The Economic History of Byzantium From

most research, is presented as a golden age. Nevertheless, this view, which seems set to prevail, has not, in fact, been sufficiently taken into account in recent publications.

Over the last twenty years, a more concrete approach to the rural economy has been adopted, generally considering the economy within the framework of a history of land use and exchanges. This research has mostly been undertaken for thematic or regional studies, and has helped correct the previous abstract and pessimistic picture of the rural economy, replacing it with a vision that, while still piecemeal, is now more realistic. Furthermore, all recently published work, including syntheses, is based on documentation that is now better established, more abundant, and more diverse.

Certain facts, sufficient to indicate in which direction things were developing, may now be considered probable, though much is still uncertain. The texts require further examination and do not palliate the deficiencies of rural archaeology or the scarcity of paleogeographic, paleobotanical, and paleozoological studies on the territory of the empire. So few written texts have survived that we know very little about the first two centuries of the period under consideration and are obliged to reject a chronological approach that would have given them a role. As it is, we can only guess at the economic and social changes that affected the countryside, first as a result of the plague in the sixth century, and its subsequent recurrences until the mid-eighth century, and, second, due to the frequently insecure conditions that prevailed until the tenth century. However, we cannot assess the part played by the permanent features of the rural economy, although it must have been considerable. Some continuous features must have existed, if only on the level of agricultural methods, to explain how the state finally found the means of winning the war against first the Arabs and then the Slavs. Many more regional and multidisciplinary studies are required to substantiate the hypotheses and general statements that we necessarily resort to and that, even nowadays, are liable to miss the true face of reality.

Nevertheless, the few facts we do possess call for a reexamination of some prior analyses and for an attempt at describing the characters and modalities of a development in the rural economy, which, though certainly slow, was apparently continuous from the eighth to the beginning of the fourteenth century. The outline adopted here reflects the historiographical situation, which is characterized today more by our lack of knowledge than by any divergence of opinion. Too much data are missing to allow a picture of the Byzantine rural economy to be drawn or to trace its evolution between the seventh and twelfth centuries. The following comments constitute a provisional attempt at analyzing some of the circumstances of this evolution. We will begin by examining the conditions of production under their most general aspect, followed by the factors and forms of its development, insofar as they can be perceived at present.

The Conditions of Agricultural Production

Some features of the Byzantine rural economy emerge over a long time span that occasionally extends far beyond that of the empire. Previous descriptions have sometimes presented them as the factors or symptoms of stagnation or even of Byzantium’s

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backwardness in relation to its western and Arab neighbors, without actually taking into account the specific nature of the environment or the developmental factors that belonged to a long agricultural tradition.

The geographical conditions of agricultural production in the eastern Mediterranean are presented in this volume by B. Geyer. Regions were variously suited to certain types of crops, but all, apart from those abutting the few arid steppes, possess and must have possessed at the time an overall level of rainfall adequate to ensure a generally successful dry crop farming system based on cereals and, in many places, on orchards and vines. The Byzantine rural economy developed in accordance with both the opportunities and the many natural restrictions that presented themselves, which, in turn, enable us to assess its effectiveness. In this respect, there is no point in contrasting Byzantine and Arab agriculture, as has been done, labeling the former as bound by routine when it was simply adapted to its geographical conditions, and the latter as innovative because based on irrigation,3 when the two regions are different, the one temperate and the other desertlike. It is probably far more useful to stress the way in which these diverse conditions explain in part the characteristic features of Byzantine agriculture and indeed of those systems that came before and after within the same geographical space. At the local level, this diversity favored polyculture together with stock raising, as was probably practiced in many regions, for some of which evidence is available. In itself, polyculture constituted a safeguard against disastrous weather conditions and was a component of social equilibrium. At the regional level, many medieval sources testify to a degree of specialization in relation to specific geographical and climatic circumstances, which allowed some sectors to concentrate on particular crops or stock raising whenever possible or necessary. Thus central Asia Minor, which is both cold and dry, has concentrated on stock raising over crop growing, up to the present day.

