The Economic History of Byzantium From

On one farm, the area of arable land was in principle adjusted to the workforce, as demonstrated for instance by the words zeugotopion and boidotopion. It also varied according to the type of farm and demographic pressure. Taking as a basis the previous remarks (p. 241–42) relating to the area of tenures, we allow our zeugaratos 80 modioi of arable land.420 Let us palliate the rigid nature of tax categories by making his holding consist of half first-quality and half second-quality land. We assume the existence of catch crops on the fallow land and suppose that 5⁄8 of the area was cultivated every year (according to Kondov; see above, 254). If we estimate a yield of 1:4 for the secondquality land and of 1:5.6 for the first-quality land, it follows that the cereal yield for this farm was 1:4.8.

The amount of seed needed for this farm can be worked out, because we know that one modios thalassios of grain was in principle sown on one modios of land.421 We will follow M. Kaplan422 in setting farming expenses (renewing the plow team and tools) at the equivalent of 12 modioi of wheat in the case of a zeugaratos, and we assume, on the basis of Patmos, II: no. 50, dated 1073, that 12 modioi of wheat were worth one nomisma.423

Theoretical tax levies are well known for the eleventh century (cf. N. Oikonomides, “The Role of the Byzantine State in the Economy,” in this volume). As we have seen, in the case of a landowner, they comprised the land tax (in principle 1⁄24 of the land value, or 1⁄24 nomisma per modios for first-quality land, 1⁄48 for second-quality land), associated taxes (ca. 25% of the land tax), personal taxes (1 nomisma for a holding that comprised a plow team), and extraordinary charges, valued by N. Oikonomides at 25% of the total tax burden. Because extraordinary charges could consist of services and because they bore on the whole of the holding and not simply on the cereal-growing part, we will consider half of these charges to bear on the cereal crop. For his part, the farmer owed the state personal taxes and extraordinary charges, and the landowner rent; it may be recalled that this was in principle twice the land tax.424

Finally, we estimate the composition of our hearth at 4.3 persons, going by fourteenth-century hearth records and assuming a smaller demographic pressure in

420This area is not very different from that allowed by Kaplan as typical of the holding of a zeugaratos: 100 modioi (Les hommes et la terre, 505), which, according to this author, corresponded to that of an average peasant; it is far smaller than the average holding proposed by Svoronos: 175 modioi (“Structures ´economiques,” 59).

421Ge´ome´tries, § 13, 52 bis, 133. On the question of yields, see above, 253–55.

422Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 503.

423On the price of wheat, see C. Morrisson and J.-C. Cheynet, “Prices and Wages in the Byzantine World,” EHB, table 5.

424Farmer’s Law, § 19; Fiscal Treatise, 123; Ge´ome´tries, § 54; Oikonomides, “Terres du fisc,” 326–28: Oikonomides relies principally on Patmos, 2: no. 50 (cf. below) and envisages a rent that was 20% higher; cf. Oikonomides, Fiscalite´ et exemption fiscale `a Byzance, IXe–XIe s. (Athens, 1996), 125–27. In fact, tenancy agreements tended to vary and the rent could amount to less than that: cf., for instance,

Iviron, 1:107. Cf. also I. M. Konidares, To` di´kaion th'" monasthriakh'" periousi´a" ajpo` tou'9ou me´cri kai` tou'12ou aijw'no"(Athens, 1979), and ODB, s.v. “Land lease.” In principle, the pakton amounted to twice as much as the land tax, and thus depended on the quality of the land. It was thus half as much on second-quality land as on first-quality land.

