Cattaro — modern Kotor, in Montenegro — operated as a semi-autonomous commune under loose Byzantine and later Serbian suzerainty across this period, striking its own copper for local exchange when larger powers had little interest in supplying small-denomination coinage to Adriatic port towns. The follaro was the workhorse of that gap.
Dobrinić's cataloguing of this type separates it from superficially similar issues by die-link analysis rather than visual differentiation alone — a necessary approach given how little documentary evidence survives for the commune's mint operations before Venetian annexation in 1420 effectively ended independent Cattaran coinage.
Cattaro — modern Kotor, in Montenegro — operated as a semi-autonomous commune under loose Byzantine and later Serbian suzerainty across this period, striking its own copper for local exchange when larger powers had little interest in supplying small-denomination coinage to Adriatic port towns. The follaro was the workhorse of that gap.
Dobrinić's cataloguing of this type separates it from superficially similar issues by die-link analysis rather than visual differentiation alone — a necessary approach given how little documentary evidence survives for the commune's mint operations before Venetian annexation in 1420 effectively ended independent Cattaran coinage.