Money And Currency In Medieval Greece 245
distinctive tournois issue was launched at Arta. John ii Orsini ruled over
Epirus in a fine balancing act between Angevin Romania and Byzantium. The
issues in his name lasted on all accounts from the late 1320s to his death in 1336
or 1337. The coinage was initially of modest size and respectable quality, and
it began circulating together with other tournois issues. Soon, around 1330 or
a bit later, the coins were made entirely of copper, with fluctuating weights,
while the output of the Arta mint increased significantly. This coinage was
henceforth, like other inferior tournois issues such as those of Catalan Athens
(see above), handled and hoarded separately. For a combination of purely
monetary reasons, and the geopolitical constellation involving the Epirote
and Serbian states and Byzantium, this coinage migrated in large quantities to
Macedonia and Bulgaria.
During this decade also the tournois of Glarenza first suffered significant
reductions in fineness, which resulted in increasing distrust in and avoidance
of this coinage, paving the way to its disappearance. The issues in question
were produced in the name of Prince Robert of Taranto after 1332. Two sugges-
tions for the closing date of the Glarenza mint—1347 and 1353—may be put
forward but these remain hypotheses and we can only assume that this event
occurred in either of these respective years, or at one point in between. The
indigenous tournois coinage of Greece was further undermined by continued
counterfeiting, especially in Catalan territories (see above).
This general reduction in reliability played into the hands of a new Venetian
fine silver denomination, the soldino, which was introduced in 1332. This coin-
age was designed to unite the two main Venetian systems of account based on
the piccolo and the grosso, at a profit to the republic. Its success in Greece was
based, in addition to the demise of the tournois and of the Venetian grosso, on
its increasing usage by Venetian public and private interests, and the fact that
it managed to find a convenient position in the Greek account systems at 1:4 to
the tournois, and 20 or 25 to the main hyperpyra. The soldino was adopted the
quickest and the most thoroughly in the western Peloponnese and in Boeotia/
Attica/Euboea, that is to say in areas most exposed to the Venetian colonial
presence and witnessing the greatest commercial activity. We may infer from
documentary sources and very sparse numismatic evidence that the main
Italian gold coinages—ducats and florins—became increasingly available in
Greece in the first half of the 14th century, although the data are altogether
not sufficient enough to determine the relative extent and importance of this
phenomenon. The aforementioned Robert of Taranto minted an extremely
small gold florin issue at Glarenza. As in the previously analysed period, dur-
ing 1300–50 the overall quantity and quality of the circulating specie, and the