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    It is about monetary funds in Romania

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    3 views8 pages

    Preda Numizmatics

    Uploaded by

    Mykola Melnyk
    It is about monetary funds in Romania

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 8
    THE BYZANTINE COINS—AN EXPRESSION FF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE ‘EMPIRE AND THE POPULATIONS NORTH OF THE DANUBE IN THE 6th—13th CENTURIES * Constantin Predal=) The presence of Byzantine coins in the Carpatho-Danubian area is a consequence of the relations established between the Empire and the populations on the left bank of the river. The present attempt does not intend to limit itself merely to establishing the monetary circulation as such, but, making use of the data known, to set off the essential elements with the support of which it may be possible to elucidate certain aspects of paramount importance for the early period of the history of Romania. In this respect it is particularly important to state precisely the nature of the relations established in the course of time between the By- zantine world and the populations left of the Danube. A distribution of a general character for every separate population of the monetary discov- eries made so far north of the Danube ‘depends on the character of these relations. Such an operation can be undertaken, as it is well-known that the nature of the various relations is reflected in the character of the monetary discoveries. For example in consequence of permanent exchange relations and of good-neighbour relations, with a tradition already formed, we may expedt, generally speaking, to come upon discoveries of isolated coins, especially of bronze, ‘and more seldom under the form of hoards of coins of precious metals. When the relations change their character and become relations of a political nature which implied the payment of a tribute or of stipends, we expect to find hoards, especially of pre- cious metal, and their concentration in the regions where documents record the temporary settling of the populations that reached these regions. On the grounds of this principle we hold that it is natural we should attribute to the autochthonous population, namely the Romanic one, the main fund of bronze Byzantine monetary discoveries made isolatedly, since it is well-known that between this population and the Byzantine Empire there did exist close and permanent economic relations. It seems also natural, on the grounds of the same principle, to attribute to the various migratory populations the majority of the hoards, especially those of precious metal. In this sense, the agreements concluded between the Byzantine Empire and the new populations that had reached its frontiers, to whom the Empire was to pay annual subsidies — at times very substantial ones—are most significant. Written sources mention clearly the treaties of alliance concluded by the Byzantines and the Gepidae, the Avars, the Antae, the Petchenegs and the Cumans and the * A revised version of the study published in ‘*SCIV", 1972, p. 377. 219 stiyends paia te. them s ij intai sey ads pata & he ‘pmpie, they might maintain the peace and observe Thas, one may have before one’s e é c v 0 yes the gen ictur this are ear Byzantine coins in the North Danubian eae ana ye obi way scarly follow up the way in which the process of circulation thee spec ive issues developed here. If we were to take into account the fact that for the late Roman epoch we possess, be it only partially, repandive the Sot @ monetary discoveries, with the new contributions reeording. the following period, we could get a general view of the whole istration were Tithhaen ne “Deck wer eee othe cette a of the first Romanian feudal states. And until almost the setting up At the same time with the rei, t n e r ign and reform of i short period during which the coins appear only incidental ae . cretion was resumed, ao ove estan eee faine of monetary ul ” a different: i iffer- Spine a che >eprocess as such was peculiar not only tothe “Byzantine Empire, ¥ to the region on the left of the Danube too, where the new. meaty spes appeared in all the zones where the Roman coins had cues Y tire lated. The series .of issues continued uninterruptedl: during. all th ¢ eigns, from Anastasius to Constantine IV Pogonatos, "The statisties Wwe ha e established, guided especially by isolated discoveries. SeEeS hat t e number of coins found north of the Danube increased at first, to a inate in the time of Justinian and Justin IT, and th Ggergased and Hinetuated until the reigns of Constans II and Constantine arene gor - For example, the numerical distribution of the coins for every en Pe ern even if not absolutely complete, is not far from being the eal ot cy 3 e ‘ollowing : Anastasius 21; Justin I, 36; Justinian 81; qaatin Th, 93 5 ». pieces of which belong to hoards) ; ‘Tiberius IL Constan’ tine ? a5 Maw motu Tiberius, 45 ; Phocas 15; Heraclius and family, 30; coins belong to the ronutaating a prpenatee, nmediately tee 189 g eaca. Immedi: i of Constantine IV (668—685) the monetary circulation wae sate ree 2 which enables us to speak i i i wins orth of ae peak pia first period of the spreading of Byzantine Referring them to the enti i i © ‘ L ‘ire period extending from i Or natin a, ’ we find that up to the present 509 coins were dine. Soin ee 28 2 ‘e gold issues, 157 silver issues and the rest of 326 are bronze coins of arious Rominal values. It is also worth underlining that of this erie, while 170 AB, 6 AV and 154 AW result fo eng ated, Sse0r- 5 3 1 res ‘om hi . i hat omen the bronze coins Giscovered isolatedly wei a rethen Seale y e ‘ed in hoards, i be considered considerable and significant, enough hes eres 1 Theophanes, Chronogra; ; phia, BM, 6096, p. 451; 40 a8 in Historei Grave Minores, TH, Leipzig, 1871, pp. s Dats and 98 100g ements ruched arate, Beinegee, 1eab BP- 195~106, 160; G. Ostrogorsky, Gschichle des bysanl €. Porfirogenetus, 37--38, pp. 164-171 ; Cedrenus- Skylit ne san ets TL 14, S233; &, Port ftzes, II, p. 581; 36451. Foren Camant $1 episeapia for (The Cumans and Their Bishoprie), Sean Pr alton, D8. 