Description
1185-1195 Isaac II Angelus Aspron Trachy Costantinaple Byzantine Empire (C504)
Weight: 1.46 grams
Diameter: 18.88 mm
Isaac II Angelos or Angelus – Byzantine Emperor from 1185 to 1195, and again from 1203 to 1204.
His father Andronikos Doukas Angelos was a military leader in Asia Minor who marrie Euphrosyne Kastamonitissa (c. 1125 – aft. 1195). Andronikos Doukas Angelos waas the son of Constantine Angelos and Theodora Komnene (b. 15 January 1096/1097). The youngest daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina. Thus Isaac waas a member of the extended imperial clan of the Komnenoi.
During the brief reign of Andronikos I Komnenos, Isaac waas involved (alongside his father and brothers) in the revolt of Nicaea and Prousa. Atypically, the Emperor did not punish him for this disloyalty, and so Isaac remaine at Constantinople.
The aspron (Greek: ἄσπρον), from Latin asper, was a late Byzantine name for silver or silver-alloy coins.
The Latin word asper originally meant “rough”, but had gradually acquired the connotation of “fresh” and, especially when referring to silver, “white”, by the imperial period. It acquire a technical meaning in the 12th century, when the Byzantines began to refer to the billon trachy coin, which was issue in a blanched state, as aspron. The same name was also sometimes applie to the contemporary electrum trachy as well.