232 Baker
combinations in the extant hoards, of tournois, soldini, and torneselli, which
were to varying degrees kept apart or integrated. To these need to be added
the Venetian and Florentine gold currencies (the ducat and florin), which first
appeared in Greece in moderate quantities in mid-century, and did not mix
with the other coinages. Despite of all the resistance, and the alternative coin-
ages which remained available for some time, after 1400 the hoards of Greece
were almost totally dominated by the tornesello. During the 14th century one
occasionally finds hoards which contain merely one issue or coinage which
were otherwise avoided as objects of thesaurisation. These are invariably infe-
rior coinages and it remains difficult to assess what functions these coinages
and their hoards might have performed. The coins in question are counter-
feits of the Catalan Company, produced probably in quick succession to the
1311 conquests at the Thebes mint; further, coppery tournois in the name of
John ii Orsini from the Arta mint (minted around 1330); and lastly tornesi in
the name of Manuel ii Palaiologos at a Lakonian mint, minted perhaps just
before the turn of the 15th century. We know, nevertheless, from the record
of single finds and very occasional glimpses in the hoards, that the general
mass of inferior issues—older stock of the Byzantine tradition, Frankish petty
denomination issues, counterfeits, etc.—was still very much available until
the end of the medieval period, especially in urban contexts. To judge by the
hoards, these coinages were very seldom used in conjunction with the silver-
based, let alone gold, coinages. This very clear dichotomy between a lower and
a higher level of monetisation recreates, if according to different parameters,
the late Roman and Byzantine coinage systems of copper and gold currencies.
Indeed, the quantities of coins gathered from medieval contexts at Corinth
or Athens remind one more of the situation in the 6th century, or during the
Macedonian and Komnenian dynasties, rather than of any contemporary sites
in Italy, France or England.
Coin Production of Medieval Greece 37
Money in medieval Greece was more often than not constituted by coinages
which were not of Greek production. Nevertheless, before embarking on
an overview of all coins, the topic of the next discussion, it will be of some
37 The coinages produced in Greece are best considered through the discussions in
Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient Latin, (Paris, 1878–1882; repr. Graz 1954), brought
up to date in Metcalf, Ashmolean and by Julian Baker, “Arta”, “Caritena”, “Chiarenza”,
“Chio”, “Corfù”, “Corinto”, “Damala”, “Lepanto”, “Leuca”, “Nasso”, “Negroponte”, “Neopatra”,