The Economic History of Byzantium From

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and the Persians in 626, held out against the arduous Arab sieges of 674–678 and 717–718, only to face another plague epidemic in 747–748. We are told that Herakleios considered transferring the capital of the empire to Carthage, and his grandson Constans II settled in Syracuse in 663. Patriarch Nikephoros I describes the city as nearly emptied of its inhabitants.17 Constantinople thereafter witnessed a significant demographic decline as its population dropped from 500,000 to perhaps 40,000 or 50,000. The urban environment changed profoundly: the capacity of the harbor declined; of the old public granaries, only one survived.18 In 740, following an earthquake that damaged the town walls, Emperor Leo III determined that the city’s inhabitants lacked the means to undertake the needed repairs and sought to finance them by means of a special tax added to the land tax levied throughout the empire.19 To remedy a drought that had emptied the cisterns of Constantinople, Constantine V tried to restore the socalled Aqueduct of Valens, cut in 626; he was only able to do so at great expense in 768 by bringing in 6,700 laborers or building workers from Thrace, Greece, Asia, and the Pontos, especially masons and brickmakers.20

A review of different types of sources leaves no doubt of the diagnosis. During this long crisis many cities disappeared; the geographic distribution of urban centers changed; towns became ruralized and their functions changed. The city of antiquity, in short, gave way to the medieval town.21

The conciliar lists and the Notitiae Episcopatuum trace the shrinking of the empire and its subsequent slow revival.22 The presence of bishops at the councils of the seventh century (Constantinople III in 680–681; the Council in Trullo, 691–692)23 was scant with respect to territories still under Byzantine domination (157 and 200 bishops, respectively, attended). The ruined Balkans sent only a small number of bishops (18 for

17Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople, Short History, ed. C. Mango (Washington, D.C., 1990), 140 (§ 68) (hereafter Nikephoros, Short History).

18C. Mango, Le de´veloppement urbain de Constantinople, IVe–VIIe sie`cles (Paris, 1985), 51–62; see Magdalino, “Medieval Constantinople.”

19Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1883–85; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), 1:412 (hereafter Theophanes).

20Ibid., 1:440; Nikephoros, Short History, 160 (§ 85).

21On the question of the “break” versus the continuity of urban civilization in the 7th century, see E. Kirsten, “Die byzantinische Stadt,” in Berichte zum XI. Internationalen Byzantinisten-Kongress (Munich, 1958), 5.3:1–48; G. Ostrogorsky, “Byzantine Cities in the Early Middle Ages,” DOP 13 (1959): 47–66; D. A. Zakythinos, “La grande bre`che,” in Caristh´rion eij" Anastaj´ sion K. Orlaj´ ndon (Athens, 1966), 3:300–27; M. F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300–1450 (Cambridge, 1985), 78–85 (on the Balkans), 619–67 (on the consequences); J. F. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture (Cambridge, 1990), 93–124. Summary in Harvey, Economic Expansion,

21–29.

22These lists, first used by Ostrogorsky (“Byzantine Cities”) have a significant margin of unreliability and error, but nonetheless constitute invaluable benchmarks, since each ecclesiastical see corresponds, in principle, to a city.

23R. Riedinger, Die Pra¨senzund Subskriptionslisten des VI. oekumenischen Konzils (680–681) und der Papyrus Vind. g. 3 (Munich, 1979); H. Ohme, Das Concilium Quinisextum und seine Bischofsliste (Berlin, 1990).

