The Economic History of Byzantium From

would have held the produce of the estate farm and dues paid in kind. Metochia also included a church.33

Direct forms of exploitation were carried out by employees and, at least from the eleventh century on, through the “services” owed by peasants living on the estate.34 At the beginning of our period, the agricultural production of the domanial farm was probably less marginal than was subsequently the case: the Geoponika (albeit based on a 3d-century text and without specifying a location) refers to brigades of laborers, workers, coloni, and slaves, who hoed the soil to a rhythm set by a supervisor.35 This conveys a wholly different picture of the domanial economy than that alluded to in medieval texts, but this form of exploitation may have persisted in various places for a while.

References to slaves and wage laborers on domanial lands suggest, while not in themselves proving, the existence of a significant level of direct farming in the earliest periods. At the end of the eighth century, the Life of St. Philaretos mentions only numerous “servants” (oiketai) on the holy man’s domains in Paphlagonia.36 During the second half of the ninth century, the famous widow traditionally named Danelis owned “a part of the Peloponnese that was not small” and thousands of slaves, many of whom may have merely held domestic roles or done artisan work,37 while others may have worked on the land. Also in the tenth century, lands belonging to the emperor, “to archontes or other persons,” were probably exploited by slaves,38 but these slaves could be established on a piece of land, as was the case with the douloparoikoi of Macedonia in the ninth to eleventh centuries.39 In the tenth century or a bit later, the Fiscal Treatise also refers to the presence of slaves, wage laborers, “and others,” without specifying the work performed by each of these categories.40 Despite their lack of precision, such

33Patmos, 2: nos. 50 (1073) and 52 (1089); Iviron, 2: no. 52; C. Giros, “Remarques sur l’architecture monastique en Mace´doine orientale,” BCH 116 (1992): 409–43; P. Magdalino, “The Byzantine Aristocratic Oikos,” in The Byzantine Aristocracy, IXth to XIIIth Centuries, ed. M. Angold (Oxford, 1984), 92–111; Harvey, Economic Expansion, 188–89.

34In 1077, for instance, the Diataxis of Michael Attaleiates (“La Diataxis de Michel Attaliate,” ed. P. Gautier, REB 39 [1981]: 73) refers to douleiai owed by paroikoi. There is good evidence during our period for corve´es (aggareiai), due initially to the state, then to the owners of estates, and which were often 12 or 24 days per year; they could be used for plowing the land, as in Actes de Chilandar, ed. L. Petit and B. Korablev, ( VizVrem 17 [1911]; repr. Amsterdam, 1975), no. 93, in 1323; cf. A. Stauridou-Zaphraka, “ HJ ajggarei´a sto` Buzantio,” Byzantina 11 (1982): 23–54; ODB, s.v. “Corve´e”; and A. E. Laiou, “The Agrarian Economy, Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries,” EHB 328ff. For central Italy, see Toubert, Structures, 1:465–73.

35Geoponika, 2.45.5.

36Vie de Philare`te, 115.

37Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 319.

38Novel 38 issued by Leo VI (Les Novelles de Le´on VI le Sage, ed. P. Noailles and A. Dain [Paris, 1944]) refers to these slaves but does not specify their occupation. The same Leo VI freed 3,000 slaves belonging to Danelis and sent them to cultivate lands in Longobardia: Theophanes Continuatus, 321.

39N.Oikonomides, “OiJ buzantinoi` doulopa´ roikoi,” Su´mmeikta 5 (1983): 295–302; ODB, s.v. “Douloparoikos,” “Slavery.”

40Fiscal Treatise, ed. F. Do¨lger, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Finanzverwaltung besonders des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig–Berlin, 1927; repr. 1960), 115. The date of the Fiscal Treatise has not been established; it is later than the beginning of the 10th century, but no later than the 12th century.

