Two very cool dengas of Moscow, with a surprising link to late Byzantines

[JeandAcre]

I bought the later one of these first.

Here's the seller's description.

Medieval Russia. Vasily III Ivanovich, son of Zoe Palaeologus, 1505-1533.  AR Denga, Moscow mint, 1520-1533. 14mm, 0.4 g.
rev: Ligature inscription: GOSUDAR' VSEYA RUSI (= SOVEREIGN OF ALL RUSSIA).

And the accompanying line drawing:

 

Followed by this one of Vasily's dad.

 

Medieval Russia. Ivan III Vasilyevich, 1462-1505. AR Denga, Moscow mint, 1463. 10-13mm, 0.4 g.

Type Shamrock.

obv: Horseman with a sword. The letters СЛ under the feet of the rider.

rev: KNZЬВГЛIКIИВАНЪВАСIЛЬЕ (=Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich), shamrock.

GP 8033.

 

Thank you, when I saw the listing for the one of Vasily, the mention of Zoe Palaeologus made me sit up in my chair.  And, Yep, she was a niece of Constantine IX, the last Byzantine emperor!  Yowie!  Here are two remarkably solid Wiki articles about the couple, confirming that Vasily was from their marriage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_III_of_Russia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Palaiologina

I figured that, while I was still waiting on a representative example of Constantine IX, this could cover some mileage.  

I have every confidence that other people here, conspicuously including @seth77, have the comprehensive picture of the entire historical context that I signally lack.  Not least regarding Zoe's birth in (now Byzantine, again) Morea, and her later childhood and education in Papal Rome, notably in the company of a prominent cardinal, a Byzantine Greek and Catholic Humanist.

But already, on a merely impressionistic level, the sweeping range of cultural dynamics is Really Popping.  

...Please, @seth77 and anyone else, you're very cordially invited to expand on this entire aggregate milieu, in Any way you want to!  ...If you have coins, I for one won't argue!

 

 

 

Edited January 13 by JeandAcre

[seth77]

Hi @JeandAcre unfortunately I cannot add anything of value to this because anything Russian is outside my interests. 

[JeandAcre]

Sorry to hear that, @seth77.  I was hoping you could do something with Morea as late as the 15th century, and maybe the Byzantine contribution to the Italian Renaissance.

[Simon]

1 hour ago, JeandAcre said:

and maybe the Byzantine contribution to the Italian Renaissance.

 In my thoughts three main things created the Italian Rennaissance, the defeat of the eastern Romans in Anatolia and the agreement Alexius I Comnenus made with the Venetians after that. The tax-exempt agreement helped the Eastern Romans short term but was a temporary fix. It made the Venetians very Rich. 

The eastern Romans were basically well educated, 30% to 60 % could read (Depends on who's figures you go by.) Much higher percentage than the rest of Europe. The Eastern Romans always told the tales of the Greeks and some of the Romans but in Italy those stories were sacrilegious, the world changed on the first fall of Constantinople in 1203, new philosophies and wealth entered Italy via refugees and plunder. With that the return of the Greek and Roman style. The italian Rennaissance started with literature, then art. The turning point was Dantes DeVine comedy, a mans journey into the afterlife. 

At the same time period the Moors were driven out of Spain, they too knew and treasured the Greek mythology, so in a period of a few hundred years, what had been shunned was being rediscovered by the Italians. The rebirth and relove of old Rome and Greece.

Constantinople's fall brought more ideas and literature into a society that had been driven into a dark age, the dark ages only existed in parts of Europe and nowhere else. 

So money, a change of ideals and the addition of new thoughts made the Italian renaissance possible. 

[seth77]

There seems to be some coinage minted in the Byzantine Morea in the late 14th to the early 15th century: a petty denomination probably intended to be paired/compete with the colonial Venetian coinage, the tornesello. J. Baker describes and puts forth some notes on these Greek 'tornesi' of Mystras or Monemvasia in 'A coinage for late Byzantine Morea under Manuel II Palaiologos (1391-1425)'. Unlike the Venetian coinage, the Byzantine issues did not move much outside the confines of three main points in Byzantine Morea during the reign of Manuel II - Mystras, Monemvasia and Sparta. As a result they are now very rare, virtually non-existent beyond the confines of the despotate.

The 'Latin' part of Greece on the other hand was supplied with Venetian torneselli from ca. 1352 and well beyond the fall of Constantinopolis in 1453. I had a post in early 2023 about the colonial billon tornesello as late as 1486 here. In Attica and the Isthmus the Catalans seem to have continued minting immobilizations of the denier tournois of Guy II de la Roche and afterwards the Acciaioli probably had their own monetary operation in the Acrocorinth ca. 1390. It is also a possibility that Giacomo del Balzo and the Navarese Company had 'tornesi' minted during Giacomo's campaign to claim Morea as titular Latin Emperor in 1382-3. These coins are noted by Seltman and Malloy et al but their attribution is uncertain and they might in fact be just non-descript late imitations 'tornesi' of the likes that Badoer was involved in buying and selling as scrap metal in the 1420s.

This is a very very very concentrated overview of the numismatic landscape in 1400 in Greece.

