Unknown, Likely Late Byzantine AR Type : Any Ideas?

[O-Towner]

This one came in a small lot I purchased a few years back but I just haven't been able to figure it out. It's in the style of the AR later Byzantine types but there appears to be no legend whatsoever. It's a very thin AR type (16.5mm, 1.4gms). Any ideas of what it is would be appreciated. Here's the coin:

 

[Hrefn]

Looks like a clipped Venetian grosso.   The vertical inscription could be DUX.

[Hrefn]

a Grosso of Venice of the Doge Iacopo Tiepolo 1229-1249. Papadapoli-4803.  Prior to being elected Doge, he served as Podestà of Constantinople, newly conquered by the forces of the Fourth Crusade.   Obv:  Christ enthroned.  Rev: Tiepolo and St. Mark.  Purchased from Ed Waddell in 1988 

A plethora of imitative coins followed the issuance of these. 

 

[JeandAcre]

(Summary edit:)  @O-Towner, kindly humor me with a belated welcome to the forum!  ...Looking as if you've been posting in places I don't hang out in alot.  (Not that broadening one's horizons ever hurt anyone.) 

Right, to needlessly echo @Hrefn's point, these grossos have pronounced Byzantine influence all over them.  Effectively the only inherently Western elements are the Latin legends.  Along with their continuation in Venice, there was also a long run of Serbian imitations --from memory, a fair ways into the 14th century.  ...Wish I could get any traction with the possible occasion for the clipping.  It looks as if it could have been a deliberate, perhaps quasi-official reduction, to serve as a lower denomination ...somewhere or other.  That's likely to be an interesting story in its own right.

As you might suppose, given that this was Venice, they had close mercantile ties to the Byzantines before the conquest of the Fourth Crusade.  Nonetheless, it's a little surprising that the the grosso, with these very neo-Byzantine motifs, may predate the crusade  --and the ensuing flood of Byzantine silver.  Granted, under the presiding Doge (cf. 'DVX'), Enrico Dandolo, but possibly from a handful of years earlier.  (Cf. Stahl, Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages, pp. 16 ff.)  There are certainly examples in Dandolo's name (p. 18, Fig. 3).

This is the earliest one I could get.  Yep, holed; nope, I didn't blink.  Pietro Ziani; successor of Dandolo, Doge 1205-1229.   

(@Hrefn, I also needed one of Iacopo Tiepelo, especially as context for Jean de Brienne.  Pics of that are eluding capture at the moment.  But it doesn't hold a candle to your example; no one's missing a lot!)

 

Edited May 8 by JeandAcre