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Description: | Gold coin, Early Medieval Byzantine, pierced, treasureThis was examined by Barry Ager who comments-I have examined a single coin reported found in the Bedale area. The coin is a gold histamenon trachy of the Byzantine emperor Michael VII Ducas (1071-1078), class IId and it weighs 4.17g, at the lower end of the range for examples of this coin. The obverse of the coin depicts a bust of Christ, raising his hand in blessing and the reverse shows a bust of the emperor with his name and titles in Greek letters.Although the Byzantine gold coinage was famous for centuries for its fineness, the later 11th century was a time of debasement, and the gold of Michael VII was in fact about 12 carats fine, i.e. about 50% gold to 50% silver in its makeup. Michael VII's gold coins, known to westerners as 'michelois', were the principal high-value coin in the Middle East encountered by participants in the First Crusade in the 1090s and in the early years of the kingdom of Jerusalem and the other crusader states at the start of the 12th century. Although single coins are not normally eligible for consideration under the Treasure Act, coins removed from currency and converted into jewellery are so classed. This coin has a piercing that indicates that it was almost certainly worn at some time as a pendant. The placing of the hole demonstrates that it was intended to display the image of the emperor, not that of Christ. Many surviving Byzantine gold coins of this period are pierced in exactly this way: for example, five of the 12 gold coins of Michael VII in the British Museum collection are similarly pierced, while the 37 examples in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection include five pierced ones and another with a suspension loop attached. There is evidence in late medieval and early modern times that in the lands of the former Byzantine Empire children could be given coins pierced like this. In this tradition, the emperor on the coin, whoever he was originally, represented Constantine the Great, as the first Christian emperor and founder of Constantinople. However, it is not clear when this practice began. There is little doubt that Byzantine gold coins were familiar in medieval England, despite a lack of previous finds from the relevant period of the 10th to 13th centuries: there is abundant documentary evidence from the 1150s onwards to show this (for a detailed discussion, see B.J. Cook, 'The bezant in Angevin England', Numismatic Chronicle 159 (1999), pp. 255-276). This coin is earlier in date than most of the surviving references, but the documentary record before the 1150s is much sparser and our evidence for the presence of Byzantine gold necessarily less extensive. There does seem enough evidence to allow for the possibility of a coin such as this arriving in England in the decades around 1100 and for it to have a role either as either a piece of jewellery or as an item of currency to be used in a formal or ritual setting when a piece of gold was required: e.g. as a religious offering, an entry fine when inheriting land, as a token payment to settle a claim.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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