The three elements that played the predominant role in the establishment of this system were the dangerous external situation of the empire, the decline in the population, and the ever increasing financial needs of the state. The reorganization of the empire by Dioceltain and Constantine, designed to establish internal stability, greatly increased the complexity of the government, and its financial needs, while the defense of the frontiers was making greater and greater demands upon the treasury. To meet these demands the empire had at its disposal land, a limited supply of agricultural labor, and certain organized services in the cities, notably those connected with the supply of food. It was by a systematic exploitation of these resources that the empire could find the necessary funds with which to defend its frontiers and to maintain its governmental establishment.
Freedom of choice gave way to strict control and supervision. Land and its cultivator were bound together; one could not leave the land, nor could the land be taken away from one, for the empire obtained its revenues mainly from the land, and it was imperative that it be cultivated. These revenues were chiefly in kind; they had to be transported, transformed and distributed; and to achieve these processes the state turned to existing organizations of transport and industry, imposed its control upon them, held their members responsible for the performance of the services required of them, and rendered their trade hereditary. The shipowners (navicularii), the bakers (pistores), and the pork dealers (sarii) were those chiefly affected. Those working in the state factories, where arms and certain garments destined for the imperial court were manufactured, or in the state mints, were also attached to their work and their trade was made hereditary. Attached to their social position, which was hereditary, was the urban aristocracy, the curiales, who performed public services, notably the collection of the taxes. The evolution of this social structure was complete by the end of the fourth century.
This was a hard system, but times were hard. The empire was faced everywhere by formidable enemies, it was fighting for its very existence, and it had no recourse but to exploit fully the resources at its disposal. The empire did survive thanks to these measures. Furthermore, the social immobility never became complete. There were free peasants who were at liberty to move, provided they did not stay on the same land for more than thirty years. And in the towns the majority of the artisans, particularly those whose trades were not connected with any public service, though organized into guilds and their activities regulated, enjoyed considerable freedom of action. Their trades were not forcibably hereditary, although the son usually followed the trade of his father, which was what the government wanted and encouraged. The artisans were even free to strike for higher wages, and their intervention in politics often had important results. The ability of members of guilds engaged in public services to find substitutes for themselves proves further that there were people for whom the security afforded by membership in such guilds outweighed the curtailment of freedom and the heavy obligation that such membership carried with it.
There were abuses and weaknesses, and these carried serious consequences. Burden from taxation was heavy, and to this was added the maladministration of the lower officials, who usually exploited the poor beyond the requirement of the law while dealing much more leniently with the wealthy. Many peasants ran away or sought the protection of large landowners, who were also great civil or military functionaries, turning over to them their land and becoming simple coloni (serfs).
The patrocinium (services of a patron) was perhaps the greatest evil, for it not only deprived the state of its revenue but also lessened the number of small peasant proprietors. While it increased the power of the wealthy, who, with their private armies, often defied the central government, thus adding to the maladministration of the empire. Nor did it help to ameliorate the condition of those peasants who resorted to it, for in place of the state private masters now exploited them - and much more ruthlessly.
The condition of most of the coloni was miserable. Some even chose to live among the barbarians. As the free peasants disappeared, while the great magnates were permitted to substitute money payments for the serf-recruits they were required to furnish to the state, the army of the empire became an army of mercenaries. The state required its citizens to work and pay taxes while it entrusted the defense of its frontiers to barbarians.
The emperors of the fifth and sixth centuries, especially Justinian, sought to eliminate some of these abuses, but the measures they adopted were palliatives, designed to work within the cadre of the existing organization. They did not succeed. At the close of the sixth century the only sizable social classes in the empire were the large magnates and coloni, although the free peasant proprietor had not completely disappeared.
The two centuries that followed form one of the darkest and most critical times in the history of the empire. It was almost ripped apart by the Persians and then by the Arabs in the East, and by the Avars and the Slavs in the Balkan peninsula. In the face of these external dangers, important measured were taken that transformed the social structure of the empire, gave new life to its society, and enabled it not only to stop the Saracens but also to regain the dominant position in the East.
The characteristic feature of the rural society that had come to obtain in the Byzantine Empire between the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the ninth was the free village community inhabited by peasants who owned their land and usually cultivated it themselves. Each free village community formed a fiscal unit for purposes of taxation. The peasants living in it were collectively responsible for the taxes, the assessment of which was now divorced from the head tax of the earlier period, allotted to their community. If a peasant, for instance, abandoned his land and there was no one to pay the taxes, the neighboring peasants were held responsible for these taxes and, in return, enjoyed the usufruct of the land. In practice, though, this responsibility was often lifted, and in such cases the abandoned land, after thirty years, became state property.
