Byzantine Coinage: Money, Minting, and Imperial Power

The gold solidus introduced by Constantine supplied Byzantium’s high-value currency for centuries. Anastasius I’s reform of 498 added larger bronze denominations for smaller purchases. After eleventh-century debasement, Alexios I introduced the hyperpyron in 1092. Imperial mints controlled production, and coin designs named rulers and displayed Christian images. Late Byzantine payments increasingly used silver and foreign currencies.

The system began with the late Roman gold solidus and the small bronze nummus. It was reorganised by Anastasius I in 498, developed through successive reforms, and gradually transformed from a currency centred on a stable gold coin into one dominated by debased or reduced-value issues. By the fifteenth century, regular gold coinage had ended, silver stavrata formed the principal high-value issues, and minor transactions relied on copper coins.

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From late Roman money to the Byzantine system

Constantine I established the gold solidus, also called the nomisma, at a theoretical weight of one seventy-second of the Roman pound, about 4.5 grams. Byzantine accounts divided the solidus into twenty-four keratia, a unit derived from the siliqua weight standard.

The small bronze nummus was useful for low-value payments but was extremely light. Anastasius therefore introduced larger bronze multiples in 498. The most important was the forty-nummi coin, commonly called the follis, alongside twenty-, ten-, and five-nummi pieces. Their reverses normally displayed Greek numerals identifying their value: M for forty, K for twenty, I for ten, and E for five. The reform made small transactions less dependent on large quantities of tiny coins and gave the bronze currency a clearer structure.

Gold served high-value state payments and accumulated savings. Bronze coins supplied small change for market purchases. A sixth-century building worker in Jerusalem is recorded as receiving one-twentieth of a solidus daily, while an early seventh-century Alexandrian labourer received one twenty-third.

Denominations and the changing balance of metals

Gold remained the foundation of Byzantine high-value money for many centuries. The solidus was struck at seventy-two to the Roman pound and retained a fineness (proportion of pure gold) of approximately 95.5 to 98 percent until the eleventh century. In western Europe it became known as the bezant, a name derived from Byzantium. Its reputation rested not only on its appearance but also on the relative consistency of its weight and purity, which supported its acceptance beyond imperial territory.

The semissis was half a solidus and the tremissis one-third. Nikephoros II Phokas introduced the lighter gold tetarteron during his reign, 963–969, alongside the full-weight histamenon. The two denominations continued into the eleventh century. Earlier reduced-weight solidi marked with stars also circulated in Near Eastern exchange.

Heraclius introduced the silver hexagram in 615. Surviving examples weigh around six to seven grams. Leo III introduced the miliaresion around 720; initially ceremonial, it became a regular issue from about 830 and continued until the late eleventh century. Bronze remained available for smaller transactions.

The electrum aspron trachy combined gold and silver and was valued at one-third of a hyperpyron. The billon aspron trachy contained a low proportion of silver in copper alloy. Many issues were cup-shaped, described as scyphate or trachy; the reason for that shape remains uncertain.

Reform and debasement in the eleventh century

The solidus began to lose its former stability under successive emperors from the 1030s. Its gold content declined gradually at first and then more rapidly. The recorded fineness fell to about 87.5 percent under Constantine IX, 75 percent under Constantine X, 66.7 percent under Romanos IV, 58 percent under Michael VII, and about 33 percent under Nikephoros III. During the early years of Alexios I, the gold content could fall still further.

These changes affected how people used money. A coin’s legal or accounting value could continue to be stated in relation to an older standard even as its actual metal content declined. This created pressure on exchange and public finance, especially when taxes, salaries, and commercial payments were assessed or settled with coins of different quality. Debasement could increase the number of coins available to the state, but it also weakened confidence in the older standard and encouraged distinctions between coins by weight and purity.

Alexios I Komnenos introduced the hyperpyron in 1092 at about 4.45 grams and an initial fineness of approximately twenty and a half carats, or 85–86 percent gold. Electrum, billon and copper denominations accompanied it. The new issues replaced the heavily debased gold currency of the preceding decades.

Minting, officials, and the production of coins

Coin production was an imperial responsibility. In the early period, the comes sacrarum largitionum, the official associated with the imperial treasury, supervised minting and its suppliers. As the late Roman treasury administration was reorganised, responsibilities passed to departments known as the sekreta, with the vestiarium taking a role in monetary production. In the ninth century, the official in charge of the mint was the archon of the minting, who served under the chartoularios of the vestiarium.

Constantinople was the principal mint, and its output was generally much greater than that of individual provincial mints. During the sixth century, gold and silver were also struck at a changing group of provincial centres. Military circumstances sometimes required temporary mints: under Heraclius, bronze coinage was produced for army needs in places including Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Isauria.