242 JACQUES LEFORT

references, which are plentiful,41 suggest that slaves had played an important part in the domanial economy since the seventh century, and increasingly so following the Byzantine reconquests.42 However, nothing specific is known about their function; they assisted the master of the place or his agent in all sorts of ways in the business of managing the estate. Further mentions of slaves occur in the eleventh century when they were freed, and they disappear from the sources after the twelfth century.43

References to wage laborers also occur continuously from the seventh century44 to the end of the Byzantine period. The number is never specified, and their occupation only rarely; they can be woodcutters, shepherds, or millers and employed in agricultural work on a seasonal or permanent basis. In 1089, for instance, an estate belonging to St. John of Patmos on the island of Leros included a house for agricultural workers about whom nothing is known, and another that was kept for some paroikoi, who were no better established than the others, since they lived together and did not possess houses of their own.45 In the same way, the status of wage laborer (like that of slave) could constitute a transitional stage in a process leading to a more stable condition.46 To sum up, at least by the end of the period under consideration, wage laborers, as a category of the rural workforce, did not play a decisive role in agricultural production. The overall impression is that the direct management of the demesne required an increasingly smaller workforce.

From the tenth century on, in fact, our information about agricultural exploitation proper to the demesne suggests that it was limited. In Byzantine Apulia, judging by the situation during the Lombard and Norman periods, the cultivated reserve was insignificant, even nonexistent.47 In eastern Anatolia, in the mid-eleventh century, on the lands of the protospatharios Eustathios Boilas, all the farmland seems to have been divided up into tenures and let out for rent ( pakton), some of it to Boilas’ freed slaves.48 The same situation may, or may not, have existed in 1077 on the domains of Michael Attaleiates in Thrace near Rhaidestos, which were farmed by paroikoi and by short-term leaseholders (ekleptores), who (the former at least) owed the landowner “services.”49 In the same way, a reference in 1083 to plow teams belonging to the master (despotika zeugaria), coupled with a mention of wage laborers on the estates of the megas domestikos

41Cf. Teall, “Agricultural Tradition,” 53.

42Cf. Ioannis Skylitzae Synopsis historiarum, ed. I. Thurn (Berlin–New York, 1973), 250 (hereafter Skylitzes).

43Oikonomides, “Doulopa´ roikoi” 298; G. Ostrogorskij, Pour l’histoire de la fe´odalite´ byzantine (Brussels, 1954), 297. In 1073 on the estate of Baris in the region of Miletos, no slave could be mentioned “for they are dead” (Patmos, 2: no. 50).

44P. A. Yannopoulos, La socie´te´ profane dans l’Empire byzantin des VIIe, VIIIe et IXe sie`cles (Louvain, 1975), 199.

45Patmos, 2: no. 52.

46Thus in 1300 the estate of Xenophon at Stomion in Chalkidike was cultivated by wage laborers (proskaqh´menoi mi´sqarnoi) installed there, who became paroikoi prior to 1318: Actes de Xe´nophon, ed. D. Papachryssanthou, Archives de l’Athos (Paris, 1986), 128.

47Martin, La Pouille, 205, 306–7 (there are no data for the Byzantine period).

48Lemerle, Cinq ´etudes, 59–60.

49Cf. above, note 34; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 350.

of the West, Gregory Pakourianos, at Petritzos in Bulgaria, also suggests that a proportion of the cultivated part of the estate was directly farmed, although this is not certain.50 As it is, we do have evidence for direct exploitation at Baris, near Miletos, in 1073 (see below), and this appears to be the case in the first decade of the twelfth century at Radolibos, a large village in Macedonia that became a domain of Iveron, and which will frequently be alluded to below. Here, however, the nineteen master’s fields (choraphia despotika, 100 modioi in all, ca. 12.5 ha)51 represented only 3% of all the fields that were part of this village, the rest being owned and farmed by paroikoi. It is debatable whether these “despotic” fields were not simply parcels of land whose tenures lapsed periodically, in certain circumstances, only to be renewed, in which case the principal function of domanial exploitation would have been to manage them on a provisional basis. In fact, seven of these nineteen fields were not directly farmed, but were apparently let on short-term leases to some of the monastery’s paroikoi.