the two councils combined), who came exclusively from coastal areas or those near the sea, from the provinces of Europa, Rhodope, Macedonia, Hellas, and Epiros. The metropolitans of Thessalonike, Herakleia, and Corinth are listed in 691–692, but their names are not followed by any signature; new ecclesiastical sees begin to appear. The absences are less flagrant with respect to Asia Minor, and certain provinces such as Paphlagonia and Galatia display a remarkable stability. A century later, at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, the number in attendance (365) shows a marked advance,24 and the distribution of the attendees is evidence of a slow recovery in Thrace, Macedonia, and central Greece along the major communication axis (the Via Egnatia). Twelve new metropolitan sees come on the scene. All of this may be seen as the result not only of the creation of the themes but also of an imperial policy that, under Constantine V, Irene, and Nikephoros II Phokas in particular, restored a number of destroyed cities, created new centers, and undertook population transfers to redress the imbalance between Asia Minor and the Balkans. The Photian Council of 879–880—the only ecumenical council in the ninth century—counted 383 bishops in attendance and is evidence of a clear recovery in Thrace, Thessaly (Larissa, Demetrias), and the Peloponnese (Patras, Methone). The Notitia Episcopatuum documents the intervening changes for the first time: it quantifies the number of sees under the first patriarchate of Nicholas I Mystikos (901–907), enumerating 139 bishops, archbishops, or metropolitans in the Balkans, 442 in Asia Minor, 22 in Rhodes and in the islands, and 34 in southern Italy and in Sicily.25 Such was, more or less, the new urban geography of the empire.

A separate chapter26 analyzes coin finds, which, with significant variations among the different sites, give evidence of a decline or an interruption of monetary circulation in 610—in particular after the reign of Constans II (668)—and, thereafter, a staggered recovery under Theophilos (829–842), Basil I (867–886), and Leo VI (886–912).

Excavations and studies in geographic history confirm both the impoverishment of the urban network and the great diversity of individual cases.27 The Balkans were the most affected: Stobi and Sirmium close to the Danube simply ceased to exist, whereas in Serdica, Adrianople, Naissus, and Philippopolis we find traces of continuity. Sources after the seventh century no longer mention Thebes in Phthiotis and other Thessalian towns of lesser importance. In Greece, Corinth, Athens, and Thebes shrank in size; in Asia Minor, those towns that put up resistance against sieges or whose inhabitants did

24J. Munitiz, “Synoptic Account of the Seventh Council,” REB 32 (1974): 147–86; J. Darrouze`s, “Les listes ´episcopales du concile de Nice´e (787),” REB 33 (1975): 5–76.

25This is Notitia 7 of J. Darrouze`s, Notitiae episcopatuum Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (Paris, 1981), 53–78, 269–88.

26See C. Morrisson, “Byzantine Money: Its Production and Circulation,” EHB.

27J. Russell, “Transformations in Early Byzantine Urban Life: The Contribution and Limitations of Archaeological Evidence,” in The 17th International Byzantine Congress: Major Papers (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1986), 137–54. Cf. Ch. Bouras, “Aspects of the Byzantine City: Eighth–Fifteenth Centuries,” EHB 501ff; see also the EHB case studies: C. Foss and J. A. Scott, “Sardis”; K. Rheidt, “The Urban Economy of Pergamon”; A. Louvi-Kizi, “Thebes”; M. Kazanaki-Lappa, “Medieval Athens”; and G. D. R. Sanders, “Corinth.”

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not seek refuge on protected sites lost a good part of their populations, and they clustered around fortified areas;28 Ibn Khordadhbeh describes them as simple fortresses. In the ancient province of Asia, incorporated at this point into the theme of Thrakesion, Ephesos (in 614) and Sardis (in 616) were destroyed by the Persians. Pergamon (in 663 and 716) and Smyrna (in 654 and 672) were captured by the Arabs. Ephesos, during the seventh and eighth centuries, temporarily abandoned its harbor to regroup houses, churches, and market stalls on a fortified hill, which in the ninth century became a vibrant and quite wealthy agglomeration that served as the capital of the theme. Despite a number of public works undertaken by Constans II around 660, Sardis never again became a large city: a fortress was erected on its acropolis in the ninth to tenth centuries; a few houses and a chapel surrounded a fortified castle. At Pergamon, a wall of reused masonry dating to the reign of Constans II encircled the acropolis; a slow demographic recovery under the Macedonian emperors and in the eleventh century undoubtedly explains the construction, under Manuel Komnenos, of a new wall that includes the lower city. Michael III, around 856–857, refortified the city of Smyrna, which became independent of Ephesos and was ranked a “metropolis” in 867; like the majority of Asiatic cities, however, it assumed a relative level of prosperity and an urban aspect only under the Laskarid dynasty in the thirteenth century.