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the eleventh century. We surmise that each person would have consumed 15.5 modioi thalassioi of wheat per year.425

It is clear that our model is too hypothetical for the following calculations to have more than heuristic value. Table 1 summarizes the features of this theoretical holding and shows the items that allow us to ascertain the results, in the case of both a farmer and a landowner.426

The rate of payments (taxes and possibly rent, compared to production) varied according to the quality of the land; according to our calculations (using the above items), the variation was between 25% (for first-quality land) and 21% (for second-quality land) in the case of a landowning farmer and, in the case of a tenant farmer, between 36% and 28%. In every case, the theoretical tax levies would have been high,427 higher still in the event of lower yields. However, the texts that we rely on are probably recording a fiscal demand of an ideal nature, and we would be entitled to consider the levies listed above as maximum rates, rather than average. Note, too, that dues were in principle higher for tenants than for landowners. Perhaps this was the price of protection by a powerful lord, which would explain why small landowners preferred to become a great landowner’s paroikoi.

For landowning and tenant farmers, the yield ratios listed above (1:4.8) would in any case have left them with a surplus, allowing us to suppose that zeugaratoi were in a position to engage in improvements. On the other hand, our calculations suggest that, should the levies have been set at maximum rates, the surplus accruing to a tenant or peasant proprietor owning only one ox would have been practically nil, mainly because the weight of consumption would have been higher in this case as compared with the means of cultivation. However, it must be assumed that some boidatoi and many aktemones had other sources of revenue, in addition to that from their cereal crops.

Revenues of Great Landowners In general, the revenues of great landowners (apart from the fisc and owners of privileged properties) consisted principally of the sum of dues (in coin or in kind) supplied by their tenants, minus the land tax, associated taxes, and administration costs.428 Table 2 is based on our previous hypotheses and lists the

425Lefort, “Radolibos,” 223: 54.2 modioi for 3.5 consumers, a quantity that comes close to that allowed by Kaplan (Les hommes et la terre, 503–5), 77 modioi for 5 persons.

426Wheat quantities are expressed in terms of their value in nomismata. Values in nomismata are rounded to the nearest tenth.

427A high fiscal levy of 25% has been assumed by Svoronos, “Structures ´economiques,” 59. The fiscal exactions are apparently underestimated in Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 505, where they are set at 8% in the context of a typical holding of 100 modioi; Kaplan bases his calculations on a land tax rate of 0.01 nomisma per modios of arable land, which is corroborated by some documents (ibid., 489–90). He does not take personal taxes or extraordinary charges into account.

428In Patmos, 2: no. 50, local costs amount to 7 nomismata for an area of arable land whose value we estimate at 5,391 modioi. We have used this figure as our basis for estimating administration costs, which we consider fixed for an estate of this size. Oikonomide`s, “Terres du fisc,” 331, sets these costs at 17% of all dues (2⁄120 out of 12⁄120).

Table 1

Theoretical Results of a Farmer’s Cereal Crop

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Table 2

Theoretical Revenues of a Great Landowner

possible revenues of a theoretical great landowner, assuming that he had managed to rent out all the arable land on his demesne.

Our great landowner’s theoretical rents would have been on the order of 3%.429 However, rent revenues would have been considerably higher, at ca. 8% on fisc lands or on privileged estates where the land tax and associated charges had been remitted by the state. A great landowner’s revenues would be higher still if the personal taxes paid by his paroikoi had been assigned to him.

To conclude: according to these calculations, the theoretical tax levies must have been very considerable, and this would not have been possible unless yields were higher than is generally thought to have been the case. According to my hypotheses, the state would have levied a maximum 23% of the value of production in the form of a tax,430 with the same proportion reverting as surplus to the landowning farmer, in the case of a zeugaratos.431 On estates, the surplus was shared between the great landowner and the farmers; each zeugaratos farmer would keep 14%,432 and the great land-

429Oikonomide`s, “Terres du fisc,” 331–32; though the author bases his calculations partly on other data and follows a different line of reasoning, the theoretical rents that he proposes are equal to or slightly lower than 3.3% of the value of the property, which is not very far removed from ours.

430Table 1: the landowner’s case.

431Table 1: 4.6 nomismata out of 20.

432Table 1: 2.8 nomismata out of 20.

owner 9% after tax.433 Of course, it would be a bit of luck to find a situation that matched this scheme, but the reality cannot have been very different. This is suggested by the following examples.