During the same period, an item about seed (150 modioi), in the accounts kept by the Georgian steward on this estate, confirms the existence of the domanial farm, which was no larger than three of the 122 peasant farms on the same estate put together and had no great economic significance.52 While the area under cultivation was sometimes greater, the direct exploitation of arable land on the estate generally seems to have become marginal.53 From the tenth century on, at least, the agent managed only part of the incultum directly and left the exploitation of arable land to the peasants. As it is, attempts to illustrate the history of the “feudalization” of the empire by contrasting the small area of arable land meanly left to the paroikoi with the huge expanse (mostly uncultivated land) reserved for the master of the estate, have proved quite meaningless, given the very different use of the soil in either case.54

Peasant Farms Consequently, the greater part of the arable land, whether in the context of estate or village, is reckoned to have been cultivated within peasant holdings by the family head with the help of his wife and children, who constituted a hearth. The peasant family retained rights over their farmed land that were often hereditary. This institution may have been confirmed at the beginning of our period, as a result of the stable status of certain tenants during the proto-Byzantine period, and was reinforced first by the Roman right of succession and then by the canonical right of

50Lemerle, Cinq ´etudes, 189.

51This ratio may generally be allowed:1 ha 10 modioi. This is only an average of the various values for the modios established by Schilbach, Byzantinische Metrologie, cf. his index, s.v. “Modios” (888.7 m2, 939.2 m2, 1,279.8 m2). In Macedonia, the modios seems to have comprised around 1,250 m2: Ge´ome´tries du fisc byzantin, ed. J. Lefort et al. (Paris, 1991), 263.

52Iviron, 2:253.

53In 1323 at Mamitzon near Constantinople, the Chilandar monastery held in exclusive possession

600modioi of land plowed by the corve´es of paroikoi, that is 15% of the entire area (3,912 modioi): Chilandar, no. 92, for 1323: for the 11th century, see comments by Svoronos in “Structures ´economiques,” 51–56 and, for the 13th to the 15th centuries regarding this document in particular, see Laiou, “Agrarian Economy,” 322ff.

54Cf. for instance ODB, s.v. “Demesne.”

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marriage.55 It was then extended to rural slaves who had gained their freedom. Evidence for this is provided, for instance, by the houses of landowners or tenants, on the limestone massif of northern Syria up to the seventh century,56 and also by the saints’ lives and documents. The persons who made up a hearth represented only part of the biological family; some children were obliged as adults to leave the house, the girls to marry and the boys to find employment elsewhere as soldiers, for instance, or to start up another farm. Macedonia is the only place in the early fourteenth century where the composition of hearths and the demographic comportment of families, as well as their modest strategies to safeguard both their farms and the position of members separated from the hearth, may be deduced from surviving praktika that contain precise hearth counts and form valuable series.

Angeliki Laiou has thus been able to establish that a young couple would have between three and four surviving children around 1300,57 which evokes a form of demographic behavior typical of the preindustrial age, one that enabled the population to grow at a significant natural rate, at least in the absence of recurrent catastrophes.58 Of 164 hearths counted in 1301 on the properties of Iveron in the Thessalonike region, during a period of strong demographic pressure, the registered population comprised an average of 4.9 persons per hearth, and an average of 4.7 persons on the properties of the Athonite monastery of Lavra.59 The number of persons that a farm could feed was obviously related to the available means of cultivation; on the properties of Iveron it was very high among the few peasants who possessed two plow teams (7.5 persons, or 1.9 per ox), high too in hearths with only one team (5.6 persons, or 2.8 per ox) or a single ox (5.1 persons), and less with those who owned no oxen (4.1 persons).60 These figures show that hearth populations were not in direct proportion to the number of draft animals, since the best-supplied peasants in this respect had relatively fewer mouths to feed, an economically significant fact that will be explored below. A praktikon dating from 1103 suggests that the structure of hearths at Radolibos was the same then as in the fourteenth century;61 numbers may have been slightly less, given the lighter demographic pressure. Eleventh-century lists of peasants give few details; it is clear only that hearths were already organized around a couple and their children.62 With regard to earlier periods, there are only scattered examples, such as a prosperous

55 Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ´economique, 114–18; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 483–84; ODB, s.v. “Family.”

56G. Tate, “Les campagnes de la Syrie du Nord `a l’e´poque proto-byzantine,” in Hommes et richesses (as above, note 1), 63–77.

57Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 72–107, 290.

58Along the same lines, at the beginning of the period studied, Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ´economique, 145–55.