Continuity? Discontinuity? It matters little.29 Whether they survived or disappeared, cities changed between the end of the sixth century and the middle of the ninth cen- tury—in appearance, in function, and in definition.30 A “right” or a hierarchical catalogue of cities no longer existed, except to establish the precedence of sees in an ecclesiastical geography that sustained the ancient provincial demarcations. Under the thematic system, at least until the eleventh century, administrative, fiscal, and military control was no longer ordinarily exercised through a network of cities. City dwellers were not recognized as having a special status well before Leo VI so acknowledged by officially rescinding the legal provisions regarding the curiae and the order of curiales.31 Cities were administered by “notables,” socially but no longer institutionally defined, of whom the bishop was the natural leader. The use of the term polis, which implied a

28For the cities of Asia Minor, see in particular C. Foss, Byzantine and Turkish Sardis (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); idem, “Archaeology and the ‘Twenty Cities’ of Byzantine Asia,” AJA 81 (1977): 469–86; idem, Ephesus after Antiquity: A Late Antique, Byzantine and Turkish City (Cambridge, 1979); W. Brandes, Die Sta¨dte Kleinasiens im 7. und 8. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1989).

29On this problem, which seems in my view to be meaningful only within a Marxist perspective, see A. P. Kazhdan and A. Cutler, “Continuity and Discontinuity in Byzantine History,” Byzantion 52 (1982): 429–78, and the reply of G. Weiss, “Antike und Byzanz: Die Kontinuita¨t der Gesellschaftstruktur,” Historische Zeitschrift 224 (1977): 529–60. On periodization from the Marxist perspective, see the studies of Soviet Byzantinists conveniently assembled in translation in Le fe´odalisme `a Byzance: Proble`mes du mode de production de l’Empire byzantin, ed. H. Antoniadis-Bibicou (Paris, 1974).

30On this issue, see the fundamental study of C. Bouras, “City and Village: Urban Design and

¨

Architecture,” JOB 31.2 (1981): 611–53; J. F. Haldon and H. Kennedy, “The Arab-Byzantine Frontier in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries: Military Organisation and Society in the Borderlands,” ZRVI 19 (1980): 79–116; Haldon, Byzantium, 92–124.

31 Les Novelles de Le´on VI le Sage, ed. P. Noailles and A. Dain (Paris, 1944), Nov. 46–47 (pp. 182–87).

degree of autonomy in administration, was no longer compelling (except for Constantinople), and a number of synonyms from this point forward stress the defensive aspect of urban sites: kastron, phrourion. Defense, to be sure, was the first characteristic of these towns that withdrew into the safety of protected locations, inside a fortified enclosure, or in the shadow of a fortress that replaced or reinforced city walls. The second was the impoverishment of the city’s appearance, the result of the ending of patronage and liturgia, a change in the way of life and of social intercourse (baths, stadiums, and hippodromes came to an end), the abandonment of the rules of urban life and of a number of taboos, such as burial intra muros, the privatization of public spaces, and the rapid redistribution of the landed property in towns. In a climate of insecurity, of relative economic autarky, and of a militarized society, the town assumed somewhat different functions: it ensured the security of its residents and was used as a refuge by the surrounding rural population, particularly in frontier regions; it served as a way station or a cantonment site for movements of the army; it functioned as a market for exchange, ensuring the commercialization of basic products on a modest, regional scale; it ensured the transfer to the army and the central administrative agencies of fiscal revenues levied on rural populations. This latter function may well have contributed to maintaining the elements of an urban civilization (money, fiscality, a legal system) in a society that was no longer fundamentally predicated on the existence of cities.

