The Economic History of Byzantium From

tence of charitable institutions, whose daily bread distributions, now charity rather than annona, fed an extremely large number of indigents.356

The Book of the Eparch confirms that neither public bakeries nor a state monopoly continued to exist. Rather, there was a guild that would have been comparable to the others in every respect, except that it was exempt from all corve´es or requisitions that might have interrupted the manufacture of bread357 and that it involved a sensitive product subject to a high degree of supervision by the eparch. Authorities set the price of bread—or more precisely its weight, since, for accounting reasons and because of the rigidity of the monetary system, it was the weight of bread that varied while the price remained fixed. The mechanism was as follows.358 (1) Bakers or their agents came to the prefecture on a regular basis to negotiate with the eparch the weight of bread as a function of the price at which they had purchased the wheat (which should be understood, here again, to be the weight of wheat per nomisma. (2) The price or weight of bread had to allow a constant profit: 2 miliaresia per nomisma (1⁄6 or 16.7%) for general expenses—particularly burdensome in that these included a large labor force, animals, and fuel for lighting and the ovens; 1 keration per nomisma (1⁄24 or 4.2%) as profit for the baker himself, who, more often than not, had rent to pay. (3) Finally, the symponos and his agents were charged with applying the fixed tariff, from bakery to bakery, after the various operations (milling, rising, and baking) had taken place. The eparch’s assessor (who seems to have been itinerant, whereas the eparch himself remained at the prefecture) undoubtedly used factoring tables to facilitate the various conversions of weights, prices, and percentages, necessary when the calculation moves from wheat to bread. Pliny the Elder gives only a rudimentary estimate of such conversions;359 a somewhat more detailed formula appears under the name of Florentinus in the Geoponika:360

1. Having carefully picked over the undamaged wheat [to remove rotten kernels], and having sieved it, weigh it, and if you find that the modios equals 40 pounds

356For the reign of Irene: Ps.-Kodinos, Patria, 3:85 and 173, ed. Preger, 246, 269; for the Myrelaion of Romanos Lekapenos, see Theophanes Continuatus, 430, which specifies that the emperor ordered daily distribution of bread to 30,000 indigents.

357EB, 18.1–2.

358EB, 18.1, 4. The first paragraph should be understood thus: “The bakers must, on the order of the eparch, make their weights conform with the [purchase] price of the wheat. Having purchased a quantity of wheat corresponding to one nomisma and having milled it and let it rise in the presence of the eparch’s assessor [ejn tv' sumpo´nv should probably be emended], they must calculate their profit.” It is not the “storehouse” (magasin) of the eparch or of his assessor (Nicole, Livre de Pre´fet) that is at issue, and one can in no way conclude from this passage that the bakers obtained wheat from public granaries. Durliat, “L’approvisionnement de Constantinople,” in Mango and Dagron, Constantinople and Its Hinterland (as above, note 179), 29; Koder, “ Epaggej´lmata,” 363–71, esp. 366–67. The system for determining prices was the same for bread and for wine: EB, 19.1.

359Bread weighs one-third more than the flour that is used for its manufacture: Hist. nat., 18.67; see Foxhall and Forbes, “Sitometrei´a,” 79–80.

360Geoponica sive Cassiani Bassi scholastici De re rustica eclogae, 2.32, ed. H. Beckh (Leipzig, 1895), 2.32, p. 71.

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[13 kg], you may expect the equivalent in pounds of bread, for the reduction that results from the subtraction of the bran will be compensated by the addition of water in the course of milling and other operations [leading to the preparation of the dough]. 2. The baking of the bread results in a loss of one-tenth and onetwentieth [that is, a total of 15%] of the weight, so that as it is baked the bread will lose 1.5 pounds for every 10 pounds. 3. The same reduction in weight [in baking] necessarily applies to second-quality bread, as well as to bread made of pure wheat.361

There is no evidence for regulation or permanent supervision of prices outside Constantinople.

Butchers and Fishmongers The provisioning of Constantinople with meat was either regional (Thrace, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia) or involved sources at a greater distance (the Anatolian plateau).362 Such would seem to be the meaning of the provisions in the Book of the Eparch that distinguish between whole herds (essentially of sheep) belonging to large landowners, coming from “outside” and driven to Nikomedeia or Constantinople by agents or by livestock merchants acting as intermediaries ( provatarioi, provatemporoi),363 and the various animals that the peasants of areas closer in would have been able to sell on their own in the markets of the capital, without obstruction from those professionals who sought to obtain a form of monopoly.364 It appears that butchers did not have the right to meet the couriers, nor could livestock merchants take unrestricted delivery of livestock outside the system of controls; they were, however, encouraged to go negotiate the price of herds “beyond the Sangarios River” (that is, outside what we might call, in a broad sense, the “region” of Constantinople) in order to obtain meat at a better price by cutting out the intermediaries.