59Iviron, 3: no. 70; Lavra, 2: no. 91. For the registration of small children in the praktika, see Lefort, “Radolibos,” 205, n. 46 (bibliography).

60According to Iviron, 3: no. 70.

61Iviron, 2: no. 51; Lefort, “Radolibos,” 202–5.

62Iviron, 1: no. 30; Patmos, 2: no. 50, and, on the list of paroikoi contained in this document, G. Litavrin, “Family Relations and Family Law in the Byzantine Countryside of the Eleventh Century: An Analysis of the Praktikon of 1073,” DOP 44 (1990): 187–93.

farmer’s hearth in 897 that comprised five persons: the widow of the head of family and four of his sons (one daughter had become a nun and two sons monks).63

Peasant houses have not been studied much64 and are not systematically mentioned, except in the fourteenth century by the compilers of certain praktika. However, they had always constituted the farm center.65 In both villages and estates, these houses were sometimes rudimentary, especially in the case of herdsmen; in the tenth century in Chalkidike, a document alludes to the encampments (kataskenoseis) of paroikoi (who were certainly swineherds), which were probably little different from those set up by Slavs close to Thessalonike in the seventh century, or from those belonging to Vlach stockbreeders, who settled near Strumica at the beginning of the fourteenth century, which together formed a katouna.66 Several texts show how, in the tenth to twelfth centuries, even the houses of agriculturists could be taken down and rebuilt elsewhere, once the main wooden struts had been transported.67 Local materials, traditions, and degrees of wealth all played their part in contributing to a diversity of building forms at which we can only guess. In every instance, the peasants’ houses had to be large enough to take in, besides the people, their cattle, crops, and tools. Some of them were rectangular,68 but others, perhaps the majority, were built along the lines of a model that persisted throughout the Ottoman Empire to the twentieth century and were organized around a courtyard, though naturally not as grand as that attached to masters’ houses.69 One may suspect that this courtyard (aule), as an organizational structure for the inhabited space,70 was, unlike streets in Hellenistic towns, a feature of the rural world that, according to many documents, was sometimes established even in the very center of Byzantine towns. In the countryside, the majority of houses were surrounded by a piece of ground featuring vegetable plots and the occasional tree.

Our knowledge of peasant farms between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries is derived from fiscal documents, which reveal that they included, on average, not a plow team as was sometimes thought,71 but a single ox. This was, for instance, the case at the beginning of the twelfth century at Radolibos, where an average of 0.8 ox per cul-

63Lavra, 1: no. 1.

64Ch. Bouras, Katoiki´e" kai` oijkismoi` sth`n buzantinh` EllaJ´ da,” in Oijkismoi` sth`n ElladaJ, ed. B. Doumanis and P. Oliver (Athens, 1974), 30–52; idem, “Houses in Byzantium,” Delt.Crist. Arcj. EtJ. 11 (1982–83): 1–26; S. Ellis, “La casa,” in La civilta` bizantina, oggetti e messaggio, ed. A. Guillou (Rome, 1993), 167–226.

65In a 10th-century fiscal instruction, the term oikema indicates a peasant holding: Ge´ome´tries, § 54.

66Iviron, 1: no. 9; V. Popovic´, “Note sur l’habitat pale´oslave,” in Les plus anciens recueils des Miracles de Saint De´me´trius, ed. P. Lemerle (Paris, 1981), 2:235–41; Chilandar, no. 13.

67J. Lefort, “En Mace´doine orientale au Xe sie`cle: Habitat rural, communes et domaines,” in Occident et Orient au Xe sie`cle (Paris, 1979), 256–57.

68As in the Mani, Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 122; ODB, s.v. “Houses.”

69On northern Syria, see J.-P. Sodini and G. Tate, “Maisons d’e´poque romaine et byzantine (IIe– VIe sie`cles) du Massif Calcaire de Syrie du Nord: Etude typologique,” in Colloque Apame´e de Syrie, Bilan des recherches arche´ologiques, 1973–1979 (Brussels, 1984), 377–93; on Macedonia, see L. Schultze, Makedonien Landschaftsund Kulturbilder (Jena, 1927); Lefort, “Habitat rural,” 256.