The “Turning Point” of the End of the Eleventh Century

In the period of stabilization and of subsequent stability of the ninth to tenth centuries, the role of the state should not be underestimated. Dynastic continuity (the Macedonian emperors reigned from 867 until 1028), stabilization of the borders followed by territorial growth, a currency operating at fixed equivalences after Theophilos’ reform and a stable gold coinage, a well-established and relatively effective tax system, sustained legislative activity and economic regulation (at least with respect to Constantinople); all these structural and centralizing elements favored the rise of the city during this period. Little by little, they disappeared during the eleventh century with the rise of political instability and, particularly after 1071, with the lasting settlement of the Anatolian plateau by the Turks; the latter provoked a new geographic imbalance—this time, in favor of the Balkans. However, at the same time that the state found itself weakened, the urban economy sustained a marked development, raising three main questions for historians. Was this relative expansion of the cities accompanied by a demographic upturn in the countryside, or did it reflect land abandonment? Did the years 1070/1080 represent a new “break”? Finally, did the trading privileges granted to the Italian merchants handicap or stimulate the urban economy?32

Regarding the first point, it is now believed that a slow and steady demographic rise during the eleventh and twelfth centuries affected both towns and the countryside.

32 See J. Lefort, “The Rural Economy, Seventh–Twelfth Centuries,” EHB 271ff, and Laiou, “Exchange and Trade,” 751f.

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Regarding the second, it has become customary to distinguish the “civilian” emperors of the period from 1025 to 1081, who favored the development of a middle class in the cities (and especially in Constantinople), from the “military” Komnenian emperors, who relied on a feudal ´elite whose base was provincial and essentially rural. Between the two, there occurred a change in dynasties and the symbolic battle of Mantzikert. The traditional schematic makes somewhat hasty connections between political, social, and economic phenomena, which do not necessarily march in lockstep. Ce´cile Morrisson’s analysis of the monetary “devaluations” of the eleventh century allows us to distinguish between an expansionary phase (lasting until approximately 1067) and a subsequent recessionary phase (beginning with the reign of Romanos IV Diogenes), during which a veritable monetary crisis raged, linked to military defeats and to the need to replenish a treasury that had been left high and dry.33 The third issue is directly tied to the second. It has long been held that at the end of a period that should have given Byzantium the same opportunities for development as the West, the restored empire of the Komnenoi turned inward and sacrificed its economic future by granting to the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Pisans exorbitant economic advantages in exchange for illusory diplomatic or military successes. Against this theory, which strains somewhat to draw together political history and economic history and grants primary importance to the role of the state, Michael Hendy and subsequently Ralph-Johannes Lilie have constructed an analysis in which the following points stand out.34 (1) The territorial foundations of Byzantium were, prior to 1204, more solid and extensive than has heretofore been credited. (2) The privileges granted to the Italians were, until this point, riddled with exceptions (Cyprus, the Black Sea) that significantly limited their import. (3) Italian investments in the twelfth century remained well below the level of Byzantine private fortunes. (4) Western demand had a stimulative effect, as evidenced by the continuous rise of a number of urban centers, among them Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, which do not constitute exceptional cases.

It is also true, moreover, that the flourishing economy of Byzantium in the twelfth century can only be understood in the context of the widespread movements that reanimated the Mediterranean, testimony for which is provided by the Arab geographer al-Idrisi and the traveling Jew from Spain, Benjamin of Tudela.35 Al-Idrisi, who often makes use of earlier documents, cites in particular, both on the shores of the Sea of Marmara and in Greece, towns “in which one finds artisans and craftsmen.” Benjamin of Tudela, in the 1160s, documents the importance of the Jewish communities in the localities that he crosses (notably Arta, Patras, Corinth, Thebes, Chalkis, Almyros,

33See Morrisson, “Money,” 930ff.

34M. F. Hendy, “Byzantium, 1081–1204: An Economic Reappraisal,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 20 (1970): 31–52; repr. in idem, The Economy, Fiscal Administration, and Coinage of Byzantium (Northampton, 1989), art. 2, together with a supplement, “‘Byzantium, 1081–1204’: The Economy Revisited”; R.-J. Lilie, Handel und Politik zwischen dem byzantinischen Reich und den italienischen Kommunen Venedig, Pisa und Genua in der Epoche der Komnenen und der Angeloi, 1081–1204 (Amsterdam, 1984). Cf. Laiou, “Exchange and Trade,” 736ff.

35See above, note 4.

Thessalonike, Drama, Constantinople, Rhaidestos, Gallipoli) and in the islands or ports at which he lands before reaching Antioch (Mytilene, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, Cyprus, Korykos, Mamistra); this surely constitutes a measure of artisanal and commercial activity.

