Money And Currency In Medieval Greece 251
crusading movement, and eventually as western settlement increased.45 With
the Angevin overlordship (1267/1278), settlement may have been re-invigo-
rated, and there are certainly signs of money flowing to Greece through admin-
istrative and military channels, from Italy and possibly France.46 This pattern
was repeated with the Catalan take-over of the eastern mainland, with close
ties being established to Sicily.47 From the second half of the 14th century this
pattern of administrative/demographic expansion changed, also according to
the numismatic evidence. In this period, the overall strategic situation forced
Venice, in the words of Freddy Thiriet, to a “retour nécessaire à l’expansion”.48
The military and administrative complex put in place in Romania was cer-
tainly one of the main driving forces behind the transfer of silver and billon,
maybe gold, coinages; in contrast to earlier periods, private demographic and
commercial factors may have been of lesser significance.
The Fourth Crusade and the Latin conquests resulted in a decentralisa-
tion which shifted the power relations within the Aegean and which put a
renewed emphasis on the Greek peninsula. There was an unprecedented level
of connectivity and very rapid transfers of coin took place. Some of these
were undoubtedly commercial, if we look for instance at the movement of the
hyperpyron gold coinage in the first half of the 13th century across the Aegean
in north-south and east-west direction. Nevertheless, the billon trachy coin-
age would have been carried mostly in military contexts, and then hoarded
in the Peloponnese and the mainland as a result of physical danger. A wave of
45 On this aspect of the demographics of Frankish Greece, see particularly David Jacoby,
“Italian Migration and Settlement in Greece: The Impact on the Economy,” in Die
Kreuzfahrerstaaten als multikulturelle Gesellschaft. Einwanderer und Minderheiten im
- und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans E. Mayer (Munich, 1997), pp. 97–127, repr. in D. Jacoby,
Byzantium, Latin Romania and the Mediterranean (Aldershot, 2001), ix.
46 See for instance Maria Dourou-Eliopoulou, “Oriental Policy of Charles i and Angevin
Settlement in Romania: A Model of Medieval Colonialism,” Byzantina 21 (2000), 279–86.
Monetary flows are also charted in Julian Baker and Matthew Ponting, “The Early Period
of Minting of Deniers Tournois in the Principality of Achaïa (to 1289), and their Relation
to the Issues of the Duchy of Athens,” Numismatic Chronicle 161 (2001), 207–54.
47 Julian Baker and Mina Galani-Krikou, “Further Considerations on the Numismatics of
Catalan Greece in the Light of the Athens Roman Agora (Lytsika) 1891 Hoards,” in Κερμάτια
φιλίας. Τιμητικός τόμος για τον Ιωάννη Τουράτσογλου [Kermatia Filias: A Volume in Honour of
Ioannis Touratsoglou], 2 vols. (Athens, 2009), 1:457–73.
48 Freddy Thiriet, La Romanie vénitienne au moyen âge: le développement et l’exploitation du
domaine colonial vénitien, xiie–xve siècles (Paris, 1959), 168 and particularly 353 for the
inclusion of completely new holdings in the Peloponnese, the mainland, and the Ionian
Islands as a result of Ottoman expansion and the collapse of other powers.