The epibole or allelengyon, as this collective responsibility for the tax was known, was designed to ensure the collection of the land tax from all the land, to keep the land under cultivation, and to encourage cooperation and mutual assistance among the peasants so that they might stay on the land. This free village community had existed before, but by the end of the sixth century it had virtually disappeared. Its restoration and extensive development, which had begin in the seventh century, led to the remarkable revival of Byzantium, after the shattering blows it had received in the seventh century at the hands of the Persians, Arabs, Avars and Slavs.
The free village community did not remain the dominant feature of the agrarian society of Byzantium. It began to lose its original character by the end of the ninth century. Everything being equal, the small farmer, with his strip of land, a pair of oxen, and a mule or donkey, managed to provide for his family, and sometimes even to prosper. Overall, though, he found it difficult, if not impossible, to accumulate a reserve with which to meet an emergency. Any misfortune, might cause the farmer to abandon his land, or attempt to sell it and try to eke out an existence by working for a large land magnate. There was no lack of purchasers.
The landed aristocracy had become weakened in the course of the seventh and eighth centuries, but it had never ceased to occupy a very important position in the society of the empire. Before the end of the ninth century it had become a powerful and wealthy group, controlling the high military functions of the empire and enjoying many economic privileges. The ninth century also saw the multiplication of monastic establishments endowed with land and ever ready to acquire more. This aristocracy, both lay and ecclesiastic, found its way into the village communities and began to absorb by various means, but principally by purchase, the holdings of small farmers, for land offered the most promising outlet for economic expansion, as the economy of the empire remained agricultural.
The imperial government, by a series of laws tried to check this absorption, but in the end the aristocracy won. Its victory, anticipated by the death of Basil II (1025) was complete by the end of the eleventh century.
Urban society too, went through some important changes during this period. The loss of Egypt and Syria and the consequent abolition by Heraklios of the gratuitous distribution of bread affected the guild of the shipowners, the navicularii, and that of the bakers. This led to the attachment to one's profession being no longer hereditary. This development was complete by the ninth century.
The guilds functioned not only to expediate the commercial life of the empire's citizens, but also to serve the government. The latter extracted from the corporations the services and provisions known as munera and, for periods of time, the tax known as the chrysargyron. At the muncipal level, they were often required to provide labor servies, on a rotating basis for the town. The government controlled many aspects of the organization and economic life of the craftsmen and merchants, specifically in terms of price setting and enforcement of quality.
While the guilds played an enormous role in Byzantine life, including the overthrow of a few emperors, today they are only a shadow of their former self, due mainly to the competietion of tax-free Latin shops and craftsmen.
One of the most important features of the social and economic structure of the Byzantine Empire was monasticism. By the end of the fourth century, monasteries were being founded virtually everywhere, the preference usually given to localities with difficult access. The monk quickly became one of the most vital elements of Byzantine society.
The monks are an omnipresent and powerful part of Byzantine society. They furnish the church with its bishops and patriarchs. People respect and admire the monks and frequently turn to them in time of need. Emperors love them, and share their table with them, and, when on the point of launching some important undertaking, often consult them. Monks are considered the spiritual force upon which the safety of the empire depended. Emperors placed greater faith in monasteries than in fortresses.
In the tenth century, the landed aristocracy came to dominate the society of the empire. The failure of the government to check this domination solidified the aristocracy's position. The prevalent element of this domination is the landed magnate, who is also a powerful figure in the political and military life of the empire. His possessions, usually acquired though imperial grants, but also by purchase and even outright seizures, are vast, sometimes stretching over entire regions.
Meanwhile, the village communities underwent important changes. No longer inhabited by free peasant proprietors but by dependent tenants, paroikoi, they had become the "property" of powerful magnates, both lay and ecclesiastical. Some peasant proprietors continue to exist. Nevertheless, free villages are few, and are hardly better off economically than the nonfree ones.
The peasants inhabiting the dependent villages are subject to various duties and obligations, known collectively as their burden, payable to their lord.
A typical village consists of land, livestock and trees. Besides the land devoted to the cultivation of cereals and other crops, vineyards and vegetable gardens are common. Among the livestock, oxen used for plowing, hogs and sheep predominate, while among the trees those most frequent are the fig, the olive and the walnut.
The peasant village is in decline, a steady process since the tenth century. In this day it is a culmination is abandonment of whole villages, a process that will accelerate so that by the fall of the Empire in 1453, they will abandon the majority of countryside.
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Last modified: Thurs Dec 10, 1998