431-499, sao, Nels Ty 1962, ‘pp. 69~71; I. Barnea, IstDobr, II, BHR ‘Wwitoes, pp. 418, 431— 432, 439; idem, the same publication, vol. III, 1971, pp. 136-195 ton, gues au Bas-Danube, BHR 27, Bucuresti, 1970, po 157, te Diacomus 220 volume of the circulation. If we take into account that our discoveries are located outside the Empire, some of them far enough from its fron- tiers, we might say that, if in this period the monetary circulation north of the Danube was not intense, it was comparatively active. Our estimate must not appear exaggerated if we take into account the fact that the events and, generally speaking, the conditions of economic and political order in the Carpatho-Danubian area were far from being favourable to a normal monetary circulation. Until the present, there has been a number of 94 discoveries of Byzantine coins dating from the 6th—7 th centuries ; they were discovered on the territory of pre-Roman. Dacia. Of them, 82 were discovered iso- latedly and the other 12 were hoards. They are disttibuted comparatively uniformly, but there were certain zones where concentrations of coins were discovered. The numismatic researches which have often supplied valuable contributions to the elucidation of certain problems of early history, will try, on this occasion too, to throw some light on certain moments in the troubled history of the Romanian people. This time our pretentions are not the same, for the main reason that, under the conditions of a very troubled period when there were so many shiftings and commuting of populations and when events succeeded upon each other so rapidly, under the conditions of a documentation not only lacunous, but not even sufficiently clear, it will not be at all easy to make appreciations on the ethnical origin of those who handled the various categories of Byzantine coins discovered north of the Danube. If the circulation of the latter in the former Dacia could serve as an undeniable testimony of the relations, so to say considerable enough between the Empire and the North-Dan- ubian zone, the same coins help us to a very small extent to identify those who handled them. The situations must be judged and appreciated for every separate epoch and for every separate region. The monetary dis- coveries under consideration give us nevertheless certain precious indica- tions referring to the persistence of the Daco-Roman population and to the presence of the new migratory populations who made their appearance in the Carpatho-Danubian space. It is now quite well-known that the monetary circulation was not interrupted when Dacia was abandoned. Its persistence can be followed up evidently until the middle of the 5th century 2, after which there was if not an interruption a marked decrease. The recovery of the Empire and the reconquering of its positions at the Danube beginning with the reign of Anastasius, created also the conditions necessary for the resumption of the contacts with the North-Danubian population. As @ consequence of these relations, no doubt stimulated by the actual presence of the power and culture of the Byzantine Empire along the Danube and in the zone of the bridge heads, the new monetary issues will begin to reach north of the Danube, together with other categories of products. Considering the number of discoveries which amount to 94 and the way they were found disseminated on the whole area of Romania (Fig. 1), ihe monetary circulation in this period, especially in the 6th century. doves not seem to us to be an incipient and restricted phenomenon or just 2D. Protase. Problema continuitafii in Dacia in lumina arheologie: si numismaticéi (The Problem of Continuity in Dacia in the Light of Archaeology and Numismatics). Bucuresti, 1966, pp. 158—198. 221 @ casual one. On the contrary, this disseminaton or a large scale, not confined to the line of the Danube only, that is to say, to the immediate 4 vicinity of the Empire, is rather the proof of a process already formed oni which implies a tradition and the continuity of an older one, but under new forms and new impulses. Following up the same distribution of the Byzantine coins in'the 6th century, one ‘Will discover that they are dissem- inated on an extensive area which coincides almost exactly with the same circulation area of late Roman coins in Dacia, from the epoch after the withdrawal. Thus, considering that the Byzantine coins represent only a new stage of one and the same process of circulation in post-Aurelian Dacia, we are entitled to believe — on the ground of acknowledging that there was only a single and continuous process of circulation — that this was due mainly to one and the same population. As for the post-Aurelian epoch the existence, in most of Dacia, of a Daco-Roman population and culture is already proved, we think it is natural to assume that the same ethnical fund will be the main handler of the Byzantine coins. Anyhow wwe see at the back of these coins a local Daco-Roman population accus- tomed to monetary exchanges rather than a newly arrived population. Such a conclusion which is supported more especially by