Two Concrete Cases The praktikon of Adam for Andronikos Doukas (Patmos, II: no. 50) contains precise but incomplete data about the farming of fisc property in the Miletos region in 1073 concerning the oikoproasteion of Baris and its dependencies. This property was situated on the alluvial plain of the Meander and outlying lands, which, according to the fisc’s surveyors, constituted the most fertile region of the empire. This document has been studied for more than a century and has played a major part in shaping previous representations of the Byzantine rural economy, although in some respects it is a case apart. With the exception of one large domanial farm (3 plow teams, 420 modioi of sown land), these possessions were farmed indirectly; 2,210 modioi of arable land were farmed out to 51 paroikoi. The Baris land was put to producing cereals, rather than fruit or stock (221 nomismata of income to 38). Half of the theoretically cultivable land was in use.434 On average, each paroikos—generally speaking a boidatos— rented 43 modioi of arable land (2,210⁄51): the inference being that each zeugaratos rented an average 86 modioi. In Baris, rents (pakton) were paid in coin, at a rate of 1 nomisma for 10 modioi, or 20% more than the quantities given in the normative texts: 1 nomisma for 12 modioi in the case of first-quality land. In my opinion, this level of rent payments is explainable only by the exceptional fertility of the land. If we assume that all the land at Baris was first quality and that the yield was on the order of 1:5.6 (apparently a minimum, in view of the rent level), the surplus, over and above the 41% lost to levies (compared with 33% in the theoretical case), would be on the order of 3 nomismata for a tenant of 80 modioi (according to my calculation).435 At Baris, rents for mainly arable land, worth perhaps 6,449 nomismata,436 with revenues of 221 nomismata (for arable land actually being farmed), were on the order of 3.4%.

The situation at Radolibos seems to have been rather different, probably due to the role played by viticulture in the village economy. At the beginning of the twelfth century, 2,900 modioi of arable land, or ca. 30% of the level ground in the territory, were given over to cereals.437 As at Baris, the estate comprised a domanial farm: the arable land was mainly split into hereditary tenures (staseis) held by 122 paroikoi. Although these paroikoi owned about as many oxen as their counterparts at Baris, they grew cereals on almost half as much land. Instead, they owned vineyards, which were appar-

433Table 2: 86.8 nomismata out of 1,000.

434We estimate the theoretically cultivable area to be 5,391 modioi; the cultivated area was 2,210 modioi farmed by paroikoi, plus maybe 672 modioi (420⁄5 8) for the domanial farm.

435The paroikoi of Baris were probably a more complicated case, if we retain a hypothesis presented by Oikonomides (cf. Patmos, 2:30–31n): the sum of the tax owed by the paroikoi would show that they were not simply tenants but also the owners of some fields, on average 12 modioi per paroikos.

436Assuming that, as we have seen to be the case in principle, the tax was set at twice the rent (1 nomisma per 10 modioi) and assuming the value to be 24 times the tax (5,391⁄20 24).

437Lefort, “Radolibos,” 215, 219.

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ently numerous, though we do not know the area they covered.438 Data that we do possess about 22 zeugaratoi shows that their tenure comprised on average 44 modioi of arable land. The paroikoi owed Iveron farming dues, which were probably paid wholly in kind (though some paroikoi did pay in coin): they paid a pakton in wheat and barley, plus, as we have seen, the zeugologion, totaling 21 modioi of cereals in the case of one zeugaratos.439 Assuming that the yield at Radolibos was on the order of 1:5.1, the levies exacted on the cereal production of these zeugaratoi, on the order of 26% (compared with 41% at Baris; 33% in our theoretical case), would produce only a low surplus of 0.8 nomisma. However, it is likely that the surplus at Radolibos was mainly provided by viticulture, the produce of which was probably marketed. These two examples serve to underline the diversity of the situation and the difficulty of engaging in any calculation.

