Michael

Intro ...

(1034-1041)

l

V

CONSTANTINOPLE

Michael IV (1034-1041). AV Histamenon nomisma. Constantinople mint. Sear 1824.

Obv: + ıҺs xıs ʀєx ʀєςɴᴀɴᴛınm. Bust of Christ facing, wearing nimbus cruciger, pallium and colobium, and raising right hand in benediction; in left hand, book of Gospels; triple border.

Rev: + mıxᴀʜⳑ ьᴀꜱıⳑєчs ʀm. Bust facing, with short beard, wearing crown and loros, and holding labarum and globus cruciger; above, to left, manus Dei; triple border.

Notes: thin, spread fabric; sometimes slightly scyphate (i.e. cup-shaped).

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Michael IV (1034-1041). Æ Follis. Constantinople mint. Sear 1825.

Obv: + єᴍᴍᴀɴᴏᴠʜᴧ. Three-quarter length figure of Christ Antiphonetes standing facing, wearing nimbus cruciger, pallium and colobium, and raising right hand in benediction; holding book of Gospels in left hand; in field to left, ıc; to right, xc. [ıc and xc have lines above]

Rev: ıc—xc / ɴı—ᴋᴀ in two lines around angles of jewelled cross.

Notes: Anonymous Follis Class C.

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Michael IV's family was one of no consequence, and his rise to power was effected through the agency of his brother John the Orphanotrophos, who was apparently known to Romanus III while the latter was a private citizen and subsequently became one of his most trusted advisers. Michael's good looks were outstanding, and when he was introduced at court the middle-aged Zoe became infatuated with him, Romanus felt no affection for the woman he had been forced to marry and treated the intrigue with indifference, even when it became evident that Zoe intended Michael as his successor. Michael was duly crowned and enthroned on the evening of the day of Romanus’ murder, and his public acclamation took place the day following.

Michael was in many respects a good ruler, despite his in auspicious beginnings and his weakness in promoting other members of his family to high offices for which, with the exception of John, they were clearly unfitted and in the exercise of which they made themselves extremely unpopular. But he had the misfortune to be an epileptic and to suffer from dropsy, so that it soon became clear that his reign would be short. Since he could not expect children by Zoe and his only surviving brothers were eunuchs, he and John agreed that his successor should be his nephew Michael Calaphates, son of his sister Maria. The younger Michael was duly adopted by Zoe as her son and given the title of Caesar. The emperor himself, though still quite a young man, died on 10 December 1041, after assuming the monastic habit in the great church of the Anargyroi which he had founded.

GOLD COINAGE. The gold coins of the eleventh-century Michaels, who were four in number, form two groups, one without any distinguishing family name or other indication of exact attribution, the other with the name of Michael accompanied either by the family name of Ducas or the name of the Empress Maria. Coins of the second group must all belong to Michael VII Ducas (1071-8), either alone or in association with his wife, the Alan princess Maria. The remaining coins have to be divided between Michael IV (1034-41), Michael V (1041-2), if he minted at all, and Michael VI (1056-7). The attributions of Sabatier and Wroth are traditional and based, where they are based on anything, on the supposition that the coin types of successive emperors are likely to resemble each other. This is sometimes a good argument, but here, where the period of time involved is short and the die-sinkers had a fairly limited repertory of recognized iconographic types from which to choose, it can by itself carry little weight.

Six criteria are helpful in working out the attributions. They are: (1) the comparative length of the three reigns—Michael V only four months and Michael VI exactly a year as, against Michael IV's seven years eight months; (2) the fineness of the coins, for debasement had only just begun in the reigns of Michael IV and V but was appreciably further advanced by that of Michael VI; (3) the evidence of Scandinavian coin hoards dating from the 1040's, since Danish pennies of this decade sometimes imitate Byzantine coin types and obviously could not imitate those of Michael VI; (4) the titles (basileus, despotes, autocrator) given to the emperors on the coins; (5) the literary evidence for the restrictions placed upon Michael V when he was granted the imperial title, since these render it doubtful if he could have minted at all; and (6) typological considerations, for one of the disputed coins provided a model for Thessalonican issues of the Emperor Alexius I. The criterion of portraiture is of no serious value.

With these considerations in mind, one can make attributions as follows:

HISTAMENA. Two types can be dealt with briefly. Coins with a facing bust and the title basileus belong to Michael IV. They were correctly attributed to him by Sabatier and Wroth, and are too common to belong to either of the short reigns. The rather rare coins showing the emperor being crowned by the Virgin are best assigned to Michael VI. Wroth attributed them to Michael V on the ground that Michael VI was already supplied with coins, but this now turns out to be incorrect. They give the emperor the title of autocrator, which occurs on tetartera that can be assigned to Michael VI with certainty, and they are not amongst the Byzantine coin types copied in Denmark, which is a strong argument against their attribution to Michael V. Unfortunately, no figures for fineness are available.

