THE NUMISMATIC ICONOGRAPHY OF THE PERIOD OF ICONOMACHY (610-867) BY MARIA CHANTAL VRIJ A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies School of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2016 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis considers the use of numismatic imagery in the Byzantine Empire during the period 610-867, with its main focus centred in the period 685-842. Though charting the iconographic trends and changes on the coinage of the period and the possible reasons behind them is the principal raison d’être of the thesis, it also tackles methodological issues such as the use and abuse of dies studies and ways of determining who decided what images appeared on coins. The main body of the text is arranged chronologically with the methodological issues appearing throughout. Exceptions to this format are the first chapter, which considers the economic context of coin circulation in the period and the gold purity of the coins of the period, and the third chapter, which considers the production at the mint of Cherson, which produced anonymous coins not identifiable by date, but still part of the context. Finally, the thesis contains two appendices, the first paper appendix presents a catalogue of the coins held at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts for the period 685-842, and the second CD-ROM appendix presents the data from the All That Glitters… project, testing the purity of Byzantine gold coins with x-ray fluorescence. i Dedicated to my parents, who ‘worried my brain’ to make me think and inspired an interest in history that school never could. ii Acknowledgements On an institutional level, I should like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for granting me a scholarship to undertake research on the numismatic iconography of the period of iconomachy, of which the following thesis is the result. I should also like to thank the Barber Institute of Fine Arts for allowing me to use the collection as the backbone for this thesis and to publish alongside it a catalogue of its holdings for the period 685-842 (appendix 1). Similarly, I would like to thank the Fitzwilliam, Ashmolean and British Museums for allowing me to view their material for the period. Finally I, and the other members of the All that glitters… the Byzantine Solidus 307-1092 project, am grateful to the Royal Numismatic Society for the provision of funds for the project, which is discussed in chapter 1, and whose results are provided in appendix 2. On a personal level, I should like to thank Leslie Brubaker for reading drafts of this thesis, sometimes at short notice, and providing suggestions for it. To my examiners John Haldon and Rebecca Darley for helping to refine and further improve. I am also grateful to the members of the All that glitters… project for permitting me to publish its results in chapter 1 and appendix 2. Of the members of that project, I should especially like to thank Rebecca Darley and Jonathan Jarrett for inviting me to participate in it, them and Robert Bracey for helping to improve my academic confidence, and to Jackie Deans, alongside non-project member Jack Dobinson, for helping me to understand the scientific side of XRF testing. I am further grateful to Marcus Spencer-Brown, whose conversation regarding the coins of the period 685-720 has provided intellectual stimulation on the subject, and whose insistence on having references to my thesis in his MA dissertation has given me an increased impetus to actually finish the following iii thesis. I am immensely grateful to Michael Burling for providing constant support, both academic and emotional, through the period of corrections. For reading drafts for readability, providing general day to day life support and helping me to locate references I had failed to write down, I should finally – and to my mind most importantly – like to thank my mother. iv Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1 – The Byzantine economy, 7th-9th centuries .............................................. 27 Part 1 – The broader economy ..................................................................................... 27 The disappearance of the annona system ................................................................ 27 From pan-Mediterranean to localised economies ................................................... 30 From polis to kastron .............................................................................................. 33 Coin circulation and demonetisation ....................................................................... 35 Part 2 – Gold coin purity .............................................................................................. 39 Chapter 2 – The coins, 610-685 .................................................................................... 53 Part 1 – Herakleios (610-641) ...................................................................................... 53 Iconography on the gold coinage ............................................................................ 62 Iconography on the silver coinage .......................................................................... 66 Iconography on the base metal coinage .................................................................. 70 Part 2 – 641-668 ........................................................................................................... 72 The sons of Herakleios (641) .................................................................................. 72 Constans II (641-668).............................................................................................. 77 Part 3 – Mezezios (668-669), and some notes on rebel and usurper coinages ............ 82 Part 4 – Constantine IV (668-685) ............................................................................... 91 Chapter 3 – The mint of Cherson................................................................................. 99 Chapter 4 – The coins, 685-797 .................................................................................. 113 1 Part 1 – The extended ‘20-year anarchy’ (685-720) .................................................. 113 Justinian II, first reign (685-695) .......................................................................... 113 Leontios (695-698) ................................................................................................ 125 Tiberios III (698-705)............................................................................................ 127 Justinian II, second reign (705-711) ...................................................................... 128 711-720.................................................................................................................. 133 Part 2 – Leo III with Constantine (720-741) .............................................................. 136 Iconography on the gold coinage .......................................................................... 137 Iconography on the silver coinage ........................................................................ 141 Iconography on the base metal coinage ................................................................ 143 Part 3 – Constantine V (741-775) .............................................................................. 144 Iconography on the gold coinage .......................................................................... 147 Iconography on the silver coinage ........................................................................ 149 Iconography on the base metal coinage ................................................................ 149 Part 4 – Leo IV (775-780) .......................................................................................... 151 Part 5 – Constantine VI (780-797) ............................................................................. 155 Chapter 5 – The coins, 797-813 .................................................................................. 160 Part 1 – Eirene (797-802) ........................................................................................... 160 Iconography on the gold coinage .......................................................................... 162 Iconography on the base metal coinage ................................................................ 165 Part 2 – Nikephoros I (802-811) ................................................................................ 166 Iconography on the gold coinage .......................................................................... 166 2 Iconography on the base metal coinage ................................................................ 170 Part 3 – Michael I (811-813) .....................................................................................