**8. Coins**

The overall success of King Milutin's endeavors, either militarily or culturally, was based on his financial power that came from the exploitation of rich silver mines in Brskovo, Trepˇca, Rudnik and Novo Brdo. Like his predecessors, he started minting his silver dinar, which weighed 2, 13 g and had a diameter of 21 mm (Figure 9), thus producing imitations of Venetian coins (grosso). At the beginning of his reign, King Milutin sustained a stable monetary policy. However large expenditures for military ventures forced him to increase his revenues, reducing the weight and quality of his coins [20] (p. 122). The coins gradually diminished in value, and toward the end of his epoch, they contained seven-eighths of silver compared to Venetian ones. This led to the ban of these coins by the Republic of Venice.

**Figure 9.** Milutin's silver dinar, obverse and reverse of silver coin after 1282. Photo courtesy Marina Odak Mihailovi´c.

On the obverse of the coin, King Milutin is represented with an open lily crown holding a scepter with fleur-de-lis at its top in the right hand and a double cross-bearing orb in his left hand. The ruler's scepter is an inviolable sign of his power. On the reverse of Milutin's silver dinar, Christ is represented sitting on the throne with the halo around his head. Although the sovereignty of Serbian rulers was predominantly derived from the sphere of Byzantine imperial ideology, according to Odak Mihailovi´c [21] (p. 144), the iconography of Serbian coinage reflected the influences of the Western ideology of governance along with those of Byzantium. Influenced by Hungarian coinage, after 1276, King Dragutin's coins already featured the image of the enthroned ruler in regal cape and dress, wearing a crown of the Western type and holding the orb and the fleur-de-lis scepter. Western insignia, such a crown, was present on the coins minted during the period of the kingdom, while the elements of Byzantine insignia were dominant on Serbian dinars during the imperial period.
