Béla III's copper folles are among the most historically loaded coins of medieval Hungary. His reign coincided with a dramatic reorientation toward Byzantium — Béla had spent years at the Constantinople court as a designated imperial heir before dynastic politics returned him to Hungary — and the Byzantine administrative influence on his coinage is direct rather than coincidental. The follis denomination itself is a conscious borrowing from Byzantine monetary practice, unusual in a Latin Christian kingdom.
The ÉH#114 attribution places this among the better-documented types of the series, though die variation within Béla III's copper issues is considerable and not fully systematized.
Béla III's copper folles are among the most historically loaded coins of medieval Hungary. His reign coincided with a dramatic reorientation toward Byzantium — Béla had spent years at the Constantinople court as a designated imperial heir before dynastic politics returned him to Hungary — and the Byzantine administrative influence on his coinage is direct rather than coincidental. The follis denomination itself is a conscious borrowing from Byzantine monetary practice, unusual in a Latin Christian kingdom.
The ÉH#114 attribution places this among the better-documented types of the series, though die variation within Béla III's copper issues is considerable and not fully systematized.