The Byzantine Aristocracy (8 th-13 th Centuries). The Byzantine Aristocracy and Its Military Function (original) (raw)
2023
This book provides an in-depth analysis of the social structure of Late Byzantine society (mid 13th - mid 15th c.), including the norms and ideas that governed social relations, and the Byzantine perceptions of their society. It includes an analysis of all social groups, the social networks and the patron-client relations proliferating in this period, and the distribution of social and political power between the different social groups and the state. The deficiencies inherent in Byzantine society are recognised as one of the main factors behind the fragmentation and the collapse of the Byzantine empire. Ιntroduces the basic patterns, ideas and gestures that governed the system of social relations and the construction of social profiles and roles of Byzantine society Identifies the main traits of Late Byzantine society and the ideas of the Byzantines about their social system, the social values and the organisation of their society. Explores the use of modern sociological and anthropological theories in order to better understand Byzantine society. Provides thorough and up-to-date analysis of the different social groups in the Late Byzantine society (character, composition, relation to the economic, political and ideological resources). Emphasises the networks of patron-client relations and their effect on the structures of Byzantine society. Offers a new explanation of the collapse of Byzantine society and the state in the face of external threats.
Mediterranean World XXIV (地中海論集), 2019
The Byzantine aristocracy of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries have been traditionally blamed as one of many long-term factors that brought about the disaster of the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Their greed for power and money supposedly led to political and economic hardship, together with “restraining” the Byzantine economy from developing, such that it was defenceless against the more innovative merchants of Venice and the other Italian maritime republics. Crucial to this picture is the perceived ‘feudalisation’ of the Byzantine economy, as plucky smallholders and free farmers supposedly became serfs, and major landowners dominated production and consumption to the detriment of their peasants and the Byzantine state. Recent evidence has contradicted this picture, however, as it appears that the twelfth century was a period of economic growth and wealth for Byzantium. This paper aims to demonstrate that the twelfth century Byzantine aristocracy had the theoretical economic knowledge to invest and develop their holdings, and that they carried this out for the benefit of both themselves, the people and the imperial government. Using a mixture of monastic documents, personal letters and material culture, this paper will paint a new picture of the twelfth century where the growth of the domainial estates of large landowners provided increased capital investment for resource development, as well as providing better connections between where goods were produced, and where they were sold. There is also limited evidence of both village leaders and landowners negotiating for better conditions and profits, and the emperor actively attempting to keep both workers and landowners happy, rather than the emperor taking one side or the other. The implications of this research changes the social, political and economic history of twelfth century Byzantium, as well as demonstrating how twelfth-century aristocrats could relate to their people and the imperial government for mutual gain.
Land and Privilege in Byzantium
2012
A pronoia was a type of conditional grant from the emperor, often to soldiers, of various properties and privileges. In large measure the institution of pronoia characterized social and economic relations in later Byzantium, and its study is the study of later Byzantium. Filling the need for a comprehensive study of the institution, this book examines the origin, evolution and characteristics of pronoia, focusing particularly on the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But the book is much more than a study of a single institution. With a broad chronological scope extending from the mid-tenth to the mid-fifteenth century, it incorporates the latest understanding of Byzantine agrarian relations, taxation, administration and the economy, as it deals with relations between the emperor, monastic and lay landholders, including soldiers and peasants. Particular attention is paid to the relation between the pronoia and Western European, Slavic and Middle Eastern institutions, especia...
A three year research, of which this paper, submitted to Byzantina Symmeikta for publication, rather marks the beginning of a longer period in which the subject “social profiles” will be the focus of my interests. The basic assumption here is that, in the absence of legal consolidation of “social class” in Byzantium, “social position” proper is influenced by profiles that are formed and used either by the state, that in the long run enhances its political power and social control over separate social groups, or by individuals and groups themselves in order to raise their social assertions and to project themselves to society in their effort to consolidate their own social position. The absence of legal consolidation of “position” in Byzantium created tensions that are easily recognizable in the sources, but in addition it also created space for the “lower” social strata to claim their rights in the context of a state that appears surprisingly “modern”. To reach this conclusion some theoretical aspects are examined first, including social distinctions found in the legislation that were used by Patlagean in her groundbreaking work on poverty. Hoping that the clarification of distinctions concerning the infames, the humiliores, the poor and related groups, such as the “unknown”, will be useful for a systematic approach of the subject “social class” in Byzantium, this paper investigates also the powerful, the dynasts, it strives to define the byzantine perceptions of nobility and examines the role of wealth for the definition of the position of these groups.