The real problem is that of the exceedingly rare histamenon showing the Archangel Michael handing a labarum to the emperor. The type is most unusual, for the emperor stands on the right instead of on the left, and the Archangel, while remaining facing, has to stretch his arm across his body in order to hold the labarum with his right hand. Sabatier attributed the coin to Michael VI, and was followed by Wroth. This is certainly wrong, as Hauberg pointed out, for the type was already being copied in Denmark in the late 1040's. The choice is between Michael IV and Michael V, and since another type exists for Michael IV, it is natural to attribute them to Michael V, as I have done in earlier studies. Two scholars would prefer to make of them a minor issue of Michael IV, leaving Michael V with no nomismata at all. Miss Fagerlie’s argument that St. Michael was much venerated as a healer, and that Michael IV was a chronic invalid, cannot be said to carry much weight, since the emperor's special devotion was directed not to St. Michael but to SS. Cosmas and Damian, the Anargyroi, the “moneyless” saints who did not charge for their services. Hendy's arguments are more substantial. He would attribute the coins to Thessalonica on the ground that an almost identical type, but with St. Demetrius instead of St. Michael, was struck there by Alexius I in the course of the first Norman war. The fact that the coins come from a provincial mint would account for both their rarity and their use of an imperial title different from that of the histamena of Constantinople. The opening of a mint at Thessalonica would be explained by this city being Michael IV's headquarters for the Bulgarian campaign, during the last year of his life, and since Harold Hardrada took part in that campaign he would have been particularly well placed to secure large quantities of such rare coins and bring them subsequently to Denmark. That this would leave Michael V without a gold coinage is not sufficient reason against it, for Michael—or his uncles on his behalf—had promised Zoe that he would be emperor in name only, and he might therefore have been expected not to mint.

Although no absolute certainty is possible, I have been convinced by Hendy’s reasoning and transferred the coins to Michael IV. The most cogent arguments are not the incidence of Scandinavian imitations; Harold Hardrada would have been just as well placed to import Michael V's histamena, if they existed, as he would those of Michael IV. They are the existence of Alexius I's derivative coins and the implications of Psellus’ account of Michael V's constitutional position. It is highly unlikely that a Thessalonican mint in the 1080's would have selected as its model a quite unimportant coinage, struck forty years previously and of such rarity that only four specimens are known today, unless this had some special connection with the city. As for Michael V, the few days of uncertain authority which he enjoyed in April 1042 after his emancipation from Zoe would not have been sufficient for an autonomous coinage, and during the previous four months, if he had minted at all, he could have done so only in association with the empress, who would have taken precedence over him on the coins.? We have in fact a pattern histamenon and a pattern tetarteron ofZoe belonging to this period, and they make no allusion to Michael V at all.

TETARTERA. Only one type of tetarteron is known that can be earlier than Michael VI. It has on the obverse the bust of the Virgin, on the reverse a standing figure of the emperor. Sabatier and Wroth attributed it correctly to Michael VI. Since it is fairly common one might assume that it belonged to Michael IV, but the fineness (16-17 carats) shows that it comes after the reign of Constantine IX. It was also only from 1042 onward that tetartera began to be struck in quantity.

Michael IV’s gold coinage thus consists of one type of histamenon struck at Constantinople and another, exceedingly rare, struck in the last months of the reign at Thessalonica. The module of the Constantinopolitan coins is nearly always larger than that of the histamena of Romanus III, and the coins are thin and often slightly concave, or at least not quite flat. As yet this was no more than a defect in striking, and not, as it later became, a formal indication of debasement, though they are in some cases of poor quality gold. His reign, however, marks the beginning of the great debasement of the eleventh century. The design of the coins is very uniform. The emperor's appearance does not conform at all closely to Psellus’ description of the youthful good looks that captured Zoe’s heart, but a beard was customary in eleventh-century Byzantium. The only noteworthy variations are in the design of the labarum, of which there are six varieties differing in the form of the central ornament (pellet, pellet in a circle, diamond, saltire and four pellets) and in the ornament above (cross of four pellets, triangle of three pellet, single pellet). It is not clear that these represent anything more than the vagaries of die-sinkers; they do not seem to mark distinctive issues of varying fineness corresponding to the degree of concavity of the coins. I am inclined to date the form ⁘⚄ earlier than others, both because it is the traditional design and because some of the specimens in the group are of relatively small module, not very different from the histamena of Romanus III. Coins with ⁘⚄, which are also sometimes small, perhaps come next. The only specimen I have seen with ·⚄, which is rare, is poor in color and debased in appearance.

The only other coin attributable specifically to Michael IV is the histamenon of the mint of Thessalonica described below, No. 2. Apart from the “facing angel” on reverses of sixth- and early seventh-century solidi it is the first representation of an angel in the Byzantine series. It is also the first representation of a saint other than the Virgin, apart from the brief appearance of St. Alexander on the coins of the Emperor Alexander (912-13). Its extreme rarity—only four specimens are known to me—is to be explained by the brevity and the exceptional circumstances of its issue.

These histamena make up all the identifiable coinage of Michael IV. He has no known silver coins. The Anonymous Folles of Class C (above, pp. 681-4) have been attributed to him by recent scholars, in place of those of Class B which were assigned to him by Wroth. My own view is that Class B may have been struck during his reign, but the dating is at best only approximate in character.

(from DOC vol. lll)

Coinage