Areas close to the sea were relatively well favored; they frequently presented a greater diversity of natural conditions, featuring fluvial terraces which, though small, were easily cultivated and readily accessible, facilitating the commercialization of produce. The climate was milder and could also be more humid than elsewhere. These coastal regions appear to have played an important part in the development of the Byzantine economy. The map of land use ca. 1300 that Michael Hendy established (Fig.1) illustrates the contrast between the coastal zones, featuring cereal crops, vines, and olive groves, and the interior of the Balkans and Asia Minor, which concentrated on stock raising. In its main features, this map is valid for the end of the period discussed here. Indeed, we know that the contrasts illustrated in it were already present during the Roman period, and many of these indicators can also be found in later centuries.4

The peasantry’s tools are described in this volume by A. Bryer. He shows how little they changed through the ages and how rudimentary they were, relatively speaking, resulting in a low ratio of productivity to labor. Although our information about these

3Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 68–69.

4Hendy, Studies, 35–58.

2. The rich man scolds his wasteful steward (Luke 16:1–4). National Library, Athens, cod. 93, fol. 125 (late 12th century) (after A. Marava-Chatzinikolaou and C. Toufexi-Paschou, Katãlogow mikrografi«n buzantin«n xeirogrãfvn t∞w ÉEynik∞w BiblioyÆkhw t∞w ÑEllãdow [Athens, 1978], 1: pl. 643)

tools is mainly derived from miniatures and consequently not extensive, this picture remains persuasive. There is, however, a case for regarding the permanence of techniques and tools as evidence of their successful adaptation to the environment. This approach modifies the previous perception of a stagnating Byzantium, as compared with the sometimes overrated innovations of the medieval West, with its Atlantic outlook. For instance, the scratch plow or sole ard (rather than the western heavy plow) was alone appropriate for the generally shallow soils of the Mediterranean world.5 Moreover, some farms owned teams of buffalo,6 suggesting a capacity for plowing heavier soil than that usually farmed. The Geoponika already mentions plows that could cut more or less deeply, without providing further details.7

During the ninth and tenth centuries, tools in Byzantium appear to have contained much the same proportion of iron as in the West, iron obviously increasing their efficiency; indeed, there is no evidence that iron tools were not the norm, in subsequent periods as well.8 That significant ironand metalworks were present throughout the countryside is suggested by traces of rural metallurgy in the Crimea, by the fairly frequent discovery of iron dross in the course of archaeological surveys in Macedonia and Bithynia, and by the references to smiths in the villages.9 Hoes were required for finishing off clearance work effected “by axe and by fire,” to use the words of a psalm quoted, appropriately enough, by Eustathios Boilas,10 and must also have been suitable for working small areas. Scratch plows seem to have been in general use for plowing fields, as we know from the fact that half of the peasants in Caria and Macedonia owned at least one ox at the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth centuries—those who owned only one must have joined up with another in the plowing season.11 When compared with working with a hoe, the use of harness and metal plowshares must have gained time for farmers, enabling them to carry out the repeated plowings that were required.

Water mills were used to grind grain and, though infrequent during the protoByzantine period, were already numerous by the twelfth century, possibly already by the tenth;12 as with other improvements introduced in the Middle Ages, they saved

5Teall, “Grain Supply,” 129; Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ´economique, 250; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre,

48–50; Harvey, Economic Expansion, 123.

6In the 11th century, near Miletos, cf. “Eggrafa Pa´ tmou, ed. M. Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou (Athens, 1980), 2: no. 50 (hereafter Patmos); for the same period, in Chalkidike, cf. below, p. 258.

7Geoponica sive Cassiani Bassi scholastici De re rustica eclogae, ed. H. Beckh (Leipzig, 1895), 2.23.9; 3.1.10 (a“rotron mikro´n); 3.11.8 (baqu` a“rotron). For the date of this compilation, cf. below, p. 291.

8Teall, “Agricultural Tradition,” 51; Harvey, Economic Expansion, 122–25; on central Italy, Toubert,

Structures, 1:228–35.

9ODB, s.v. “Iron” (for Crimea).

10Will of Eustathios Boilas, ed. Lemerle, Cinq ´etudes, 22.