[JeandAcre]

Many thanks for your engaging take, @Simon.  You nailed several of the salient factors.  In particular, and I really like how far back you go with the origins, your emphasis on literature as having been the initial component.  But as you resonantly imply, the closer you look, the more nuances there are to the aggregate process.

One random observation to make, off the top of my head, relates to your reference of the Moors being driven out of Spain, complementing the Byzantine presence in Italy following the fall of Constantinople.  (...Am I derailing my own thread? Mr. Bill time:)

 

The Moorish presence in al-Andalus was a key factor in what used to be called the 'Twelfth-Century Renaissance' in Christian Europe.  After the fall of Toledo in 1085, Alfonso VI of Leon-Castile (who had spent a formative period of dynastic exile at the court of Toledo) did a kind of Alexandrian Library in miniature.  He had the entire collections of the Moorish and Jewish libraries translated into Latin.  (Thank you, keeping the libraries intact.  He knew what he was looking at!)  Ensuing copies circulated surprisingly quickly, starting (thank you) in southern (anachronism alert:) France.  

Even from the beginnings of the Inquisition in the second half of the 13th century, the profound, ongoing influence of Moorish and Jewish culture in Christian Spain was increasingly, arbitrarily curtailed.  Especially from the fall of Granada, as you note, what Italy got from Moorish exiles, Christian Spain summarily lost. 

...Right, 1492 coincides both with the fall of Granada, and the onset of Spain's colonial adventure in the other hemisphere.  The tragic irony is that, at the moment that Spain was poised to conquer vast swaths of the planet --in effectively total ignorance of the often urban populations who had been there for millennia-- it was also in the middle of the most culturally reactionary phase it had seen for centuries.  ...And that's how Spain entered the Modern world.

Sorry to end on this note.  "All Things Considered" is starting --and, no, I gave up on mulitasking a while ago.

Edited January 13 by JeandAcre

[JeandAcre]

17 minutes ago, seth77 said:

There seems to be some coinage minted in the Byzantine Morea in the late 14th to the early 15th century: a petty denomination probably intended to be paired/compete with the colonial Venetian coinage, the tornesello. J. Baker describes and puts forth some notes on these Greek 'tornesi' of Mystras or Monemvasia in 'A coinage for late Byzantine Morea under Manuel II Palaiologos (1391-1425)'. Unlike the Venetian coinage, the Byzantine issues did not move much outside the confines of three main points in Byzantine Morea during the reign of Manuel II - Mystras, Monemvasia and Sparta. As a result they are now very rare, virtually non-existent beyond the confines of the despotate.

The 'Latin' part of Greece on the other hand was supplied with Venetian torneselli from ca. 1352 and well beyond the fall of Constantinopolis in 1453. I had a post in early 2023 about the colonial billon tornesello as late as 1486 here. In Attica and the Isthmus the Catalans seem to have continued minting immobilizations of the denier tournois of Guy II de la Roche and afterwards the Acciaioli probably had their own monetary operation in the Acrocorinth ca. 1390. It is also a possibility that Giacomo del Balzo and the Navarese Company had 'tornesi' minted during Giacomo's campaign to claim Morea as titular Latin Emperor in 1382-3. These coins are noted by Seltman and Malloy et al but their attribution is uncertain and they might in fact be just non-descript late imitations 'tornesi' of the likes that Badoer was involved in buying and selling as scrap metal in the 1420s.

This is a very very very concentrated overview of the numismatic landscape in 1400 in Greece.

Huge, thanks, @seth77, for taking the time to get this far into the Morean dimension on this thread --and, only more to the point, your link to the single most relevant of your posts!  Naturally, I'm not done giving it the attention it warrants but, Yes, this was what was called for!  Cool on your stuff.

Edited January 13 by JeandAcre

[John Conduitt]

Those are interesting coins. The first is a 'coiled' legend. They're not rare but the reverses are not typical. Here's a more usual one.

Vasily III Denga, 1505-1533

Novgorod. Silver, 0.78g. Horseman looking forward with sword; •KНZЬ- / ВЕЛIКI•ВАCIЛII• / IBANOBIYЬ• (Grand Prince Vasily Ivanovich); Ѳ below. (Ѡ)СП-ОДАРЬ ВСЕЯ Р-УСИ (Ruler of all Rus) (HPF 3250A).

Edited January 13 by John Conduitt

[seth77]

I like to think that I have more than one single relevant post 😸😸

[JeandAcre]

Many thanks for posting this one, @John Conduitt.  The same Latvian dealer (I have lots of good history with dealers in Baltic countries) had listed one of these.  I liked the linear Cyrillic on the reverse (incomprehensible to me, but no less cool), but by the time I was ready to get serious about picking one of his Ivan III's --and maybe another one of Vasily-- it had been sold.  Your example is decidedly better than the one he had, anyway.  It's really fun that the mint is Novgorod, underscoring the transition from the Grand Duchy to the beginnings of the Tsardom.

There was another example of Ivan III that he might still have, which was fun for having a reverse legend in the Arabic alphabet --perhaps transiltering (late-breaking edit: please read, 'transliterating') the Turkic dialect of the Tatars?  This is still very much over my head.  But on that one, the strikes were weak, and the dealer had already given me a discount on the one with the shamrock, with Cyrillic that's only better struck. 