the isolated discoveries of bronze coins, concerns mainly the early half of the 6th century, at the same time referring to a greater extent to the extra- Carpathian region. If we were to strictly accept the information conveyed by Jordanes* and Procopius 4 we should admit that the Slavs came and settled in the extra-Carpathian regions as early as the first half of the 6th century. Archaeologically, however, and in a broader sense also from a critical standpoint of literary sources, & settling of the Slavs in this part of Dacia in the period mentioned seems to be out of the ques- tion 5, Even if we admitted there were a few jnfiltrations previous to the date established archaeologically this could not account for the dissemi- nation of Byzantine coins almost equally in all the regions of extra- thian Dacia. Moreover it would be hard to suppose a contact estab- lished so rapidly between the newcomers and the Empire. The repeated inroads undertaken by the Slavs south of the Danube, in consequence of which we could have expected to come upon a considerable number of | hoards ‘consisting of coins and treasures of objects of precious metal do j not imply at all a contact in the sense of the establishing of good-neigh- i pourly relations. The bronze coins discovered isolatedly and on rather | extended area reflect precisely the existence of normal relations between the Empire and a population living north of the Danube, whom ‘we consider the Romanic one. The fact that, from this period, we know } only of one gold coin dating from the reign of Anastasius, and another five specimens of gold ones from Justinian, two of which were found in Wallachia, one in Moldavia and the other two in Transylvania, supports what we have already formulated. But they were a little more numerous by the end of the 6th century and the beginning of the 7th. Things are about as significant when it comes to dealing with the hoards. We possess Wea Fig. 1, — Byzantine monetary discoveries, 6th—7th 2 Jordanes, Getica, 3 4 Procopius, De ae + M. Matei, “SCIV”, 10, and 3, 14, 1-6. , 145 De bello Gothico, 1, 2: 1959, 2, pp. 409 — 439; M. “SCIV”, 9, 1958, pp. 73—90; Idem, “‘SCTV”, 10, 1959, 1, pp. Nestor, ‘Dacia’ 1961, pp. 429-448 ; idem, “Studi”, 15, 1962; idem, in “RR 1964, 3, pp. 383-423 and in IstRom, 1, pp. 102 sq.; M. Petrescu-Dimbovita, in “RRH”, 5, 1967, pp. 181 sq; Dan Teodor in “MemAntiq”, 3, 1969, pp. 181-204. 222 223 ~only one soard (Culalbi, Co. Galati) from th re of pronze coins issued by’ Anastasius’ and “a ustin Peay: a T epoch, some from the reign of Mauricius Tiberius, oth: fro) time or Constans II and Constantine IV. To conclude, we hold that i spi the existing difficulties, the discoveries of Byzantine coins in extra- Carpay tt hian 1 ci my Serve, next to the archaeological discoveries, as Homan op peer Hing e presence and continuity of the Dacian-Carpae- believe a different state of thi i iod it A 0 ings in the same period in Tran- sylvania and Banat. In these regions there are only two zones where Byzan ine coins were discovered. One is situated in the inter-Carpathian x ied be een \ the upper reaches of the rivers Mures and Olt and in the Tirnava, and the other in Banat, on the | of the Mureg, before it flows into the Tisa. ‘According to both Tense news and archaeological discoveries, on the Transylvanian plateau there ms Be esides ae anative Paco-Roman population, the Gepid population. ‘ies seem to confirm such a conclusion. Besides t ‘act that some of them appear in the zone more densely inhabited by the pi , among them there are also treasures and hoards of gold coins a thing we would not come upon in the extra-Carpathian region. This wou nid also confirm the Written information according to which the Gepidae ce . . petunia rewards ce with ‘ 3yzantium from which they were to receive the latter half of the 6th century and until abo i I al ut the middl fhe 7eh, particularly important changes of a political and ethnical ators a pl . The tribes of Slavs, under the names of Antae and Sklaveni we ve te settle in larger numbers in the majority of the North-Danubian eg It would be difficult, however, to state the precise date of this pr cess. tye were to take | into ¢ consideration only the archaeological dis- 9 ave to admit their presence here as certain by th gnd of che oi et wen the Deginniny ng ot ‘the 7th.’. In this case we must ver I CESS ed & long time by the: middle of the 6th century and concluded by the begindie cP the Tth. is was also the interval of time when the Avars made their appear- ance and began to assert themselves more ani iti standpoint. In the year 567, after succeeding in putting an ond wee nat minal jon of fhe Gepidac, they occupied the Pannonian Plain and were to tthe ‘Goan 'y also in the other regions that had been occupied These political events and changes of situation are no’ is : 3 C t alway - gernibly Feflected by numismatics. The monetary discoveries do a indicate, ‘or that interval of time, any kind of disturbances in the circu- pion process. The series of monetary discoveries succeed each other fron he early to the latter half of the 6th century, not only uninterrup- dly, but: evincing actually a perceptibly ascending character during the reigns. of emperors Justinian I and Justin II. Compared to the previous issues in the time of Anastasius and Justin I, the coins from the time of “consisting xe Others date from * C. C. Diculescu, Die Gepiden, Leipzi P ty ipzig, 1922; K. Horedt, Untersuch. tur Friih- geschichte Stedent ns, Bucuresti, 1958, pp. 77—111 ; idem, Contribufti la (storie Transtloantel Battista i |

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