11In the accounts drawn up by one Georgian steward at Iveron, at least, the boidatoi were grouped in pairs for the purpose of paying the zeugologion; Actes d’Iviron, ed. J. Lefort, N. Oikonomides, and D. Papachryssanthou, Archives de l’Athos, 4 vols. (Paris, 1985–95), 2:286–99 (hereafter Iviron). Vie de Philare`te, ed. M. H. Fourmy and M. Leroy, Byzantion 9 (1934): 121, also suggests that plowing required a plow team (although this does not exclude the possibility that surface plow was performed with a single ox).

12Harvey, Economic Expansion, 128–33; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 53–55.

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time for productive work. The water for mills flowed along channels that were dug into rock or constructed (sometimes along stretches more than a kilometer long) and also served to irrigate gardens; once in place, these difficult and laborious constructions were used for centuries. The frequency with which mills and adjacent gardens are mentioned in texts serves to underline the very real importance of irrigation in Byzantium, as discreetly placed in the landscape as it was.13 Though not a necessity and not spread over large expanses, irrigation did constitute an appreciable resource.

Thus, though the explanation for the development of the Byzantine rural economy is not to be found in technical advances, the tools available to Byzantine farmers cannot be said to have impeded this development.14 At the same time, the diffusion of iron tools and the multiplication of certain improvements, including mills, as well as the many paths that were made during the Middle Ages from village centers to outlying lands (these radiating lines can be spotted on maps with a scale of 1:50,000), only served to increase the farmers’ productivity.

The Social Organization of Production

Village and Estate, Small Landholders and Tenant Farmers During the whole of the period under discussion, the social organization of production was arranged round two poles, which, following Byzantine usage, can only be called estate and village, in spite of the imprecise and frequently ambiguous nature of these terms. The equilibrium between these two poles did alter, when the village and its communal economy (which seem originally to have been preponderant) were replaced by a predominantly domanial economy (known as seigneurial in the West).15 The present attempt at analyzing the various aspects of these two organizational forms, which are still obscure, begins by dismissing certain concepts that have given rise to outdated interpretations. These include, for instance, the definition of a village as a collection of free smallholders; the principle by which smallholdings are viewed as factors of prosperity; the assimilation of the large estate to a lazily managed latifundium; and the perception of the transformation of villages into estates as a process that reduced the peasant population to serf status. All these notions have now been relegated to the realm of historiography. Instead, I would stress the duality of village and estate, on the one hand, and the predominance of peasant smallholdings in terms of units of exploitation, on the other, as permanent features of the Byzantine rural economy and factors of progress.

The terms for village (kome, chorion) and estate (often proasteion, ktema) designated changing realities and cannot be defined independently of a particular context. They enable us to make distinctions, in any given period, among the various methods of soil

13Harvey, Economic Expansion, 144; ODB, s.v. “Irrigation.”

14For the tools of southern Italy, see J.-M. Martin, “Le travail agricole: Rythmes, corve´es, outils,” in Terra e uomini nel Mezzogiorno normanno-svevo (Bari, 1987), 113–57.

15On great properties in the West, see P. Toubert, “La part du grand domaine dans le de´collage ´economique de l’Occident (VIIIe–Xe sie`cle),” in La croissance agricole du Haut Moyen Age (Auch, 1990), 53–86.

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might generally have had to pay heavier charges than village proprietors (rents were in theory twice as high as the land tax), the many other factors involved are difficult to assess. Villagers, for instance, did not benefit from the fiscal exemptions available to peasants on an estate.

