Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: Volume Five: Michael VIII to Constantine XI, 1258-1453

Dumbarton Oaks
edited by Philip Grierson
ISBN: 0884022617
price: $210.00  

This final volume of the Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection follows the general plan of volumes two through four in incorporating an extensive general introduction covering every aspect of the coinage, but it differs from them in its use of the sylloge format for the catalogue proper, with every coin illustrated and summary coin descriptions appearing on the pages facing the plates. This change is justified by the great complexity of coin designs during the first half of the Palaeologan period as well as by the poor quality of the striking, which makes the illustration of several specimens necessary if types and legends are to be clear to readers.
The collection of Palaeologan coins at Dumbarton Oaks is by far the largest that exists, and the field is one in which great advances have been made in our knowledge over the last half-century. This volume completely supersedes the account of Palaeologan coinage in what was for a long time the standard work on Byzantine coinage, Warwick Wroth's catalogue of the coins in the British Museum (1908), and forms a necessary complement to the catalogue of Simon Bendall's great personal collection of Palaeologan coins, published in 1988.