70At Radolibos in the 20th century, traffic sometimes circulates by passing from one courtyard to the next.

71Kaplan, les hommes et la terre, 195, 500.

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tivator was the norm; peasants who owned one ox (boidatoi) formed the largest group (39 of 126 peasants), followed by those who did not own a draft animal (38 aktemones), then those who possessed a team (32 zeugaratoi), and finally donkey owners (17 onikatoi), who were perhaps more involved in transportation than agriculture.72 An identical situation prevailed at the end of the eleventh century on the estates of Baris, where 51 peasants owned a total of 44 oxen (an average of 0.9 ox).73 In some cases, paroikoi who had no draft animals used those belonging to the estate owner, involving contracts about which nothing is known.74 As well as his ox, the average peasant (in Thessalonike at the beginning of the 14th century; there are few earlier data) would have owned a cow, a pig, and four goats or sheep, a total of seven head,75 not counting poultry, which was not listed on censuses. These figures do not take much account of the way some farms specialized in stock raising. For instance, in the region of Thessalonike at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the paroikoi of Lavra who kept sheep (20%) owned on average 30 head, and one of them owned 300 head.76 They were probably allowed to pasture their sheep on the monastery’s fields in return for dues. These figures suggest that all peasant holdings included livestock, which made a significant contribution, as a source of both food and manure. Indeed, this is the picture drawn by the Farmer’s Law, which may have reflected legal practice in villages during the seventh and eighth centuries;77 village herds could even grow so large that their owners would have to employ a stockman to bring them to pasture.78

Though peasants did not monopolize apiculture (Philaretos the Merciful owned 250 hives), small farms appear to have been more involved in this activity than larger ones.79 Beekeeping was a sure means of profit, since honey was the sole source of sugar and wax the principal source of candles. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the paroikoi of Lavra in the region of Thessalonike owned on average two hives each; 14% owned an average of fourteen hives and one paroikos owned sixty.80 A tenthcentury document81 suggests that hive transhumance was probably practiced in the

72Iviron, 2: no. 51; in the 14th century, on the estates of Iveron in the Thessalonike region, 167 oxen for 164 paroikoi. The paroikoi of Lavra in the same region and during the same period were less well equipped than those of Iveron (0.4 oxen on average): cf. Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 173.

73Patmos, 2: no. 50.

74P. Gautier, “Le Typikon du se´baste Gre´goire Pakourianos,” REB 42 (1984): 125; the 47 pair of oxen mentioned here were intended for “those who reside on all the estates of the monastery.” In 1106, six plow teams that had been presented to the Eleousa monastery (zeugaria doulika) were used by twelve ateleis paroikoi: Iviron, 3: no. 56.

75According to Iviron, 3: no. 70, an average of 0.8 cows, 0.3 donkeys, 0.8 pigs, 4.3 goats or sheep and 0.5 hives per peasant (for 164 holdings); on the estates of Lavra in the theme of Thessalonike, the average was 8.2 head of livestock per holding; cf. Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 30–31, 174.

76Lavra, 2: no. 91; Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 174.

77On the Farmer’s Law, ed. I. Medvedev, Vizantiiskii zemledelcheskii zakon (Leningrad, 1984), see in the last instance ODB, s.v. “Farmer’s Law”; Haldon, Seventh Century, 132ff.

78Farmer’s Law, §§ 23–29.

79Vie de Philare`te, 127; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 333.

80Lavra, 2: no. 91; Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 31.

81Actes du Proˆtaton, ed. D. Papachryssanthou, Archives de l’Athos (Paris, 1975), no. 5; on apiculture, see also Geoponika, 15; Harvey, Economic Expansion, 157–58.

Middle Ages; this process was adapted to the flowering season in different geographical areas and is still practiced in twentieth-century Chalkidike.

