The ''aspron'' ( el, ἄσπρον), from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''asper'', was a late

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

name for silver or silver-alloy

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

s. The Latin word ''asper'' originally meant "rough", but had gradually acquired the connotation of "fresh" or "freshly minted", i.e. not worn smooth by use, and, especially when referring to silver, "white", by the imperial period. It acquired a technical meaning in the 12th century, when the Byzantines began to refer to the billon '' trachy'' coin, which was issued in a blanched state, as an ''aspron''. The same name was also sometimes applied to the contemporary

electrum Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals. Its color ranges from pale to bright yellow, depending on the proportions of gold and silver. It has been produced artificially, and ...

''trachy'' as well. The name re-appears in the 14th–15th centuries as a generic name for silver coinage, such as the Byzantine ''

doukatopoulon The ''stavraton'' or ''stauraton'' ( el, σταυράτον) was a type of silver coin used during the last century of the Byzantine Empire. History The name ''stavraton'' first appears in the mid-11th century for a gold ''histamenon'' showing the ...

'' or the Turkish '' akçe''. The 15th century account books of the Venetian merchant-banker Giacomo Badoer lists several cities and governments that coined aspers, which included Trebizond,

Caffa uk, Феодосія, Теодосія crh, Kefe , official_name = () , settlement_type= , image_skyline = THEODOSIA 01.jpg , imagesize = 250px , image_caption = Genoese fortress of Caffa , image_shield = Fe ...

, Simisso (or

Samsun Samsun, historically known as Sampsounta ( gr, Σαμψούντα) and Amisos (Ancient Greek: Αμισός), is a city on the north coast of Turkey and is a major Black Sea port. In 2021, Samsun recorded a population of 710,000 people. The cit ...

Tana Tana may refer to: Places Africa * Lake Tana, a lake in Ethiopia (and a source of the Nile River) * Tana Qirqos, an island in the eastern part of Lake Tana in Ethiopia, near the mouth of the Gumara River * Tana River County, a county of Coast P ...

, and

Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the S ...

.Cecile Morrison, "Coin Usage and Exchange Rates in Badoer’s ''Libro dei Conti''", ''Dumbarton Oaks Papers'', 55 (2001), pp. 217-245

References

Sources

* {{Byzantine coinage Coins of the Byzantine Empire Numismatic terminology