Sale: CNG 63, Lot: 1715. Estimate $250.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2003.  Sold For $325. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MICHAEL VIII. 1261-1282. AV Hyperpyron (4.17 gm). Constantinople mint. Facing bust of Mary, orans, within city walls; A K / Archangel Michael presenting Michael, kneeling before Christ. DOC V 14; SB 2243. Nice VF for issue. ($250) 

The Byzantine Empire was restored by Michael VIII Paleologus, who had usurped the throne of the successor kingdom of Nicaea from the child ruler John IV Lascaris in 1258. By 1261 he had consolidated his rule and was prepared to accede to a re-united empire when Pope Innocent IV and the Venetians withdrew their support for the Latin kingdom of Constantinople. Baldwin II fled, unable to put up significant resistance. Michael began an extensive and expensive restoration of the delapidated capitol city, while facing opposition from the west, the Mamluks and Turks, and his own Orthodox church. He averted the threat of Robert I of Anjou with diplomacy and subterfuge, agreeing to a Union of Churches in 1274 and instigating the Sicilian Vespers revolt of 1282. Treaties with his various Islamic neighbors kept that threat at bay for the time being. His compromise with the Catholics, however, angered the Orthodox clergy, and when the emperor died in 1282 he was denied last rites. His costly recovery plans required a reduction in the weight of the gold hyperpyron, and silver almost completely disappeared from the coinage.