The size of peasant holdings was in proportion to their workforce; in grain-growing regions, it may have oscillated around 4–5 ha in the case of boidatoi and 8–10 ha in the case of zeugaratoi. However, it could be less, mainly for two reasons that were not mutually exclusive: (1) some farms specialized in livestock, viticulture, or something else and allowed only a minimum of land for growing cereals, enough to feed the hearth and pay its dues. This was the case at Radolibos at the beginning of the twelfth century, where the area specified for cereals was 44 modioi (5.5 ha) for zeugaratoi, 28 modioi for boidatoi, 19 for aktemones, and 8 for onikatoi.82 (2) Demographic pressure over centuries or locally at any given period could also have resulted in smaller farms, as A. Harvey noted when studying the cadaster of Thebes. This document suggests that in eleventh-century Boeotia, old tenures were being subdivided into smaller units, a division that may be interpreted as the effect of a more intensive exploitation of the soil, linked to demographic pressure.83

These variations can be illustrated only by means of examples. In 941, on the Kassandra peninsula in Chalkidike, a region that was then sparsely populated, a certain peasant called Nicholas, son of Agathon, bought from the fisc 100 modioi of land that he intended to clear, in part at least, and turn into fields.84 We will see below that the zeugaratoi of Baris probably rented 86 modioi of land in 1073. In 1083, in western Chalkidike, nine peasants ( proskathemenoi) on an estate belonging to the monastery of Xenophon on Mount Athos exploited a total of 300 modioi of land, or only 33 modioi per hearth (66 for one zeugaratos?).85 On the island of Leros in the eleventh to twelfth centuries, a zeugaratos apparently owned only 35 or 40 modioi.86 Near Strumica in the mid-twelfth century, the tenure of a zeugaratos was twice as extensive: 83 modioi. In the first half of the fourteenth century in Macedonia, farms were rather smaller, averaging 23–35 modioi in size (46–70 modioi for one zeugaratos?).87 It was only in depopulated regions like the island of Lemnos at the beginning of the fifteenth century that one finds very large farms, of 100 or as much as 600 modioi, which were, however, probably not under full cultivation.88

Given these extensive variations, there is not much point in estimating the size of “Byzantine peasant” farms. Furthermore, the estimated size of the theoretical average

82Iviron, 2:290–93.

83N. Svoronos, “Recherches sur le cadastre byzantin et la fiscalite´ aux XIe et XIIe sie`cles: Le cadastre de The`bes,” BCH 83 (1959): 1–166, repr. in Etudes, art. 3; Harvey, Economic Expansion, 63.

84Lavra, 1: no. 3.

85Xe´nophon, no. 1.

86Malamut, Les ˆıles, 2:429.

87Lefort, “Radolibos,” 219–21. In the village of Kastri, in Bisaltia in 1300, those zeugaratoi who owned their land held 75.5 modioi of arable land and the boidatoi held 45.5; cf. V. Mosˇin, Akti iz svetogorskih arhiva (Belgrade, 1939), 205–10; for the 14th century, see Laiou, “Agrarian Economy,” 334ff.

88Actes du Pantocrator, ed. V. Kravari, Archives de l’Athos (Paris, 1991), 193; Laiou, “Agrarian Economy,” 359–60.

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holding (in my opinion, that of a boidatos, which has been singled out in order to set up a model) has considerably decreased in the historiographical literature between the 1950s and 1980s (dwindling from 100 to 50 modioi),89 although not all the consequences of this reduction have been drawn.

While peasant holdings in the seventh century were certainly very different from those of the twelfth, it must be admitted that almost nothing is known about the former. The smallholding represented the smallest possible economic unit, and it was strong because of its familial character; perhaps this enabled it to adapt to constantly changing conditions, which, irrespective of what has been said, in fact often improved. The important point here is that in some regions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, peasant holdings were sometimes tiny, indicating that agricultural practices were more diverse or productive than previously supposed.

Forms of Exploitation

Produce: Crops and Livestock Given the diversity of the environment and the frequent absence of precise information, only a few comments are possible, based simply on written sources that are frequently no more than allusive and on a small number of studies.

