Early Medieval Trade Routes

Abstract

THE techniques and methodology of numismatics as an ancillary science were developed through the study of the ancient world. The application of numismatics to the study of the medieval world is of much more recent origin. This, of course, is not to say that some great medievalists such as Henri Pirenne and art historians of the stature of Andre Grabar have not utilized numismatic data in their own researches. By and large, however, scholars of the Middle Ages have neglected the vast mine of material available to them in the form of thousands of monetiform objects which have resisted the onslaught of time. Perhaps the study of a single limited problem in which a new synthesis is reached can serve to demonstrate the utility of numismatic research. The problem we shall attack had its origins in a simple numismatic oddity that escaped mention by most numismatists and virtually all historians. Its solution appears to have vital implications and ramifications for the interpretation of the history of the early Middle Ages. Historians and numismatists have been struck by the longevity of the Byzantine solidus from the time of Constantine to the siege of Constantinople by the Turks and by the persistence of the Byzantines in maintaining that coin at a given weight and fineness for the entire early Middle Ages. There are, however, three generally ignored series of Byzantine solidi that were issued in the sixth and seventh centuries which deviated from this legal weight and standard, though both the weight and fineness were expressly stipulated in the Theodosian and Justinian recensions of Roman law. This variation from the norm in the case of coins obviously marked to indicate excessive lightness and a lesser degree of fineness cannot be the result of anything but a manifestation of an imperial policy which was deliberately carried out. Coinage in gold was a jealously guarded prerogative of the Byzantine emperor, as we know from statements by Ammianus Marcellinus, Procopius, Zonaras, and other late Roman authors as well as from the numerous laws regarding