Introduction: Aristocrats, Peasants and the Transformation of Rural Society, c. 400-800
Journal of Agrarian Change, 2009
This special issue of the Journal of Agrarian Change comprises six essays concerned with the social and economic history of the Mediterranean world and its northern and eastern appendages from roughly ad 400 to 800. This period witnessed, in the fifth century, the dissolution of the Roman empire in its northern and western provinces (Britain, Gaul, Spain, Italy and Africa), the reconfiguration of the Roman empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans (Greece, Asia Minor and Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt) in the form of the empire known to us as Byzantium, and, from the 630s onwards, the emergence of the forces of Islam that were to wrest control of Egypt, Syria and Palestine from the grip of Byzantine Constantinople, whilst also conquering the four-centuries old empire of Sasanian Persia. Across this broad geographical and chronological canvas, and within the general field of social and economic history, these essays pay particular attention to relations between rural communities and those who sought to harness or live off the fruits of their labour-be they secular warlords, lay aristocrats, representatives of religion, agents of the state (where it existed), or a combination thereof. Each of them responds in different ways to Chris Wickham's recent work Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 (2005) and it is from Wickham's work that the core focus of the essays derive. This special issue should not be read as a review of Wickham's magnum opus , 1 but rather as a series of connected studies that use Wickham's model and analysis as a 'springboard' (to use Jairus Banaji's phrase) whence to engage in further consideration of key issues at the heart of Wickham's book. As such, the contributors and editors hope to advance understanding of social and economic relations in that important and fascinating period between the waning of Roman antiquity and the consolidation of western medieval Christendom, posticonoclast Byzantium and the classical Islamic world of the Abbasid caliphate as culturally discrete entities in the eighth and ninth centuries (on which see Brown 1971 and Herrin 1987).
2022
s of the Free Communications, Thematic Sessions, Round Tables and Posters, 3-334 ment, ses actes instrumentés à Constantinople restent inédits et très largement inexplorés, en dépit de la rareté de ce genre de sources, qui contraste avec l'ampleur de l'implantation des Vénitiens à Byzance et en Romanie. Observateur privilégié du monde qui l'entoure en sa qualité de notaire, Smeritis nous permet de faire la connaissance d'une partie des personnes qui formaient, de manière permanente ou temporaire, la société de Constantinople à la toute fin de son histoire byzantine, de même qu'il nous renseigne sur les activités auxquelles elles se livraient.
Wooing the Petty Elite: Privilege and Imperial Authority in Byzantium, Thirteenth-mid Fourteenth Century, in Le saint, le moine et le paysan. Mélanges d’histoire byzantine offerts à Michel Kaplan, ed. O. Delouis, S. Métivier, P. Pagès (Paris: Byzantina Sorbonensia 29, 2016), 657‒681
The paper studies the donations and privileges early Palaiologan emperors conceded to middle-class individuals or groups. In spite of their frequency, these concessions had until now remained essentially unobserved as attention was usually directed to donations and privileges in favor of powerful ecclesiastical institutions and aristocrats. The paper first examines the collective grants awarded to various towns of the empire. It suggests that the practice must have been widespread covering a large portion of the towns and underlines the fact that the grants concerned all inhabitants independently of their social position. The main part of the article is devoted to cases of imperial grants awarded to individuals who, although well-off, were relatively insignificant in terms of social rank and power. The frequency of concessions done by imperial chrysobull seems to have led to the emergence of a new social group, that of the chrysoboullatoi, who were below the archontes or the aristocracy. The study argues that these concessions cannot be seen as the result of pressure upon the ruler. They were rather a tool the emperors used to associate directly to their regime a wide segment of society in order to consolidate their control of provincial towns.
