An Estimate of Average Income and Inequality in Byzantium Around Year 1000

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.

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.

Seiyoshikennkyuukai-Symposium: Medieval Empires and their Networks, 17 November 2019 Tachikawa Memorial Hall, Ikebukuro Campus, Rikkyo University Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences; Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at) Outline of the presentation and main questions and arguments: • 1) Ideal and realities of imperial rule in 10th-11th century “Christendom”: emperors and the “dominant coalition”: Can the parallel crisis of the Roman (“Byzantine”) Empire of the East and the (“Holy”) Roman Empire of the West in mid-late 11th century CE be interpreted as a “decline” from the “apex” of these empires at the turn of the 1st Millennium CE or as the “poisoned heritage” of “autocratic” rulers (namely, Basil II [976-1025 CE] in Byzantium and Henry III [1039-1056 CE] in the German Kingdom? Both imperial offices were based on the election by and consultation “with those persons and groups of people without whom it was impossible to rule”, i. e. members of the secular and ecclesiastical elites; these groups and networks have been identified as “dominant coalition” of pre-modern states in works of institutional economics (North/Wallis/Weingast 2009). Both in Byzantium and in the Holy Roman Emperor, authors of the time diagnose a “deviation” from these patterns of rule by consultation by Henry III respectively Basil II. Furthermore, the fragility, but also flexibility of these power arrangements in both empires became especially visible during times of minority of heirs to the throne or of female claimants (in the Byzantine case). The beginnings of the climax of crisis in Germany and in Byzantium can be linked to such periods (Henry IV in the West, 1056-1066; Michael VII, 1067-1071, in the East). • 2) The crisis of the 11th century in the (Holy) Roman Empire and Byzantium: The “usual” fragility of power arrangements or new socio-economic dynamics? Based on these findings regarding the potential instability of political framework in both empires, one could ask if the crises of the 11th century were only periods of intensification of the system inherent risks of imperial rule or if they can be connected with underlying new socio-economic dynamics. For the Holy Roman Empire and entire Western Europe, the 10th-12th centuries have been identified as period of economic and demographic growth, favoured by the environmental conditions of the so-called “Medieval Climate Optimum”. The growth in the number of settlements and areas under cultivation, however, was also entangled with an intensification of secular and ecclesiastical lordship, often in competition with each other or with older rights on the use of the landscape. Furthermore, new “elites of function” (in the form of the servientes/ministeriales) and growing urban communities equally challenged the power and influence of the old-established nobilities. The conflict between King Henry IV and the nobility and peasants of Saxony due to the expansion of royal rights in the economically and strategically important Harz region thus can be understood as time of “crystallization” of these persistent changes of the socio-political framework. The entanglement of this conflict with the so-called “Investiture Controversy” with Pope Gregory VII (culminating in Canossa 1077) lead to the outbreak of full-scale civil war and the rise of Anti-Kings during the reign of Henry IV until his deposition by his son Henry V in 1106 CE. Also for the Byzantine Empire, research in the last decades has identified the 10th-12th centuries as time of demographic and economic growth. Already before, scholarship has observed the growth of the economic and political power of the “aristocratic” great families at the cost of the free peasantry (Ostrogorsky 1954 wrote about a “feudalisation” of Byzantium). In any case, similar to the Western Empire, new social mobilities and new urban educated and commercial elites become more visible during the 11th century, especially in the “mega-city” of Constantinople (for which there existed no counterpart in the West). Most recently, however, Anthony Kaldellis (2017) has put into question the “traditional” scenario of the conflict between landowning “magnates” and the imperial centre; he on the contrast claims, “the emperors were threatened not by landowners but by army officers. Some were no doubt landowners, but there is no evidence that they were dangerous because of their property. (…) Instead, they were dangerous because they could subvert the loyalty of the armies.” (p. 15). Kaldellis thus interprets the crisis of the 11th century as “systemic crisis” of the usual power arrangement of emperor, army and state apparatus. A close reading of the same sources as used by Kaldellis, however, allows us to illustrate the interplay between the traditional allocation of rank and wealth within the army and administration and the growth of landed property and their transmission within increasingly powerful noble clans. At the same time, the fragility of (non-hereditary) elite status in Byzantium may have aggravated during the 11th century both the competition over the access to the imperial office as well as tendencies toward alienation from the centre and autonomous power formation. Both trends then interlocked with the advance of Seljuk and other Turkish groups into Asia Minor before and after the Battle of Manzikert (1071 CE), leading to the loss of large areas within this former core region of the empire. In this regard, Byzantium also differed from the Holy Roman Empire in the West, whose territorial integrity despite the weakening of royal/imperial power was never threatened by the strengthened position of the leading princes, who regarded themselves “as the pillars of the empire and the guardians of its unity” (Borgolte 2002, p. 45). • 3) Geopolitical, environmental and socio-economic change across Afro-Eurasia: societies in trouble? These different outcomes of the 11th century crises in the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium are of course equally connected to the different geopolitical positions of both polities. While the Western Empire faced a serious contender only at its margins with the Normans in Southern Italy and Sicily, who also several times intervened in the conflict between Henry IV and the Papacy, the Byzantine Empire was attacked not only by the Normans, but also by nomadic groups from the Steppes at the Danube (Pechenegs) and in the East (Seljuks and other Turkish formations). Ronnie Ellenblum in his monograph on the “Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean” (2012) has connected these migration movements with environmental changes in Central Asia, most recently. He also claims, that at the same time climate-induced stress weakened the “sedentary” polities of the Middle East such as Byzantium, the Fatimid Caliphate and the Būyid dynasty, leading to their eventual downfall or almost-collapse. Based on proxy data and other evidence, however (see Preiser-Kapeller 2015), one can demonstrate a high regional diversity across the Eastern Mediterranean, with symptoms of economic growth both in Byzantine provinces and in Fatimid Egypt. The latter, however, was affected by a series of low Nile floods, which contributed to severe socio-political crises, but not necessarily as single or even prime factor. Furthermore, Ellenblum´ s claims have been refuted recently in three independent studies on Eastern Iran and Central Asia (Paul 2016; Tor 2018; Frenkel 2019). Ellenblum, on the contrast, has expanded his scenario to the Liao-Empire in Manchuria, Northern China and Mongolia (Li/Shelach-Lavi/Ellenblum 2019). While comments of experts on this study have to be awaited, data for the adjacent Northern Song-Empire even more than for Western Europe indicates a period of demographic and economic growth, although punctuated by natural calamities such as catastrophic floods of the Yellow River (Zhang 2016). Equally, for 11th century Japan studies such as Totman (2014) identify indicators for population and economic growth, however equally intertwined with increased competition over access to (shōen) land and to imperial power as in the German Kingdom, for instance. These “strange parallels” may lead us to identify the 11th century across Afro-Eurasia as a period of “crises of growth” of otherwise and despite environmental calamities increasingly affluent societies, as Thomas N. Bisson (2009) has done for Western Europe. This, however, can be also one starting point for discussion during the symposium.

