246 Baker
generally tight control by the local authorities, allowed for few additional coin-
ages to make their presence felt: French feudal coins evidently ceased to arrive
in Greece and there is a small trickle of Italian pennies ranging from the north
and centre to the Angevin kingdom of Sicily (Naples).
After 1350 the hoards of Greece initially continued the previous pattern of
containing the now discontinued local tournois and/or soldini. Soldini were
hoarded according to their types, either in conservative or progressive constel-
lations, while the most recent and least fine of the Glarenzan tournois, those
in the name of Robert of Taranto, were taken out of circulation more rapidly
than earlier tournois issues. Despite the availability of soldini and tournois,
the closure of the Glarenza mint evidently caused considerable difficulties
for the Venetian colonial and trading interests and led to a quick reaction. In
1353 the Venice mint launched a successor coinage, the tornesello, which was
minted on a lower standard than even the tournois in the name of Robert.
This led to a further reduction in the values of the local hyperpyra currencies
of Greece, which were increasingly based on the tornesello rather than the
soldino. From the dogeships of Andrea Contarini (1368–82) and Antonio Venier
(1382–1400) onwards, torneselli were minted in very large quantities indeed, so
that they came to dominate the specie in circulation in Greece in this period,
with the consequence that hoards contained an increasingly large numbers
of coins and that torneselli were amongst the most frequent stray losses of
the entire medieval period in Greece. The importance of torneselli was such
that it inspired coinages of the dukes of the Archipelago and of Byzantium.
The issues of Naxos were of little influence and were evidently confined to the
central Cyclades. Byzantium arguably minted its second generation of tornesi,
based on the tornesello, at Constantinople from 1367 onwards. Only one speci-
men from the metropolitan mint, dating to the late 14th or very early 15th cen-
tury, has been found in Greece, at the Kraneion basilica of Corinth. However, a
Lakonian issue, launched very probably in the 1390s by Manuel ii Palaiologos,
was hoarded in decent quantities at Sparta, and also circulated in other parts
of the eastern Peloponnese and the mainland. On a previous occasion, as
regent in Thessalonica, Manuel had produced a tornese coinage of a slightly
heavier standard. This coinage has been found hoarded at Athens. While after
a certain period onwards torneselli were dominant in Greece, there were still
some hoards which contained preferentially soldini. Such hoards included, in
the western Peloponnese during the 1380s, also coinages of Hungary and—in
merely one instance—of Lesbos which were based on the Venetian soldino.
It is possible that these coins were culled from circulation by the Achaean
authorities, as were the increasing number of counterfeit tournois and
torneselli, which were either indigenous to the Peloponnese, or which were