Sketching an Urban Geography

In any description of the urban geography of Byzantium, two cities stand out from the rest. First and foremost was Constantinople, the sole megalopolis. In the wake of the expansion of Islam, its population was no longer completely exceptional in the Mediterranean world, but it remained so in the context of the Byzantine Empire. As the capital, it sheltered the institution of empire, and its populus as a result played an important political role. Economic regulation tended to ensure simultaneously the satisfaction of needs and control over production and exchanges. In Constantinople there coexisted a local artisanal industry, regional exchanges with Thrace and Bithynia, and great international commerce. Thessalonike, to a lesser degree, exhibited the same characteristics: the city was a recognized center of artisanal activity in metalwork, glass, clothing, and fur; it was also the agricultural outlet for a large Balkan hinterland and the meeting point for trade with the Bulgarians and the Slavs. The great fair of St. Demetrios assuredly fulfilled the latter two functions.36 Certain Constantinopolitan institutions, moreover, appear in Thessalonike and seem to correspond to a deliberate effort to create a second pole of attraction and economic control; there may have been, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a city eparch and undoubtedly also functionaries (whose title of abydikoi is significant), charged with collecting taxes and controlling imports of the merchandise from the Bulgarian territories that entered through the valleys of the Morava, the Strymon, and the Nestos rivers.37

Starting from Constantinople and, to a lesser degree, from Thessalonike, we can demarcate zones of influence, trace routes of travel and commerce, and enumerate a certain number of towns whose economic importance was a function either of their proximity to Constantinople or of the fact that they served as stopping points or more distant outlets for the capital. In the first years of the seventh century, the Doctrina Jacobi lists the ports frequented by a “bad egg” from Constantinople, ports in which he rediscovers the urban solidarity of the Blues and the Greens: Pylai, Pythia, Kyzikos, Charax.38 This Constantinopolitan hinterland extended to the cities of Nikomedeia, Prousa, and Nicaea—all of which played a major role in its provisioning—as did the emporia of the Hellespont. At a greater distance, Sinope, Amisos, and Trebizond, on

36See also Laiou, “Exchange and Trade,” 756.

37A. Konstantakopoulou, “L’e´parque de Thessalonique: Les origines d’une institution administrative (VIIIe–IXe sie`cle),” in Communications grecques pre´sente´es au Ve Congre`s international des Etudes du Sud-Est Europe´en, 11–17 septembre 1984 (Athens, 1985), 157–62; N. Oikonomides, “Le kommerkion d’Abydos: Thessalonique et le commerce bulgare au IXe sie`cle,” in Hommes et richesses dans l’Empire byzantin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1989–91), 2:241–48.

38Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati, ed. V. De´roche, in G. Dagron and V. De´roche, “Juifs et chre´tiens dans l’Orient du VIIe sie`cle,” TM 11 (1991): 1.41, pp. 30–31.

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the southern coast of the Black Sea, played the dual role of regional centers—with the fairs of St. Eugenios and St. Phokas—and of towns through which cloth and other products of large-scale Constantinopolitan trade were conveyed toward Kherson, the Caucasus, the northern territories, and central Asia.39 On the southern coast of Asia Minor, Attaleia, in which substantial Armenian, Jewish, Arab, and, ultimately, Italian communities maintained a strong presence and which Ibn Hawqal situates at eightdays’ distance from Constantinople,40 owed little to its relations with the other towns of Anatolia and much to its direct ties with the capital.

In Asia Minor, a marked difference separated towns that revolved within the orbit of Constantinople from those that functioned as stopping points, military camps, or fortresses. Starting with the end of the eleventh century, moreover, a good portion of Anatolia was lost to the Turkish advance; a shifting frontier was drawn between Byzantium and the Danis¸mendids to the north, and the Seljuks of Konya to the south. The war did not completely interrupt commercial exchanges, but it did limit them, and imperial policy consisted in fortifying those towns that served a rural function to transform them into bases of military operations for local resistance or for limited reconquests.