For a long time it was thought that the tenth and eleventh centuries were a period when Byzantine peasants were reduced to serf status, because so many of them ceased being landholders and became paroikoi. Nowadays we know that this is not the correct interpretation. First of all, we need to stress that the term paroikos was used, from the mid-eleventh century, to designate not only tenant farmers but also landholders who paid taxes not to the state but to a third party.17 This semantic change not only stresses inversely the honor conferred on those who were in direct relation with the state, if only by paying taxes, but also shows that owning land was not a socially discriminating factor. Furthermore, the condition of paroikoi tenants improved during this period. Although their legal status was never precisely defined,18 paroikoi were considered by Byzantine jurists as the heirs of the proto-Byzantine coloni, capable of owning movable property and, after thirty years (duration of legal prescription), of securing tenant status (misthotos). They continued to be tied to the soil, which they were obliged to cultivate and on which they paid dues (telos). In the tenth century, Kosmas Magistros gave a ruling that still emphasized that paroikoi had no rights over the property they rented and that they could not alienate or transmit it,19 although it is not clear, in this case any more than in so many others, whether reality conformed to the law or even to Kosmas’ interpretation of it. In the eleventh century, Eustathios Rhomaios gave a more realistic judgment when he asserted that paroikoi could not be driven from their land after thirty years; they were then considered “like the masters” (like possessores, with rights similar to those of landowners), on condition that they paid their rent.20 Lemerle has shown that this was an important shift, since paroikoi were initially considered tied to the land, with no rights over it; they were henceforth acknowledged to possess, if not ownership rights, at least the right to pass on their farm.21

The distinction between landholder and tenant farmer was weakened once tenures held by paroikoi were considered hereditary and once some paroikoi achieved owner status. Some documents suggest that paroikoi did own some of the lands they farmed, possibly by the eleventh century and definitely in the twelfth.22 During the following centuries, the majority of paroikoi had come to own at least a few parcels of land, although this was less often the case where the whole tenure was concerned. The features

17Cf. Iviron, 2:83–84.

18Lemerle, Agrarian History, 166–87.

19G. Weiss, “Die Entscheidung des Kosmas Magistros u¨ber das Paro¨kenrecht,” Byzantion 48 (1978): 477–500; N. Svoronos, Les novelles des empereurs mace´doniens concernant la terre et les stratiotes, ed. P. Gounaridis (Athens, 1994), 246–47.

20Peira, 15.2 and 3, in Zepos, Jus, vol. 4.

21Lemerle, Agrarian History, 179–81.

22N. Oikonomides, “H Pei´ra peri´ paroi´kwn,” in Afiej´rwma sto`n Ni´ko Sborw'no,ed. B. Kremmydas, C. Maltezou, and N. M. Panagiotakes (Rethymnon, 1986), 1:232–41.

of this complex evolution are clear: as life became safer, Byzantine peasants gradually put down roots, even on estate lands. In itself, this process is a sign of economic growth.

Combing the Byzantine texts would probably reveal as many villagers in hiding to avoid paying tax as paroikoi who had absconded to avoid paying their dues.23 Indeed, irrespective of these fiscal evasions, the mobility of peasants, whatever their status, was directly related to their degree of poverty, which was often great. Unsafe conditions meant that there was more mobility at the beginning of our period than later on, but it never ceased. The important element here is that some taxpaying landholders tried to establish themselves on estates, a move they would not have attempted had the status of paroikos been worse than their own. This situation was not unusual in the tenth century, precisely at a time when village and estate economies were in competition. In 947 Constantine VII issued a novel that considered the case of a soldier who was also a peasant proprietor, who was thought to have set himself up on an estate as a paroikos, possibly because he had sold his land.24 Two documents issued in 974 and 975 by an official, the ek prosopou Theodore Kladon, referred to villagers in Macedonia who had sought refuge on lay or ecclesiastical estates to avoid their fiscal obligations. Theodore Kladon had been charged by the emperor to find them and recover the tax they owed the state.25 These examples tend to confirm that the condition of paroikos was not always worse than that of villager.

Although Ostrogorsky insisted that paroikoi were legally tied to the soil,26 this notion is not clearly defined; the head of the tenure could not avoid the obligation to cultivate the land, nor could one of his heirs after him,27 but the other members of his family were not tied to the landowner. Furthermore, in the fourteenth century, some praktika registered as paroikoi of an estate peasants who in fact owned land there and paid the tax to the master of the estate, although they did not live on it; their obligations were thus strictly fiscal, since nothing appears to have prevented them from living elsewhere. In this matter, as in others, one can certainly discern the traits of an evolution about which little is known, but that was moving in the direction of greater freedom, not increased serfdom.