The number of active mints declined sharply during the seventh century as imperial territory was lost in the Balkans, Italy, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa. After Syracuse was lost in 878, Constantinople became the only mint producing Byzantine gold and silver until major provincial mints reappeared in the late eleventh century. Mints operated again in several regions during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and after 1204 the successor states produced their own issues. In the Palaiologan period, Constantinople and Thessaloniki were the main Byzantine mints, while Trebizond maintained an independent coinage as the capital of the Empire of Trebizond.

How coin blanks were prepared and struck

Mint workers first prepared metal blanks, the pieces of metal on which designs were struck. For gold, silver, and electrum, blanks were generally made individually, with each one weighed and adjusted by smoothing or trimming until it approached the prescribed standard. For bronze and some silver issues, workers could instead prepare a set number of blanks from a measured quantity of metal. The available archaeological evidence suggests casting in circular moulds, although it does not securely establish whether these moulds were open or closed, joined together or separate.

Coins were then struck between engraved dies. Earlier coins were sometimes reused as metal for new issues, a practice especially visible in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Excavations near the Great Palace in Constantinople found evidence associated with metalworking, including charcoal, crucible fragments, abrasive sand, tripods, and sheets of copper alloy that may have been waste from preparing coin blanks.

Designs, inscriptions, and imperial messages

Early Byzantine coins retained late Roman conventions but adapted them to a Christian empire. The emperor was commonly shown frontally rather than in the older profile portrait style. Reverse types included crosses, angels, standards, and other Christian symbols. The emperor could appear in military dress, holding a cross, a labarum, or a globe surmounted by a cross. Such designs presented the ruler as a military protector and as an agent of Christian order.

Under Justin I, gold reverses replaced the figure of Victory with an angel holding Christian symbols. Justinian II later placed Christ on the obverse and the emperor on the reverse. After iconoclasm, Christ’s image returned to coinage. Tenth-century anonymous folles displayed Christ and an inscription meaning “Christ, Emperor of Emperors.”

Images also communicated succession and legitimacy. Several emperors could appear on one coin, with differences in position, scale, and clothing indicating seniority or association in rule. The hand of God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, or an archangel could be shown crowning an emperor. During the iconoclast period, emperors used crosses, dynastic portraits, and ceremonial dress rather than images of Christ. After the restoration of religious images, Christ Pantokrator and scenes of sacred authority became prominent again.

Inscriptions changed more slowly than the spoken and administrative language of the empire. Latin abbreviations such as DN, PF, PP, and AVG remained on early coins, while Greek letters had long been used to indicate bronze denominations. Greek fully replaced Latin on coin inscriptions only in the eleventh century. Later coins could include personal and family names, titles, dates, geographical references, and mint marks. Abbreviations identified places such as Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Nicomedia, Cyzicus, and Antioch.

Coins in taxation, wages, and exchange

The state collected taxes in money and paid troops and officials. Recipients spent those coins on provisions and other purchases, supplying currency to markets. Merchants used high-value coins in larger transactions and changed money into suitable denominations for local payments.

Recorded prices illustrate the differing scale of denominations. In sixth-century Jerusalem, a daily wage of one-twentieth of a solidus was reported for a building worker. In early seventh-century Alexandria, a family’s daily allowance of vegetables was given as five folles, a pound of fish as six folles, and a loaf of bread during a shortage as three folles. A second-hand cloak was valued at one solidus, while a donkey cost three or four. These references are limited by region, date, and the reliability of literary transmission, but they show how bronze and gold occupied different levels of exchange.

Coins also travelled beyond imperial borders. Finds of solidi in China, territories associated with the Avars and Khazars, Ukraine, southern Russia, and the Caucasus have been connected with diplomacy, military payments, and tribute during the seventh and eighth centuries. Byzantine gold was valued in western Europe, and foreign rulers sometimes imitated its imagery. Coins also crossed borders as diplomatic gifts, military payments and stored wealth, as well as through ordinary commerce.

Coinage connected these transactions with the wider Byzantine economy: taxes helped bring money back to the treasury, while government expenditure returned it to soldiers, officials, contractors and markets.

From the hyperpyron to the stavraton

Around 1304, the basilikon supplied a silver coin modelled on the Venetian grosso. Its weight changed during subsequent issues as available silver declined. The billon politikon supplied another denomination during the fourteenth century.

After the mid-fourteenth century, the hyperpyron continued mainly as an accounting unit rather than as a regularly circulating gold coin. In 1367, gold issues were discontinued and a regular silver coinage was introduced. The stavraton became the principal denomination, with half-, eighth-, and sixteenth-stavraton subdivisions, accompanied by copper follara and tornesia. By the fifteenth century, Byzantine coinage consisted chiefly of reduced silver stavrata and minor copper coins, without a regular gold issue.

After 1400, Italian money became the predominant circulating currency. The decline of Byzantine coinage was therefore not simply the disappearance of coins from economic life. It was a change in whose coins supplied the most trusted or useful media of exchange. The empire continued to express values in Byzantine accounting terms, but foreign gold and silver increasingly handled transactions in practice.