In the Balkans, conversely, on which the provisioning of Constantinople depended more directly and within which the Normans undertook raids without managing to gain a foothold, the towns gathered strength. Thessaly is one example of a prosperous regional economy.41 The invasions of the seventh century had managed to lay waste a few antique cities, but others emerged, such as Larissa, a large rural town situated at a crossroads, which became the metropolis of Hellas in the tenth and eleventh centuries and the seat of a strategos, or the port of Demetrias on the Pagasitic Gulf, which was supplanted in the course of the twelfth century by Almyros, a town that al-Idrisi describes as well populated, in which Benjamin of Tudela counts four hundred Jews, and whose advancement was ensured in large part by Italian merchants. The coastal sites of Greece, prey to piracy and to Venetian ambitions, also benefited from the reawakening of the Mediterranean. Mention should, finally, be made of three other towns that, after contracting considerably during the seventh through the ninth centuries, occupied an especially important position in the urban economy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in particular as a result of their role in the weaving and manufacture of silk cloth: Thebes, the capital of a theme and the center of a rich and wellpopulated agricultural region that exported food products; Corinth, which also housed workshops for ceramics and glasswork; and Athens, which specialized in, among other trades, the dyeing of purple cloth.42 These cities of archontes were known for their lux-

39See A. Bryer and D. Winfield, The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1985), and the studies of A. Bryer collected in The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontos (London, 1980).

40Ibn Hawqal, Configuration de la terre (Kitab Surat al-Ard), trans. J. H. Kramers and G. Wiet, 2 vols. (Beirut-Paris, 1964), 1:196.

41A. M. Avramea, HJ buzantinh´ Qessali´a me´cri tou'1204: Sumbolh´ eij" th`n iJstorikh´n gewgrafi´an

(Athens, 1974).

42See Louvi-Kizi, “Thebes”; Kazanaki-Lappa, “Medieval Athens”; and Sanders, “Corinth.”

ury artisanal work (in 1147 the Normans, having pillaged Thebes, deported the silk embroiderers and silk weavers to Sicily).43 The three occupied a high rank in an international commerce that no longer centered solely around Constantinople.

These various issues are treated in greater detail in other chapters of this book. I have sought here, by way of introduction, only to mark the salient points of an evolutionary trend and bring to mind a few models: the megalopolis and its hinterland; the regional capital and its modest urban network; the kastron/garrison town, situated in regions of permanent warfare; and, finally, the several new commercial sites, the rise of which was the result of the general development of exchange in the Mediterranean region. The diversity of these institutions needs to be stressed at the outset before attempting a description of the urban economy, which, in the absence of large and diverse source material, will not take those issues sufficiently into account.

The Social Structure of Production and Sale

The Corporations (Guilds)

From Antiquity to the Book of the Eparch Under the Roman tradition, which Byzantium prolonged, the corporations, or guilds, were first and foremost a form of association that brought individuals together into a recognized entity—that is, one that could act as a legal “person” and receive bequests—to defend its members’ interests, ensure the performance of funerary rites, promote devotions, help the poor, or, quite simply, taste the pleasures of social intercourse.44 Premised on the exercise of a trade, this bond was more specifically intended to stem competition, to represent the profession to public authorities, and, in a number of cases, to transmit technical knowledge by means of apprenticeship. It is essential to stress at the outset this need for solidarity

43Nicetae Choniatae, Historia, ed. J. L. van Dieten (Berlin–New York, 1975), 73–76 (hereafter Choniates); see Laiou, “Exchange and Trade,” 739, 746ff.

44Citations to the Book of the Eparch (To` Eparcikoj`n bibli´on, cited hereafter as EB) are to the most recent edition and translation, J. Koder, ed., Das Eparchenbuch Leons des Weisen (Vienna, 1991), with occasional references to the edition of J. Nicole, Le livre du pre´fet (Geneva, 1893), and to the commentaries of M. J. Siuziumov, Vizantiiskaia kniga Eparkha: Vstupitel’naia stat’ia, perevod, kommentarii (Moscow, 1962). For useful studies on the subject, see: A. P. Christophilopoulos, “Peri` to` Eparcikoj`n bibli´on,” EEBS 23 (1953): 152–59, reprinted in Di´kaion kai` iJstori´aÚ Mikra` meleth´mata (Athens, 1973), 130–37; idem, To` Eparcikoj`n bibli´on Le´onto" tou' Sofou' kai` aiJ suntecni´ai ejn Buzanti´v (Athens, 1935); idem, “Zhth´mata´ tina` ejk tou' ejparcikou' bibli´ou,” Hellenika 11 (1939): 125–36, repr. in Di´kaion kai` iJstori´a

