ABSTRACT

In early medieval Europe some large territories had hardly any money at all, whileothers relied on barter, ingots or extraneous coins traded as metal and often cut for the purpose. In the former provinces of the Western empire the Roman tradition gradually evolved into several diverging patterns: monometallic silver coinage in Francia, gold and sometimes silver surviving in the Visigothic and Lombard kingdoms in the south.1 Byzantium was alone in maintaining, albeit with the necessary adaptations, the main characteristics of the late Roman coinage, which was to remain the basic form of money through the nine centuries considered in this volume. Its pivot and cornerstone was the gold solidus/nomisma. Created in 312 as the outcome of the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine which checked the third-century crisis of the Roman silver denarius, the new system remained relatively stable over some six centuries. It was a multi-metallic and multi-denominational scheme of varying complexity, which adapted well to extremely varied exchanges. Coined money derived from an elaborate financial and fiscal organization that made a powerful contribution to the economic integration of a huge territory, as it had done in the Roman period. We will first outline its evolution, then the conditions of its production (mints and imperial finances) before considering its role in the economy and the variations in monetization.2