Chapter Six. Agrarian History And The Labour-Organisation Of Byzantine Large Estates
Theory as History, 2010
E.g. Goffart (1974). 76 for a remarkably forthright statement of this view. Brown (1971) is still the best general-introduction. Millar (1993) is a remarkable account of the cultural complexities of the Near East. On the demography of the east Mediterranean countryside, Tate (1992) is now fundamental. For Egypt see Bowman (1996). ' E.g. Tchalenko (1953-1958). I, 20, on the Syrian monasteries, '...chaque monasere constitue une entreprise agricole autonome, trks vaste, et trks bien organiske'; also Wilfong, below, ch. 10. ' Jordens (1990). Harvey (1990). There is more than metaphorical irony in the fact that the first monastery founded in Egypt occupied the site of an abandoned village, cf. S. Puchornii Wrue Graecue, Wru p r i m 54, refemng to the site as a 'deserted village called Pabau', see Halkin (1932). 36.
Rise of Great Estates in Twelfth-Century Byzantium and the Komnenian Family
Eleventh century of the Byzantine Empire seems to have witnessed a political arena that was full of hustle and bustle and that had colourful and diverse players interacting for supremacy. It might be suggested that many eleventh-century emperors supported in one way or another expansion of influence of the powerful magnate families (military magnates from mainly Anatolia) in order to strike a balance against potential massive popular uprising. And as a result, in the twelfth century, a representative of the military aristocracy, Komnenos family, with the help of other allied families, managed to usurp the throne and ushered a period of stability, prosperity and self-confidence that lasted a century. This essay sets forth, in a nutshell, a thriving and procreative economic process that was manifest from the tenth century onwards and that culminated in the growing of great estates, and its social consequences that in effect made possible of the advent of the Komnenian system and also enabled the imperial family to consolidate and enforce its rule in the twelfth century.
Approaching Social Hierarchies in Byzantium: Dialogues Between Rich and Poor
2025
Utilising new methodological approaches to understanding not only the poor as a social and economic group but also of the internal means of stratification which informed social organisation within local communities, this book looks at the place of the poor within the multi-layered hierarchies of Byzantine society using evidence from archaeology, art, architecture, as well as narrative, theological, and legal texts. Rather than treating the different levels of society independently, it looks at the social interactions which replicated and reinforced hierarchies but were also subject to negotiation within local communities. Fifteen leading Byzantine scholars discuss and analyse the topic of social hierarchies in the Byzantine Empire, covering topics such as working lives, the material world, the stratification of space, and philanthropy and social obligation. The book will appeal to scholars and students alike interested in identity formation and expression in the Byzantine provinces, as well as those researching the social history of the poor in Byzantium, and the mechanisms of hierarchies, social marginalisation, and oppression.
Voicing the rich and the poor in Byzantium: A methodological problem
Approaching Social Hierarchies in Byzantium: Dialogues between Rich and Poor , 2025
Utilising new methodological approaches to understanding not only the poor as a social and economic group but also of the internal means of stratification which informed social organisation within local communities, this book looks at the place of the poor within the multi-layered hierarchies of Byzantine society using evidence from archaeology, art, architecture, as well as narrative, theological, and legal texts. Rather than treating the different levels of society independently, it looks at the social interactions which replicated and reinforced hierarchies but were also subject to negotiation within local communities. Fifteen leading Byzantine scholars discuss and analyse the topic of social hierarchies in the Byzantine Empire, covering topics such as working lives, the material world, the stratification of space, and philanthropy and social obligation. The book will appeal to scholars and students alike interested in identity formation and expression in the Byzantine provinces, as well as those researching the social history of the poor in Byzantium, and the mechanisms of hierarchies, social marginalisation, and oppression.