(as above), 119–29; E. France`s, “L’e´tat et les me´tiers `a Byzance,” BSl 23 (1962): 231–49; A. P. Kazhdan, “Tsekhi i gosudarstvennye masterskie v Konstantinopole v IX–X vv.,” VizVrem 6 (1953): 132–55; J. Koder, “Epagge´lmata scetika´ me ton episitismo´ sto Eparciko´ Bibli´o,” in Praktika´ tou A Dieqnou´"

¨

Sumposi´ouÚ H kaqhmerinh´ Zwh´ sto Buza´ ntio ed. C. Maltezou (Athens, 1989), 363–71; idem, “Uberlegungen zu Aufbau und Entstehung des Eparchikon Biblion,” in Kathegetria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey on Her 80th Birthday, ed. J. Chrysostomides (Camberley, 1988), 85–97; B. Mendl, “Les coporations byzantines (OiJ mh` ejn th' ajpografh“'nte"o ),” BSl 22 (1961): 302–19; G. Mickwitz, Die Kartellfonktionen der Zu¨nfte und ihre Bedeutung bei der Entstehung des Zunftwesens (Helsinki, 1936); P. Schreiner, “Die Organisation byzantinischer Kaufleute und Handwerker,” in Untersuchungen zu Handel und Verkehr der vorund fru¨hgeschichtlichen Zeit in Mittelund Nordeuropa, vol. 6, Organisationsformen der Kaufmannsvereinigungen in der Spa¨tantike und im fru¨hen Mittelalter, ed. H. Jankuhn and E. Ebel (Go¨ttingen, 1989), 44–61; A. Sto¨ckle, Spa¨tro¨mische und byzantinische Zu¨nfte (Leipzig, 1911; repr. Aalen, 1963).

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and integration into the urban society, before stating that the collegia and the corpora, by virtue of their representational functions, sometimes acted as pressure groups and lost their independence by becoming the political clientele of ambitious patrons or by accepting imperial protection. Beginning in the third century, the guilds became the instruments of economic planning in the hands of a state that sought to assign artisans to their trade by heredity, to control prices, and to avert shortages.45

The legal codes contain a good number of vestiges of this situation, in particular the affirmation that the guilds of Constantinople were subject to the city eparch; the guilds were, however, subject to his control on the same terms as the citizenry or the demes.46 For all that, the fundamental nature of the guilds did not alter, nor did they become simple conduits for the administration of the city, that is, the central power. The artisans of the building trade would not have declared a strike at Sardis in 459,47 nor would the representatives of the trades of the capital have lobbied Justinian for a fairer reckoning of their fiscal contributions,48 nor would the funerary epigraphs of the little town of Korykos have expressed pride in belonging to a su´sthma,49 had the professional associations been entirely under state control. Rather, one should take into account that throughout their history the guilds were, to different degrees, simultaneously associations that freely defended corporate interests, organizations through which the state sought to control the economy, and, in certain circumstances, the spearhead for political action, in the same manner as the circus factions. The balance among these three functions differed by period; it is also tied to the nature of the source material. Normative texts stress the guardianship functions of the prefecture, while historians emphasize the disturbances brought about by the “tradesmen.” Regrettably, the associative and professional aspects of the guilds held little interest for ancient authors.

