The later medieval and modern coinages of continental Europe

After monetary beginnings derived from Germany, Poland developed a 16th-century coinage in gold, silver, and billon that reflected its status as the greatest power in eastern Europe; its thalers were especially remarkable for fine portraiture and decoration, including the superb pieces coined by Danzig (Gdańsk) after 1567, when this area sought Polish protection. Dismemberment of Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries was followed by fluctuations in status, which have continued ever since. The coinage of independence after World War I celebrated national symbolism and national heroes, such as Józef Klemens Piłsudski and John III Sobieski. On the coins produced during German occupation in World War II and during Soviet control thereafter, the Polish eagle has been a prominent emblem. Danzig struck its own coinage (in pfennig and gulden) while a free city (1920–39).

The earliest Russian coins were produced for the princes of Kiev in the 10th century and showed strong Byzantine influence. The staple coinage later came to consist of small silver kopecks and their halves (dengi) of Mongolian derivation. Ivan IV (1547–84) standardized the types of the dengi as “Tsar and Grand Prince of All Russia,” showing a uniform design of a mounted lancer. From the 15th to the 17th century unstable social and economic conditions were reflected in clipping and counterfeiting, until reforms began in 1654. Peter the Great (1689–1725) reorganized the currency: gold was coined regularly from 1701, and silver rubles and billon kopecks also appeared, together with copper fractions. In 1725, after Peter’s death, copper “plate money” was briefly produced (as in Scandinavia) at Ekaterinburg. Recoinage on a large scale occurred in 1741. Under Catherine II (1762–96) copper rubles of great size were briefly struck, and substantial five-kopeck pieces were in common production; Russian copper was also produced in Georgia. In the 19th century, Russian coinage followed conventional lines apart from the short-lived introduction in 1828 of platinum for pieces of 3, 6, and 12 rubles. The silver ruble, however, remained the monetary basis, worth 100 kopecks until a change to gold in 1897. Soviet issues were mainly of alloys, with scarce silver and, very rarely, gold; types usually included the hammer and sickle and the star, together with allusions to industry and agriculture, though after the Revolution the Russian eagle was used at first.

Finland, as a Russian grand duchy from 1809, struck in gold, silver, and bronze until declaring independence in 1917; since then, its coins have shown the Finnish lion. Latvia coined as an independent state from 1918 to 1940 and again from 1992; Lithuanian independence, similarly until 1940 and again from 1992, was reflected in autonomous coinage.

The medieval coinages of the northern Balkan states are of great morphological interest. They are chiefly silver grossi, showing a mixture of Byzantine and Venetian influences. The Bulgarians had a regular silver coinage from Ivan Asen I (1186–96) to Ivan Shishman (1371–93). Modern Bulgarian coinage began in 1879. The Serbian coinage lasted from Stephen Vladislav I (1234–43) to the mid-15th century. There was also a coinage of the bans (local officials) of Bosnia (late 13th to 15th century). The independent city of Ragusa is remarkable for the bold Roman style of its early copper (13th century) and for its rich and varied later issues.

In Romania a princely coinage from 1866 became a royal one, of orthodox pattern, from 1881; the 20th-century types, until the fall of the monarchy in 1947, were remarkably varied. That of Greece began with the republican government of 1828: the basis was the silver phoenix of 100 lepta. This was followed, under the monarchy from 1833, by the drachma of similar value. The 20th century emphasized the types of ancient Greece, though modern issues have broken from this tradition.

From the time of Basil II (976–1025) the fabric of the gold nomismata (successor of the solidus) and also of the silver began to change, from using a narrower, thicker blank (flan) to one wider and thinner, which was also given a curious cup shape, hence the name nummi scyphati (cup money); gold scyphati declined in purity until, under Nicephorus III (1078–81), they were very base. Silver remained generally scarce; the issue of bronze became uneven. New conventions in legends and types were introduced: Constantine IX (1042–55) showed on his silver an invocation to the Virgin in iambic trimeter; and an invocation used by Romanus IV (1068–71) took the form of a hexameter, carried over from obverse to reverse. Figures of the saints appeared in the 12th century. At the same time, the intrinsic quality of the coinage had sunk to a level of desperate confusion, seen most plainly under Alexius I Comnenus (1081–1118), whose “gold” was sometimes no more than billon or even bronze. The influence of Western types was seen powerfully in the bronze struck by Andronicus II with, reverse, a cross pattée surrounded by a circular inscription within a double border. Western influence continued in the 15th century, especially under John VIII Palaeologus, whose visit to Italy in 1438 (when Pisanello made his splendid portrait medal) doubtless familiarized him with the designs of the grosso and gros, which were imitated unmistakably on John’s silver and from which derived the English groat. By this time the Byzantine idiom in coinage was virtually dead.

With the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204, the power of the Byzantine Empire was split among a number of smaller authorities, of which the “empires” of Thessalonica and Nicaea were short-lived: in both, the coinage (where attributable) was of normal Byzantine character. The empire of Trebizond, however, continued a separate existence until 1461; its small silver pieces, called “Comnenian white money,” were prized for their purity and enjoyed a wide currency. Through such means the influence of Byzantine types was exerted on the contemporary coinages of Armenia and elsewhere in Asia Minor.