Basil I

Basil I was born to an Armenian peasant family resettled in the theme of Macedonia — the toponym from which the dynasty he founded takes its name, and not an indication of Slav or Greek-Macedonian descent — and he came to Constantinople in the 850s as a groom in the imperial stables. Patronage from the chamberlain Theoktistos and then from the emperor Michael III himself raised him through the imperial household to the rank of parakoimomenos and then to co-emperor on 26 May 866; on the night of 23–24 September 867 he had Michael III killed in the palace of St Mamas and assumed sole power the following morning. The nineteen-year reign that followed inaugurated the Macedonian Renaissance in Byzantine letters and visual culture, recovered Bari and the Calabrian coast from the Saracens through the joint Byzantine–Carolingian campaigns of the 870s, and opened the great Byzantine legal recodification — the Eisagoge (formerly read as Epanagoge) and the preparatory work on the sixty-book Basilika, which his second son Leo VI would complete after 886. The Macedonian dynasty that descended from him would hold the throne for almost two hundred years.

Two readings of the reign sit on the coinage rather than on the chronicle tradition. The first is dynastic-documentary: the four discrete portrait combinations of the nineteen-year reign — Michael-and-Basil (May 866 – Sept 867), solo Basil (Sept 867 – 870), Basil-and-Constantine (c. 868 – 879), and Basil-with-Leo-and-Alexander (879 – 886) — record the four phases of the founding Macedonian succession in struck metal, one of the densest single-reign dynastic-portrait sequences anywhere in Byzantine numismatics and the only Byzantine reign in which the succession plan can be reconstructed from coin obverses alone. The second is artistic: the gradual refinement of Basil's portraiture across the reign, from the stiff frontal busts of the joint coinage through the more carefully modelled standing figures of the dynastic-portrait solidi, runs in parallel with the better-known Macedonian Renaissance in manuscript illumination and ivory carving, marking on the metal the same transition out of the visual constraint of the Iconoclast era that the Paris Gregory and the Paris Psalter mark in the parchment.

Key Events

Coinage

Basil I's gold is read across three discrete dynastic-portrait sequences corresponding to the family configurations of the reign, not as a single uniform series. The opening sequence is the brief joint coinage with Michael III between May 866 and September 867 — a sixteen-month window of Michael-and-Basil solidi, scarce relative to the volume of either ruler's solo output. The second sequence runs from autumn 867 through the association of Constantine in c. 868: solo-Basil solidi carrying the inherited mid-Byzantine Christ-enthroned obverse (the convention Justinian II had introduced in the 690s and that successive iconophile emperors had restored after the close of the Iconoclast period in 843) with the emperor standing in loros on the reverse holding labarum and akakia. The third and longest sequence covers 870 to 879, with Christ enthroned on the obverse and the standing figures of Basil and his eldest son Constantine paired on the reverse; from Constantine's death in 879 the pairing reorders to Basil-and-Leo, with the younger Alexander entering as a third figure in some late issues. The mint base is narrower than in the Justinianic or Heraclian eras: Constantinople is essentially the sole significant mint, with limited Syracuse output until the Aghlabid capture of the city in 878 closed it permanently. The silver miliaresion — the flat, thin, broad-flan ceremonial issue Leo III had introduced in 720 — runs through the reign in the usual cross-potent-on-steps formula, and the bronze follis carries either an anonymous-style cross obverse or a portrait of the emperor over the inherited large-M denomination mark. The reference framework is Philip Grierson's Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Vol. III, Part 1 (Leo III to Michael III, 717–867) and the companion Vol. III, Part 2 (Basil I to Nicephorus III, 867–1081), with Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd ed., 1987) for the working pricing reference.

Collecting Guide

The most useful way into Basil I gold is by dynastic-portrait combination, because the family configuration is the single most informative attribute on the coin and reorders the price spread more sharply than grade does. Working references on every variant in what follows are DOC Vol. III.2 (Grierson 1973) and Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values. Common Constantinople solo-Basil and Basil-and-Constantine solidi sit in the $400–$1,000 band in VF at CNG, Roma, Künker, Heritage, and Leu, with the higher-grade Basil-and-Constantine reverses (the abundant c. 868–879 issue) clearing $1,200–$2,500 in choice EF. The scarce 866–867 Michael-and-Basil joint-coinage solidi carry a clear specialist premium — typically $2,500–$6,000 in VF — for the sixteen-month strike window. Late-reign Basil-with-Leo and three-figure Basil-Leo-Alexander solidi from 879–886 are scarcer than the Basil-and-Constantine baseline and clear at a modest premium. Silver miliaresia sit at $200–$600 in VF, the better-style examples climbing higher; bronze folles run $40–$200 depending on portrait clarity. Syracuse issues struck before the 878 fall of the city are a small specialist segment in their own right.

Market Overview

Basil I material is a steady mid-tier Byzantine market, supplied in adequate volume on the common Constantinople dynastic-portrait solidi but pulled upward on the dynastic-portrait variations, which attract a specialist completionist demand from collectors building the full Macedonian succession across the reign. Cross-collector demand pulls from two non-Byzantine fields: medieval-Italian-history collectors who buy the late-870s gold against the 876 recovery of Bari and the opening of the Longobardia theme, and Macedonian-Renaissance-art collectors who read the gradual refinement of Basil's portrait engraving as a numismatic surface of the cultural revival otherwise read in manuscript and ivory. Provenance from the Dumbarton Oaks die-study material catalogued in Grierson 1973 carries a durable premium at the higher end.

Related Resources

Further Reading

• Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Vol. III, Part 2 — Basil I to Nicephorus III (867–1081), Philip Grierson
• Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd edition), David R. Sear
• The Macedonian Renaissance Reconsidered, Cyril Mango