After the first quarter of the seventh century and until the beginning of the tenth, the sources no longer mention the corporations/guilds, which might give the impression that the institution itself had disappeared. We find only rare mentions of “people of the workshops,” which supports neither the conclusion that a breach took place, nor that there was continuity. “People of the workshops” (ejrgasthriakoi´) accompanied Herakleios when he left Constantinople in 623 to confront the khagan of the Avars;50 in 695 they participated, as did the senators, in the arming of a fleet against Kherson;51

45On all these points see the excellent summary by L. Cracco Ruggini, “Le associazioni professionali nel mondo romano-bizantino,” in Artigianato e tecnica nella societa` dell’alto medioevo occidentale (Spoleto, 1971), 1:59–193. See also A. Graeber, Untersuchungen zum spa¨tro¨mischen Korporationswesen

(Frankfurt am Main, 1983).

46CI 1.28.4 Bas. 6.4.13: Pa´ nta ta` ejn Kwnstantinoupo´lei swmatei'a kai` oiJ poli'tai kai` oiJ ajpo` tou'

dh´mou pa´ nte" tv' ejpa´ rcv th'" po´lew" uJpokei´sqwsan.

47Foss, Sardis, 19–20 and n. 5, 110–13.

48CIC 3:316–24, Nov. 59; see below, 415–16.

49K. P. Mentzou, Sumbolai` eij" th`n mele´thn tou' oijkonomikou' kai` koinwnikou' bi´ou th'" prwi?mou buzantinh'" perio´dou (Athens, 1975), which summarizes the points by classifying the inscriptions, in particular those of Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, according to profession.

50Chronicon Paschale, ed. L. Dindorf, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1822), 1:712 (line 15).

51Theophanes, ed. de Boor, 377 (line 29).

their representatives are cited in 776 among the recognized entities from whom Leo IV sought an oath of fidelity to the dynasty.52 To be sure, these texts do not make explicit mention of guilds, but their interpretation would be problematical had not artisanal activity and commerce maintained a minimal degree of organization. At the same time, this relative silence is hardly surprising given the weakening—even the collapse—of urban structures, the depopulation and ruralization of the towns, and the autarkical tendencies that kept the urban economy operating at an extremely low level. With the return to equilibrium, however, the Book of the Eparch enables us to pick up the thread of a tradition that had been suspended rather than interrupted, for it describes the guilds, from its own perspective, without any indication that they might be something new.

Between the abundant sources of late antiquity and those of the eleventh to twelfth centuries, the Book of the Eparch constitutes an almost unique source. Leo VI promulgated this collection of legal provisions in 911/912, undoubtedly after scouring the archives of the prefecture, submitting a draft to jurists, and adding an all-purpose prologue to the beginning of this regulation hastily transformed into law.53 The Book of the Eparch retains certain characteristics of its origin: it has the appearance, but not the coherence, of a legislative text,54 and the only complete manuscript that has come down to us shows traces of later revisions, as if it were a simple working document.55 In addition, its objectives are limited: it deals with neither the urban economy nor with guilds in a general sense; rather it describes the organization and the supervision of a certain number of trades peculiar to Constantinople: those that involved juridical practices (notaries), money (money changers), the manufacture, sale, and possible export of high-value products in which the state held a direct interest (goldsmithing, silk), specialty trades in which fraud was common (chandlers, soapmakers), trades that received imperial commissions (leatherworking), and especially those that had to do with the provisioning of the urban population, where regular supplies and a relative price stability were preconditions of social order. It would thus be imprudent to derive from the Book of the Eparch, valuable though it is, a model applicable to all sectors and all regions in the entirety of the empire: not only are many of the artisanal activities that were organized as guilds not mentioned therein (or, if so, only allusively),56 but the work does not take into account parallel networks of production or of commerce over which the prefecture did not exercise direct control.

52 Ibid., 449–50; these examples are analyzed by Schreiner, “Organisation,” 46–48.

¨

53 See J. Koder, “Uberlegungen,” and the introduction to Eparchenbuch, 31–32; Schreiner, “Organisation,” 48–50. The manuscript Hagiou Taphou 25, provides only the prooimion with a full title that includes a date.

54 The regulation of trades was not, moreover, an object of legislation. Neither the Basilics nor the law manuals discuss the matter; like the “laws of urbanism,” it fell under Ta eparchika.

55 Regarding the manuscript tradition, see the introduction by Koder to Eparchenbuch, 42–57.

56 See, for example, the last chapter regarding the building trades, which makes reference to guilds that were not the subject of specific regulations.