Sharecropping Contracts Little more than the name is known about contracts of this nature between great landowners and tenants, and the precise clauses generally remain unknown.440 In the case of cereal culture, the half-share contract, hemiseia, whereby landowner and tenant seem to have shared equally the revenues and expenses of a small cereal-growing property, is mentioned in the Farmer’s Law, though generally in connection with a small landowner without the means of cultivating a property on his own. Consequently, this type of contract is only marginally relevant to our discussion.441

The Farmer’s Law also alludes to dues of one ear of wheat in ten, reminiscent of the tithe, paid by the sharecropper (mortites) to the landowner.442 The terms morte, dekateia, dekatistes, which, in relation to cereal culture, are sometimes used in the period under consideration, and the verb apodekatizo, recorded in the fourteenth century,443 obviously refer to a sharecropping contract, although we cannot be sure that the dues were always one-tenth of the gross production, as some of these terms suggest,444 unless it is assumed that the sharecropper also paid the land tax.445 Recall that, in the eleventh century, farming contracts appear to suggest higher levies, amounting at most to 25%.446 It would be surprising if levies on sharecroppers were any lower.447 The term

438Cf. references to vines alongside the fields and to localities reminiscent of viticulture in Iviron,

2:no. 53.

439Iviron, 2:290.

440These contracts have been studied by Oikonomide`s, “Terres du fisc,” 332–33.

441Farmer’s Law, § 12, 14, 15; Lemerle, Agrarian History, 38–39; Oikonomide`s, “Terres du fisc,” 332; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 259.

442Farmer’s Law, § 10.

443Morte (mourtai), Iviron, 1: no. 15 (1008); dekateia, Lavra, 1: no. 69 (1196); dekatistes, Gautier, “Diatribes de Jean l’Oxite contre Alexis Ier Comne`ne,” 31; apodekatizo, M. Goudas, “Buzantiaka` e“ggrafa

th'" monh'" Batopedi´ou,” EEBS 3 (1926): 133.

¨

444 H. F. Schmid, “Byzantinisches Zehnwesen,” JOBG 6 (1957): 45–110; Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 219.

445 Lemerle, Agrarian History, 38.

446 Table 1: 5 nomismata rent for a production of 20 nomismata gross.

447 Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 503, does, however, allow that share cropping represented 10% of production.

dekateia sometimes occurs instead of pakton,448 and the more imprecise term of morte is mostly used, in the thirteenthand fourteenth-century texts that H. F. Schmid analyzed,449 to distinguish the landowner from the tenant who is obliged to pay morte, suggesting that these words could possess the vague meaning of “dues.”450

Finally, several scholars have proposed the existence, in the twelfth century, of a third-share contract (triton), whereby a third of the crop went to the landowner. According to Oikonomides, there is some connection between this sharecropping contract and the pakton, which corresponded to a third of the production at Baris, though possibly not everywhere else as well.451 It should also be stressed that the total dues bearing on the tenant (rent plus personal taxes) represented, in the theoretical case envisaged above, 33% of the production (cf. Table 1); however, this coincidence may not be significant.

Viticulture provided both farmer and great landowner with additional revenues, which may well have been high but cannot easily be estimated. As in the case of many other occupations, including stock raising, viticulture involved contracts between great landowners and farmers and a division of the revenues. Several texts show that the wine harvest was divided into equal shares between landlord and farmer.452 However, a document dated 1089 notes that a tenth of the harvest was due to the landowner,453 and another, dated 1320, records the custom whereby a fifth of the wine produced by paroikoi was due to the master of the place.454 Nothing is known about the clauses of these various types of contract, and consequently we cannot understand the reasons for this diversity.

We are left with much that is uncertain, apart from the fact that the traditional gloomy perception of the rural economy has not been confirmed. My aim has been to suggest that cereal production, possibly supplemented by other agricultural or pastoral occupations, would have provided better-off peasants with the means of investing in production, in spite of a rate of taxation that was, in principle, high. This hypothesis allows

448Cf. Iviron, 3:125 (pakton and dekateia are either equivalent or confused with one another); in the will of Maria the nun (1098, Iviron, 2: no. 47), the term oikomodion seems to be equivalent to pakton, which was paid in kind in the accounts of the Georgian steward at Iveron (ibid., appendix II). On the oikomodion, cf. G. Cankova-Petkova, Za agrarnite otnosˇenija v Srednovekovna Bulgarija, XI–XIII v.

