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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Milesofwho, post: 3271746, member: 91469&quot;]Every year before we set off to have an actual Christmas, my parents and I exchange gifts. This was one I received. [ATTACH=full]863053[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]863055[/ATTACH] An aspron trachy of Alexios I, issued from 1092 to 1118. It was an essential part of his role in restructuring the Byzantine Empire to the course it would follow until the fall of Constantinople in 1204. He reformed the currency in 1092, going from a gold coin of 9 carats or less to one of 22 carats. He created new offices and began a process of installing his friends and family in them. The imperial household expanded to include most of the Byzantine nobility, due to the fact that his rise to the throne in 1081 had in many ways been a result of their support. In the West, he fought against the Normans. In the East, the Seljuks and Patzinaks were his main foes. The defining moment of his reign, however, was the arrival of the armies of the First Crusade, a massive gathering of European nobility and their subjects that were commanded to retake the Holy Land of Jerusalem from the Muslims, who passed through Constantinople along the way. The emperor demanded pledges of allegiance from the nobility that came, as well as the acknowledgement that all the territory that was taken would be under Byzantine control. This agreement fractured in 1089 when the Crusaders captured the city of Antioch, a former Byzantine city. Due to Alexios not helping capture it, Bohemund of Taranto took the city as his own. Alexios was understandably enraged and forced him to capitulate after fighting a brief war in 1108. At home, he fought against the Bogomil heresy, a sect that believed that the body was evil, but the soul was good. Their leader, a man named Peter, was publicly burned at the stake.&nbsp; Alexios’s son, John, had been crowned co-emperor in 1092, but despite this there was still a succession crisis. Some sources state that John’s older sister Anna tried to take the throne after Alexios’s death in 1118, but was defeated. Anna Komnene is better known for her book about her father’s reign, the Alexiad. I have read it, and it is very interesting to see how different it is from other Byzantine histories.</p><p>Source: A History Of Byzantium: Second Edition, Timothy E. Gregory.</p><p>&nbsp;Post your coins of Alexios or the Crusades.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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