1 Follaro Imitating anonymous Byzantine follis

Produced by the Norman rulers of southern Italy in the decades following Robert Guiscard's consolidation of Apulia and Calabria, this follaro deliberately mimics the anonymous Byzantine follis that had circulated across the region for generations. The imitation was not deception for its own sake — it was monetary pragmatism. Byzantine coinage was trusted by local Greek-speaking populations who had lived under Constantinople's authority until very recently, and the Normans needed commerce to function while their own monetary authority was still being established.

MEC XIV 61 places these issues within a wider Norman pattern of absorbing Byzantine numismatic forms before eventually displacing them entirely.