The Economic History of Byzantium from the seventh through the fifteenth century
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2004
Although G. Ostrogorsky's pioneering work has been supplemented by that of H. Antoniades-Bibicou, E. Patlagean, and J. Irmscher, as well as by our own research for Hommes et richesses, the time for presenting detailed results is not yet ripe. The sources, which grow more numerous from the thirteenth century on, must still be thoroughly investigated. 1 As it is, we have space here for no more than a selection of the data that we have gathered. Accordingly, we have merely dipped into Badoer, to whom we shall return in a forthcoming volume of Réalités byzantines. We have supplemented our previous findings by adding a few items and some data about commodities (wine) and objects (luxury clothing and precious objects) not previously examined. As is well known, our information about units of measurement 2 and the nature of the coins referred to in documents is not certain. However, the orders of magnitude given below do possess a certain coherence, though economists and even economic historians of the later Middle Ages in the West will deem them very disparate and unreliable. Aware as we are of the inadequacies of our documentation, we have restricted ourselves to a few, very cautious, comments. Agricultural Prices Land and Wheat We have deliberately omitted transactions concluded in circumstances that prevented the free operation of the market (e.g., contracts between partners of unequal status) and cases involving klasmatic land, which has been discussed by others. 3 On the other This chapter was translated by Sarah Hanbury Tenison.
Byzantium as a political and cultural entity is one largely observed through the eyes and agency of its imperial and clerical elite. As the authors and commissioners of most of the documented sources that survive, the history of the Byzantine world of the 4th to 15th centuries, is essentially their history. Yet, such individuals and groups comprised only a fraction of the population living within the empire's borders. Harder to deduce are the roles and lives of its demographic majority: non-elites and the poor. Such groups are largely ignored in the written sources and therefore hold a diminished position in contemporary the scholarship. These sessions seek to remedy this issue. Scholars continue to develop new approaches for examining the daily interactions and activities of non-elite populations, including the peasantry, urban labourers, and the destitute. Equally fundamental are questions about how the poor were conceptualised and controlled by the primary custodians of wealth and power. Through a synthesis of archaeological, textual, and art historical remains this panel aims to explore a more dynamic understanding of poverty and the peasant condition within the pre-modern eastern Mediterranean.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE BYZANTINE PEASANTRY THROUGH ELEVENTH- AND TWELFTH-CENTURY NARRATIVE SOURCES
The Byzantine peasantry has been traditionally analyzed through documentary sources and material evidence. This study attempts to complement the existing scholarship on the peasantry by showing how a perception-based, socio-cultural angle can be provided through the utilization of Byzantine narrative sources from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The peasant voice is completely absent from these sources and, therefore, must be reached through deduction, close-reading and literary analysis techniques. In addition to furnishing us with much direct information on the peasants’ lifestyle, their economic and legal interactions with different actors, as well as their utilization and victimization through military matters, these sources also highlight the elite, educated and also quite urban perception of the peasantry. These narratives contain a delicate blend of marginalizing the peasantry, while also praising and defending them due to the acknowledgement that they are vital in the maintenance of the empire. A strong case is made for the collective importance attributed to the peasantry, through their function as a vast manpower pool for the agrarian economy and military machine; yet, as individuals, they remain obscure and invisible. The relative homogeneity among the selected authors’ views concerning the peasantry, which is also mirrored and enforced by military doctrines, legal documents and imperial orders of the time, indicates that their individual views are part of a broader socio-cultural expression.
The author attempts in this study to analyse the canonical texts of the Orthodox Church in order to identify certain canonical institutions used by the Church for its pastorship and mission in rural communities and how rural parishes were canonically supervised. To Christianise villages, the Byzantine Church manifested a certain canonical creativity, creating the institution of chorepiscopate responsible for rural ecclesial life and the care for the poor in rural communities. The author emphasizes the full episcopal status of the chorbishops. At the end of the fourth century, the canonical texts limit the canonical privileges of chorbishops even for their rural jurisdiction, prohibiting not just the ordination for the village but the right to ordain priests and deacons for rural communities. Simultaneously with the development of the office of chorbishops, the rank of periodeutai also appeared. These priests resided in the city and were sent by the urban bishop to visit the rural communities as well. They were supervisors of rural communities under the authority of the urban bishop and they can be considered an important link between urban and rural communities, but as well an instrument of exercising episcopal power and control in rural parishes that were previous dominated by the figure of chorbishops.