di storia dei monetieri,” Studi in Onore di Gino Luzzatto, II (Milan, 1950)Google Scholar; Andréadès, “De la monnaie et de la puissance”; Segrè, A., “Inflation in Early Byzantine Times,” Byzantion, XV (1940–41)Google Scholar, obscure; all these have full references to primary sources and secondary works. On the much-debated problem of debasements by Western rulers and the “nominalistic” theory of coinage, Babelon, E., “La Théorie féodale de la monnaie,” Mimoires de l'académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, XXXVIII (1908)Google Scholar, is still the best work, in my opinion.

37 On Byzantine finance the best survey is the chapter of Andréadès in Byzantium, where he summed up the fruit of a lifetime of research. Other works are listed in the bibliography of that chapter and in the extremely learned but uninspired book of Bréhier, L., Let Institutions de l'empire byzantin (Paris, 1949), livre 3, chap. iiGoogle Scholar.

38 Besides the works quoted in the preceding footnote, and their bibliographies, see also Lopez, “La Crise”; Charanis, “Monastic Properties”; Kolias, G., Aemter und Würdenkauf im Früh- und Mittelbyzantinischen Reich (Athens, 1939)Google Scholar, with bibliographies.