Activity

I found it difficult to find a source on the monetary system in the Byzantine Empire. My luck changed over the weekend when I found what appears to be a lengthy dissertation titled, “The Economic History of Byzantium From the Seventh to the Fifteenth Century” published by Dumbarton Oaks Research and Library Collection Washington D.C in 2002. Its unclear who the author was. However, it was edited by Angeliki E. Laiou and a scholarly committee is named on the cover of the paper. The paper covers the economic and monetary system in Byzantium. It looks in depth at agriculture and other industries prominent in medieval Byzantium. Also, the paper examines the metallurgy techniques used in coin minting. The paper is available online and I posted a link to the paper below. I haven’t been able to find any other affordable sources on this subject. I highly recommend this paper. In my last post I examined a couple of sources on Byzantine philosophy.
The Byzantine Empire had a debt free money system. The Byzantine Church Fathers rejected st. Augustine’s notion of the inherited guilt and his binary approach to analyzing the Holy Trinity. Instead the Byzantine’s believed that the three parts of the Holy Trinity were equal and in harmony with each other. Also, they believed that mankind inherited the punishment not the guilt for Adam and Eve’s sin. This meant that mankind did not have an infinite spiritual debt to pay to an infinitely angry God. This in turn led to Byzantium having a debt free money system. Their culture and economy flourished. Byzantium never merged philosophy and theology like the west did. Dr. Joseph p Farrell discussed these differences between Augustinian Latin theology and pre Augustinian Western theology and the Greek Church Fathers in his book “God, History, and Dialectic”. Therefore, Byzantium became a center of learning in science, literature, music, and the arts. This is why I’m interested in studying not only Byzantine theology and history. But also the culture such as the art, literature, music, and philosophy. I’m hoping to be able to find good sources for the primary texts that I would need to do this successfully. Here is the link to the paper on Byzantine’s economic system.
https://magictea.cc/assets/uploads/files/1528942958767-economic-history-of-byzantium.pdf