250 Baker
in order to purchase products for export, this last phase (5) makes us sensitive
to the fact that balances of payment are not always necessarily economic (see
below). Because of the bad quality of the tornesello and its overvaluation to
the hyperpyra of account, because even the soldino is a bad currency in this
respect, because of the demise of the Venetian grosso coinage in Greece in the
1340s, and since it is uncertain to what extent, if at all, the tornesello/soldino
were accompanied by Italian gold—mostly Venetian ducats—, we must nev-
ertheless conclude that Greece was increasingly the disadvantaged partner in
any such commercial relationship. Supplies were also more haphazard, and
the closing of mints from mid-century demonstrate a certain inability to har-
ness incoming bullion. Even here, however, developments in Greece were for
some time no different to certain disadvantaged areas of the West, where mon-
etisation was also extremely low. The total monetary collapse after c.1420, with
virtually no new money entering Greek circulation at all, and little evidence
of thesaurisation, paints nevertheless a dramatic picture which must be the
result of a combination of economic, administrative/political, and strategic
factors. Problems of interpretation also hang over the exports of coins from
Greek mints into the neighbouring areas of Italy, the Balkans and Anatolia,
which were certainly quite extensive in the central years of the medieval
period. There are also some technical and administrative aspects to this (see
below), but again we can assume that for some time Greece in the decades
before and after 1300 was potent and rich enough to purchase products from
elsewhere, especially from the area between Macedonia, Thrace, and Anatolia.
In general, whatever the precise years of the medieval period, Greece was con-
sistently richly provisioned with petty cash in different forms, which allowed
it to keep up day-to-day forms of monetisation which it had been accustomed
to from Byzantine times, and which spared it from using other forms of cur-
rency such as the jettons and tokens, which parts of the medieval West had
to revert to especially during the second bullion famine which began around
1400.44 Of course, the currencies in question would not have been able to carry
the functions of silver and gold currencies, of which there was soon to be an
unprecedented dearth.
We have sensed from this discussion that monetary flows in and out
of Greece were not always economic. This was quite clearly the case, for
instance, during the 12th century and parts of the 13th century, when diverse
lower to middle range western denominations reached Greece as part of the
44 John Day, “The Great Bullion Famine of the Fifteenth Century,” Past and Present 79 (1978),
3–54 [= John Day, The Medieval Market Economy, (Oxford, 1987), 1–54].