Edited January 14 by JeandAcre

[JeandAcre]

17 minutes ago, seth77 said:

I like to think that I have more than one single relevant post 😸😸

Even from now-dim memory, I believe you!  Any links you can find, at this remove, would be very cordially, gratefully welcome. 

[John Conduitt]

3 minutes ago, JeandAcre said:

There was another example of Ivan III that he might still have, which was fun for having a reverse legend in the Arabic alphabet --perhaps transiltering the Turkic dialect of the Tatars?  This is still very much over my head.  But on that one, the strikes were weak, and the dealer had already given me a discount on the one with the shamrock, with Cyrillic that's only better struck. 

I have one from a couple of Vasilies back that has an 'arabic' reverse. They didn't know arabic, so it is nonsense.

Vasily II The Blind Denga, 1425-1433

Moscow. Silver, 0.64g. Rider with falcon right. Imitation of Arabic inscription (Metz 11).

The reason for the 'arabic' is that before this, they traded with the Golden Horde (or to be blunt about it, paid tribute). The Muscovites didn't have coins at that time, so used Golden Horde coins. They then decided to strike their own coins (around the 1360s), but since they were still used for paying the Mongols, they just copied the Golden Horde coins - not entirely perfectly (the legends aren't right and the coins were 50% lighter), but you can still see this coin is a copy of a Jani Beg dang. They continued copying those coins, but progressively added their own design elements (1380s onwards), until they ended up with coins like yours.

Jani Beg Imitation Dang, from the time of Dmitry Donskoi and Vasily I but dated 1351

Russia imitating Gulistan. Silver, 1.01g. Mint of Gyulistan / Year / 752. Just Sultan / Jani Beg Khan (cf Sagdeeva 207).

[JeandAcre]

Thanks, @John Conduitt, not just for expanding the context, but the whole narrative.

Can you recommend any relatively inexpensive history of Russia, from the initial Swedish inroads to some negotiable, earlier part of the Tsarist period, that's both academic and (yes, even via translation) in English? 

...For the history, the most traction I get is limited to the Viking period, mostly ending with Jaroslav the Wise.  (By which time, Novgorod and Kiev were already the eastern equivalent of contemporary Normandy; well into the process of assimilating, but actively maintaining ties to full-on Vikings, whether from Dublin and England, or Sweden and Norway.)

[rNumis]

Came across this just now when compiling lists of Rauch auctions for the rNumis databases.  Lot of related coins here

https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=sale&sid=455

Cheers,

Steve

[JeandAcre]

Many thanks for this, @rNumis.  As an unapologetic newbie to the entire series, the further diversity of the motifs, only starting with the dengas, is already, benignly blowing my head off.  From here, it can't fail to evoke the brilliant die engraving of Salian denars (/11th-c. German), in convergence with comparably small flans and less than admirable strikes.

...Bouncing off of @John Conduitt's last post, in particular, I hope no one will throw anything too ripe if I repost these.  Going back to early Kievan Rus' (not an oxymoron, as long as you make sure to go back a millennium or so), they demonstrate the pitch of Byzantine influence that your examples, and @rNumis's fantastic link, demonstrate for Tatar influence, over the key interval of the 14th and early 15th centuries.

 

This is from the original Naumann auction listing.

RUSSIA. Kievan Rus. Vladimir I Svyatoslavich the Great (980-1015). Srebrennik. Type I.
Obv: Bust of Christ Pantocrator facing.
Rev: Half-length facing bust of Vladimir, holding cross-tipped sceptre; trident to right.

Right, then there's this one; the attribution also summariy lifted from the auction listing.

 

RUSSIA. Kievan Rus. Mstislav Vladimirovich Chrabriy. Prince of Tmutarakan (990-1024). Ae “Miliaresion”. Imitating a Constantinople mint AR Miliaresion of Basil II.  [The coolness of this example is that, dans le main, it really is much more visibly billon than AE.  Given the level of wear, and the presumably ongoing process of debasement over the course of the mintage, this has to suggest a relatively early issue.]

Obv: Cross potent on two steps; on either side, crowned and draped facing bust; crown with pendilia.
Rev: Pseudo-legend in four of five lines across field.

Cf. Golenko 3 (for type).

Condition: Near very fine.

Weight: 1.14 g.
Diameter: 22 mm.

With my effectively utilitarian example of the Byzantine prototype, Basil II, later 10th c.

Byzantine Emipre. Basil II Bulgaroktonos, with Constantine VIII. 976-1025. AR Miliaresion (20mm, 2.04g). Constantinople mint. ЄҺ TOVTω ҺICAT ЬASILЄI C CωҺST, cross crosslet set on pellet on four steps; X at center, • above crescent on shaft; to left, facing crowned busts of Basil and Constantine / + ЬASIL / C CωҺSTAҺ / ΠORFVROS / ΠISTOI ЬAS / RωMAIω, legend in five lines; decoration, -+-, above and below. Sear 1810. Very Fine, green deposit.

Edited January 14 by JeandAcre