Trees Fruit trees were economically important as a source of both food and wood and also because the fruit trade was lucrative near towns.90 There was considerable diversity of fruit trees in regions that enjoyed a favorable climate. In Macedonia at the beginning of the fourteenth century, ten species are mentioned on the tenures: almond, cherry, quince, fig, pomegranate, walnut, peach, pear, apple, and plum trees. The range was narrower or slightly different in drier or warmer environments; there were few trees on the Anatolian plateau.91 The large islands of the Aegean, Crete and Cyprus, were famous for their orchards.92

There is evidence that olive trees were grown, for instance in Syria and Palestine during the seventh century,93 but to no great extent in Chalkidike toward the end of our period, at least when compared with the situation now.94 Olive trees were always located close to the sea to avoid freezing in winter. In the twelfth century, the cultivation of the olive tree developed in Apulia, the Capitanata, and Campania.95 Data relating to the consumption of or trade in oil from the tenth century on show that the olive tree was widely cultivated in the Peloponnese, in the islands of the Aegean sea, along the shores of Asia Minor, and in Bithynia.96

89J. Lefort, “Rural Economy and Social Relations in the Countryside,” DOP 47 (1993): 108.

90Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 36.

91Cf. Hendy, Studies, 43.

92Malamut, Les ˆıles, 2:387–88.

93Tate, “Les campagnes,” 71; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 34–35.

94Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 26.

95J. Lefort and J.-M. Martin, “L’organisation de l’espace rural: Mace´doine et Italie du Sud (Xe– XIIIe sie`cle),” in Hommes et richesses (as above, note1), 2:18–19.

96Hendy, Studies, 49, 52, 53, 57, 539; Harvey, Economic Expansion, 145–47; ODB, s.v. “Olive.”

Chestnut trees were cultivated from the ninth century in southern Italy along the Tyrrhenian coast; grafts are recorded in the eleventh century. In Macedonia the peasants used to gather chestnuts in the forest in the tenth century, and they were growing chestnut trees by the beginning of the fourteenth century.97

White mulberry trees were planted for their leaves, on which silkworms feed, over much of the empire’s territory, but not everywhere, since Olivier de Serres tells us that “only there where the vine grows can silk come too.”98 The development of this profitable activity (which was labor intensive and undoubtedly required an infrastructure) has been postulated in Asia Minor, in the islands of the Aegean, and in the southern Balkans from the seventh century;99 it is likely in the Peloponnese from the ninth century,100 is attested in Calabria in the eleventh,101 and is a certainty in Boeotia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and in Thessaly in the twelfth.102 In Macedonia in the fourteenth century, a few mulberry trees were grown on some tenures, though it is not certain whether these were the white trees or the black ones, which had been introduced to Greece in antiquity and were grown for their fruit. In the same region, however, we find references to rights over silkworm cocoons in some Ottoman tax registers which suggest that these mulberry trees were also connected to sericulture.103

Grapevines were omnipresent except on the Anatolian plateau on account of its altitude and harsh continental climate. This crop was probably the most profitable in cash terms,104 but the commercialization of grapes and wines must have experienced highs and lows, as may be presumed from the fact that all the names of the vintages of antiquity disappeared in the Middle Ages, even the very concept of vintage, and the names of table grapes in the twelfth century do not appear to be very old.105 In the tenth century, some wines were once again identified according to their place of origin;106 and in the twelfth century, Ptochoprodromos cites, among all the wines consumed in Constantinople, those of Varna in Bulgaria, Ganos in Thrace, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Crete.107 Michael Choniates mentions, among others, the wines of Euboea, Chios, and Rhodes,108

97Lefort and Martin, “Organisation,” 19 and n. 27.

98Olivier de Serres, quoted by P. Lieutaghi, Le livre des arbres, arbustes et arbrisseaux (n.p., 1969), 870; D. Jacoby, “Silk in Western Byzantium before the Fourth Crusade,” BZ 84/85 (1991–92): 453.

99N. Oikonomides, “Silk Trade and Production in Byzantium from the Sixth to the Ninth Century: The Seals of Kommerkiarioi,” DOP 40 (1986): 33–53.

100Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 43; Jacoby, “Silk,” 454. Das Eparchenbuch Leons des Weisen, ed. J. Koder (Vienna, 1991), 6, 5, provides no precise information about the provenance of silk sold at Constantinople (exoˆthen).

101A. Guillou, Le bre´bion de la me´tropole byzantine de Re`gion (vers 1050) (Vatican City, 1974); idem, “La soie du cate´panat d’Italie,” TM 6 (1976): 69–84.

102Jacoby, “Silk,” 470–72.