(Sofia, 1964), 91–95; ODB, s.v. “Oikomodion.”

449Schmid, “Byzantinisches Zehnwesen,” 60–64.

450ODB, s.v. “Morte.”

451Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 219; Oikonomide`s, “Terres du fisc,” 333; according to our working hypothesis, a holder of 80 modioi at Baris would have produced 23.3 nomismata gross and paid 8 nomismata rent, that is 34%; see too ODB, s.v. “Rent.”

452Farmer’s Law, § 13.; an Italian act dated 953, Codex Diplomaticus Cavensis (Naples, 1873–93), mentioned by A. P. Kazhdan, Derevnja i gorod v Vizantii, IX–X vv. (Moscow, 1960), 93; Sathas, MB 6:620–21 (a 14th-century formulary); MM 2:509 (act dated 1401); cf. Oikonomides, “Terres du fisc,” 332 n. 50.

453T. Uspenskii, “Mneniia i postanovleniia konstantinopol’skikh pomestrykh soborov XI i XII vv. o razdache tserkovnykh imushchestv (kharistikarii),” IRAIK 5 (1900): 32–41; cf. V. Grumel, Les Re´- gestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, vol. 1.2 (Paris, 1989), no. 949.

454Iviron, 3: no. 77; on the 14th century, see Laiou, “Agrarian Economy,” 332–33.

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us to understand how peasants in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (a time when documents become more precise) were able to erect mills, plant vineyards (as demonstrated by A. E. Laiou, “The Agrarian Economy”), and buy land. During the period under consideration, various indications confirm that some farmers did enjoy a minimal level of prosperity: we have seen how peasants, who had left their villages because of the insecurity of the times and had settled as tenants on an estate in Chalkidike in 996, were paying their dues (through sharecropping contracts) and, furthermore, possessed the means of paying the taxes incumbent on the lands they had abandoned, but which they owned. We could also refer to the peasant-soldiers in the De re militari, for whom it was quite normal to buy oxen (albeit by selling their army horses) as well as “everything that serves for agriculture.”455 Whereas, both at that time and at the beginning of the eleventh century, some mills belonged to monasteries, others had probably been built by the peasants. One example of this is the mill at Dobrobikeia in the Symbolon region, for which the commune of this village owed tax.456 By the end of the period under consideration, the expansion of trade in the countryside suggests that the peasants, or at least some of them, possessed a few assets and were thus able to produce more, and in a different, better way.

Rural Craft Production

The growth in craft production was a significant feature in the development of the rural economy. It introduced new resources to the countryside and changed the very nature of some holdings by favoring exchanges within and without the village. True, there is little information in the texts and, as yet, not much from archaeology. Rural crafts do not appear to have been very widespread during the early Middle Ages.457 Though the Geoponika does indeed recommend the presence of smiths, carpenters, and potters on the estate, it mainly emphasizes the way estate inhabitants depended on their urban market:

The fact that agriculturists go to town to get their tools made is harmful. In fact, given that the need for tools is always pressing, this impedes the agriculturists; constant traveling to town slows them down. This is why one must have smiths and carpenters on the estates themselves or nearby. It is also very necessary to have potters, for whatever purpose, for one is sure to find clay on every property.458

A study of surnames denoting crafts borne by peasants in Macedonia between the tenth and the fourteenth century suggests that rural crafts were still poorly developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A list of 32 paroikoi in the Hierissos region in Chalkidike, dated 974, contains only two names of trades (mason and blacksmith), and none have been found at Drobrobikeia (among 24 peasants) at the beginning of the

455Dagron, Gue´rilla, 272.

456Iviron, 1: no. 30. In 1008, the inhabitants of Radochosta owned a mill, albeit only a ruined one: Lavra, 1: no. 14.

457Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ´economique, 268–71.

458Geoponika, 2.49.