Money And Currency In Medieval Greece 235
probably commenced sometime in the first decade of the 14th century. A mint-
ing operation which falls outside of the territories considered here, although
it was intimately linked to the production of Greek tournois, took place on
Chios under the rule of the Zaccaria family. According to the latest opinions,
the tournois in the name of Martino Zaccaria were minted approximately, for
a brief period, from a point between 1320 and 1322. The same issuer was appar-
ently also responsible for an exceedingly small tournois issue for the barony
of Damala in the Argolis, at approximately the same time. The last tournois to
be considered in this context is the fairly large and highly distinctive issue of
the late 1320s and early 1330s of Arta in the name of John ii Orsini. This coin-
age has already been mentioned as one of the sub-standard issues which were
kept apart from the other coinages, and its important historical implications
will be considered further in our next discussion. It is extremely unlikely that
the Glarenza mint ever produced any silver coinage apart from tournois. In
the past different soldini and even grossi have been attributed to it. However,
a very rare gold florin coinage in the name of the last prince to issue tournois,
Robert of Taranto (1332–64), is known in three extant specimens. In the second
half of the 14th century two very diverse entities, the duchy of the Archipelago
and the Byzantine Empire, issued what appear to have been tornesi, that is to
say coins whose metrologies were based on the prevalent Venetian torneselli.
According to this idea, a scheme can be proposed for the first of these coinages,
from the Naxos mint, which is a modification of the older views expressed by
Lambros or Papadopoli, whereby the two main issues are to be attributed to
Duke John i Sanudo (1341–62) and most likely Duke Niccolò iii dalle Carceri
(1371–83). A Lakonian issue for Emperor Manuel ii Palaiologos (1391–1425) has
been discovered only recently amongst the coin finds of the British excava-
tions at Sparta.
The first instances of “unofficial” coin productions, or at any rate of the
striking of coins which failed to bear any obvious indications of their issuers,
occurred in all likelihood within the first decade of the 13th century in Argolis.
Tetartera of the so-called “Saronic Gulf Group” were minted in considerable
quantity and came to some prominence also in surrounding areas, Corinthia,
Attica and to a lesser degree Boeotia and Euboea. It is possible that these
were supplemented with a small parallel issue of billon trachea. While many
of the counterfeit tetartera in evidence in Greece were concentrated in these
particular areas, and constituted a chronologically confined phenomenon,
some counterfeiting of tetartera also took place elsewhere and in other peri-
ods, notably in Catalan Attica or in the western Peloponnese. On the whole,
however, the counterfeiting of coins of the Byzantine tradition had fallen out
of fashion by the first decades of the 13th century. In fact, there was in this