103Lefort, Chalcidique occidentale, index, s.v. “soie”; Jacoby, “Silk,” 471 and n. 103.

104Hendy, Studies, 139–41; Teall, “Grain Supply,” 131; Harvey, Economic Expansion, 148.

105Koukoules, Bi´o", 5:288.

106De cerimoniis aulae byzantine, ed. J. J. Reiske, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1829–30), 1:491 (wine of Nicaea).

107Poe`mes prodromiques en grec vulgaire, ed. D.-C. Hesseling and H. Pernot (Amsterdam, 1910), poem 3, pp. 48–71 Ptochoprodromus, ed. H. Eideneier (Cologne, 1991), IV, 139–75.

108Sp. Lambros, Micah`l Akominaj´ tou tou' Cwnia´ tou ta` svzo´mena (Athens, 1880), 2:83.

250 JACQUES LEFORT

and further examples could be cited.109 Vines were cultivated especially in some sectors of Bulgaria, in Bithynia, in the islands of the Aegean, and along the Anatolian coast.110 Cereals Wheat and barley were always cultivated, but some secondary cereal crops seem to have been introduced during our period, showing that Byzantine agriculture was not as static as previously asserted. Ottoman tax registers from the mid-fifteenth century record how, in several villages in the Strymon valley and in Chalkidike, wheat constituted half the cereal production, barley about a third, with oats, millet, and rye— not much of the latter—making up the rest. Cereals were cultivated in similar proportions during the thirteenth century on a farm in Chalkidike belonging to the monk Theodore Skaranos, although oats were absent, and in the eleventh century in Baris, where the only two sowings envisaged were wheat and barley (apart from yellow lentils and flax).111 The type and relative importance of cultivated cereals was subject to local

or regional variations.

Thus in the tenth century there was no wheat in Phrygian Synada due to its high altitude (1,150 m), though wheat is grown in this region nowadays, most likely using the hardier strains developed recently.112 The various kinds of wheat mentioned in the texts have not been identified; one rather archaic type of rice-wheat, a bearded wheat called olyra, is mentioned in the Geoponika, and apparently persisted in Lycia until the twelfth century.113 With regard to the rural economy, references to spring wheat are more significant, because this was often sown when the winter wheat yielded little or nothing, and it could intervene in the crop rotation. These crops were known in Greece during antiquity and are mentioned by Roman agronomists; they were sown in February or March, climate permitting. One such crop, called melanather in the Geoponika, is identifiable as the “black” wheat of Psellos and as the mauraganin referred to in Skaranos’ testament; the name has apparently been preserved in Greece.114 Further evidence for the existence of spring wheat at the beginning of the twelfth century is also found in the Georgian Synodikon in the monastery of Iveron.115 What we know, especially from references to the grain trade and transport, about mainly wheator grainproducing regions shows that they often lay close to the sea: Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, and the coast of Asia Minor, although climatic conditions in these places varied greatly.116 J.-C. Cheynet has studied the geographical distribution of imperial granaries in the tenth to eleventh centuries on the basis of seals of horreiarioi, which reveal the

109Koukoules, Bi´o", 5:124–25; Malamut, Les ˆıles, 2:389–90.

110Hendy, Studies, 35, 49, 51–53, 57, 559.

111Patmos, 2: no. 50. The Xe`ropotamou, no. 9 (will of Skaranos), mentions a mixed sowing of wheat and barley (migadin), that was not known in antiquity but existed in Greece at the beginning of the 20th century; cf. Jarde´, Ce´re´ales, 9; for the 15th century, see data in Lefort, Chalcidique occidentale.

112Hendy, Studies, 139–40.

113Geoponika, 3.8; Koukoules, Bi´o", 5:259.

114Jarde´, Ce´re´ales, 10–11; Geoponika, 3.3.11; Psellos: K. Sathas, Mesaiwnikh` biblioqh´kh, 7 vols. (Venice, 1872–1894; repr. Athens, 1972), 5:266 (where various names of wheat can be found); Xe`ropotamou, no. 9; Koukoules, Bi´o", 5:258.

115Iviron, 2:4.

116Teall, “Grain Supply,” 117–28; Hendy, Studies, 46, 49–50.