The Phenomenon of Imitative Byzantine Coinages in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade: Continuity and Changes in Monetary Use in the 12th–13th Century Balkans

Broken and cut fragments of copper, retrograde and blundered legends, rulers without heads. This is all that one sees when looking at the so-called “imitative” coins of the 13th century. These fragmentary pieces of metal are but a shadow of the aesthetic beauty of the gold coinage of the Komnenian dynasty that ruled Byzantium for a century. For previous generations of scholars, these coins were a marker of the terminal decline of Byzantium, caused by the Latin knights of the Fourth Crusade, who seized, sacked, and then proceeded to rule the great city of Constantinople for half of a century. And yet, below the poorly executed figures and legends and the broken and fragmentary shape, in which they are often found, these coins hide an underlying tale of a world with not a single, but many Byzantiums. This presentation explores the phenomenon of imitative coins in the 13th-century Balkans through the use of the most comprehensive dataset of Byzantine-style coin finds from the region (c. 150,000 coins from over 600 coins finds.) It argues that this material provides evidence of a continuing monetary union amongst the different Byzantine successor states after 1204, whereby any Byzantine-style coinage was used as a medium of exchange across the territory of the 13th-century Balkans. Finally, this paper argues that the continued use of Byzantine-style coinage across the former Byzantine Empire in the years after the Fourth Crusade despite the political fragmentation of the period is evidence of an underlying demand for such coinage from both the common people and state authorities.