Basil II Porphyrogenitus “The Bulgar-Slayer” ruled for about sixty-five years, from infancy in 960 until his death in 1025. Nicephorus II Phocas (r. 963-969) and John I Tzimisces (r. 969-976) managed the Empire as regents until John died in 976. At the time of his accession to sole rule, Basil inherited a tradition of military conquests in Syria and Bulgaria, as well as an empire stabilized by the preceding rulers of the Macedonian dynasty. Very quickly, he demonstrated his own superior military and administrative capabilities, restoring many formerly Byzantine lands and filling the imperial treasury to a point not seen in hundreds of years. He also introduced legislation to limit the power of aristocratic warlords, favoring instead the smaller landholders who served as citizen-soldiers under the theme system of administrative divisions. Upon his death in 1025, the Empire was at a zenith that it would never again reach. A few of his mistakes and the multitudinous mistakes of his successors erased many of his gains, pitted the Empire against formidable adversaries, and embarked the Empire on a spectacular decline that was arguably the beginning of its inevitable fall. Despite notable rebounds under Alexius I Comnenus (r. 1081-1118), Manuel I Comnenus (r. 1143-1180), and Michael VIII Palaeologus (r. 1259-1282), the Empire never fully recovered from the irreparable harm done in the first several decades following Basil II’s death. Thus, the death of Basil II and the mismanagement of the Empire that followed under his successors served as a turning point of no return for the Byzantine Empire.

Early Medieval Europe, 2011

This article responds to recent primitivist claims with respect to the late antique economy of the early Byzantine period. It examines the archaeological and documentary evidence for economic sophistication in early Byzantine Egypt, and addresses the issue of economic growth in late antiquity as a whole by placing the evidence for early Byzantine economic expansion in a broader medieval context. In particular, the epiphenomena of economic growth in late antiquity are compared to the epiphenomena of statistically demonstrable economic growth in Anglo-Norman England.

Privileges and grants are, by definition, an arbitrary choice of the person bestowing the grant. Nevertheless, the Byzantine Emperor, despite the absolute character of his central authority, appears to grant financial privileges for specific reasons, often combining the receiver’s gratification and state gain. Indeed, in many instances the particularly extended or expandable privileges are laid out in the prologues (prooimia) of the chrysobulls, although this happened partly due to imperial propaganda through the projection of imperial philanthropy and social justice which the emperor should not disregard.

The American Historical Review, 2004

The Economic History of Byzantium, ed. Angeliki E. …, 2002

2002