In the same way, the process whereby status had been transmitted through inheritance since the late Roman Empire tended to blur the difference between peasants in villages and on large properties, seen by historians as respectively “free” and “dependent,” albeit without specifying the nature of this freedom (the condition of village

23In the case of the paroikoi: Ignatios of Nicaea, M. Gedeon, Ne´a biblioqh´kh ejkklhsiastikw'n suggrafw'n,vol. 1.1 (Istanbul, 1903), cols. 1–64, letter 3 (see now The Correspondence of Ignatios the Deacon, ed. C. Mango [Washington, D.C., 1997]); Patmos, 2: no. 50; Iviron, 2: no. 33; for the 13th century, see A. Soloviev, “Un inventaire de documents byzantins de Chilandar,” Annales de l’Institut Kondakov 10 (1938): 31–47, no. 21–24; for the 14th century, see G. Ostrogorskij, Quelques proble`mes d’histoire de la paysannerie byzantine (Brussels, 1956), 37–38.

24Svoronos, Novelles, p. 125.

25Actes de Lavra, ed. P. Lemerle, A. Guillou, N. Svoronos, and D. Papachryssanthou, Archives de l’Athos, 4 vols. (Paris, 1970–82), 1: no. 6 (hereafter Lavra); Iviron, 1: no. 2.

26Ostrogorskij, Quelques proble`mes, 68.

27Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 142–57.

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soldier was hereditary, for one) or this dependence (given that these peasants were legally free). Finally, and above all, the distinction between villagers and paroikoi blurred from the eleventh century on when whole villages were progressively transformed into estates without, apparently, the inhabitants’ economic condition being adversely affected, since rural society grew stronger in this period.28 This is why it seems legitimate, when studying the conditions of agricultural production, to treat the farming world, if not the whole peasant world, as a unit, irrespective of the different statuses held by the cultivators and even though levies on tenant farmers were theoretically heavier (see below) than the taxes paid by landowning peasants.

Peasant farms played a preponderant role in agricultural production, even on estate lands, as N. Svoronos has shown in an article published in 1956.29 This means that, before describing peasant farms, we need to look at the way estates were exploited.

The Exploitation of Estates Although much is still uncertain, it does seem that estates were often exploited indirectly from the ninth century on. Estates came in very different sizes. Some were in sectors that could be fully cultivated and were not much larger than some peasant holdings. Others, however, were sometimes far greater than the territory of a village and included mountainous or uncultivated zones. By the end of our period, the directly managed part of the estate often comprised grazing lands or forests, with the arable land nearly always rented out.

Estate owners often lived in town; this practice is attested in the Geoponika, where it is deplored, and it prevailed from the eleventh century on. However, such had not always been the case during the intervening period.30 The landowner owned the master’s house on his lands, in which his agent, at least, lived; the house often constituted the center of an agricultural unit. This was apparently the case at the beginning of the seventh century with regard to the farm of Shelomi in Palestine, which has been excavated. This farm was dependent on a monastery and formed a small courtyard surrounded by rooms, of which one was carefully decorated and the others were storerooms.31 At the end of our period, the master’s house, which was sometimes called kathedra on lay estates and always metochion on monastic estates,32 is fairly well known from descriptions in several documents from the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century. These houses were sometimes fortified and formed courtyards surrounded by buildings, comprising dwellings and workplaces (kitchen and bakery), a stable, and other structures, such as storerooms, granaries, and barns, which

28Se´minaire de l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, “Anthroponymie et socie´te´ villageoise (Xe– XIVe sie`cle),” in Hommes et richesses (as above, note 1), 2:225–38.

29N. Svoronos, “Sur quelques formes de la vie rurale `a Byzance: Petite et grande exploitation,” AnnalesESC 11 (1956): 325–55 Svoronos, Etudes (as above, note 1), art. 2.

30Geoponika, 2.1; Palladius, Traite´ d’agriculture, ed. R. Martin (Paris, 1976), 1:80–81; Vie de Philare`te,

135–37; Haldon, Seventh Century, 157.

31C. Dauphin, “Une proprie´te´ monastique en Phe´nicie maritime: Le domaine agricole de Shelomi,” in Afiej´rwma (as above, note 22), 1:36–50.

32In other contexts, the term metochion indicates a monastic estate.