In any event, the animals would have been transported on foot to the market of the Strategion (and at Easter and at Pentecost, to the Forum Tauri) so that the prefecture could exert its control.365 The Eisagoge simply requires the eparch to check that meat is selling at a just price,366 but the Book of the Eparch goes into more detail: the eparch set not only the price of sheep on the hoof (or more precisely the number of sheep that butchers could purchase for 1 nomisma [between 6 and 10 according to the

361The divergence between the calculation of Pliny the Elder and that of Florentinus arises undoubtedly from the fact that the latter considers only bread with a very high proportion of very pure white flour (except for the case of loss to the baking). See the calculations of J.-M. Carrie´, according to which 1 kg of wheat after milling renders 0.44 kg of white flour, 0.66 kg of second-quality flour or

0.88kg of whole wheat flour, and 1 kg of flour gives 1.5 kg of bread: “Les distributions alimentaires,” 1045–46, followed by Durliat, De la ville antique, 62.

362A general account appears in Koukoules, Bi´o", 5:46–66; ODB, s.vv. “Butcher,” “Goat,” “Meat,” “Sheep,” “Swine”; Hendy, Studies, 562–66.

363EB, 15.3.

364EB, 15.4.

365EB, 15.1, 5.

366EB, 4.8; Zepos, Jus, 2:244.

sources]),367 but also the proportion within this total of young lambs, which would evidently weigh less than adult sheep.368 He was present at the slaughtering of livestock by the butchers, who took their profit in kind (the feet, the head, and the viscera), the other parts being sold at no profit, for a sum that was simply a function of the purchase price.369

Prefectural regulation imposed an absolute separation between “butchers,” who were allowed to trade only in beef and particularly mutton, and the “pork merchants,” who were suspected of being likely to strike private bargains with swine merchants from the adjoining regions instead of transacting their sales at the Tauros, under the watch of the eparch. Nor were they the only parties that attracted suspicion: butchers, the households of the archontes, and the local grocers undoubtedly tended to supply themselves directly with livestock, or with smoked and salted pork, for their own consumption and for resale at a profit, which would have taken on a more or less speculative character in times of shortages; the practice was decried and subject to severe sanctions.370

Even more so than meat, fish was a function of regional geographic and climatic conditions, but was also dependent on fishing techniques in which Byzantium, following the Greek and Roman tradition, was well versed: freshor saltwater fishponds numbered in the hundreds in rural areas; there was lineor single-net fishing, which was allied to the pleasures of the hunt, fishing by pelagic nets (presupposing a boat and several men), and finally fishing by stationary nets—more profitable but requiring a team and quasi-permanent installations along the corridor used by migratory or semimigratory fish: simple funnel-shaped wattle traps set up at the mouths of rivers or at the outfalls of lakes and lagoons, or epochai, nets that were stretched over piles and into which the fish were swept.371 This form of fishing was certainly not invented in Constantinople, as Leo VI thought it to have been,372 but it adapted itself particularly

367EB, 15.5; on prices, see, cf. Cheynet, Malamut, and Morrisson, “Prix et salaires,” 349–50; cf. Morrisson and Cheynet, “Prices,” Table 11.

368The expression th' eJkatosth('EB, 15.5), for which Nicole has proposed a number of interpretations, should undoubtedly retain its sense of “percentage” in this context and be so translated (suggested to me by N. Oikonomides).

369EB, 15.2; it seems that it was the butchers themselves who undertook the slaughtering. In Rome, it was the lanius, distinct from the butcher, who received as compensation the head, the feet, and the fat from the neck and the udders: A. Chastagnol, “Le ravitaillement de Rome en viande au Ve sie`cle,” RH 210 (1953): 13–22. The tradition continued up to the 20th century in a fair number of Mediterranean countries.

370EB, 16.2–5.

371See K. Devedjian, former director of the fish market of Constantinople and controller-in-chief of the fisheries, Peˆche et peˆcheries en Turquie (Constantinople, 1926); K. Triantaphyllopoulos, “Die Novelle 56 Leos des Weisen und ein Streit u¨ber das Meeresufer im 11. Jahrhundert,” in Festschrift Paul Koschaker (Weimar, 1939), 3:309–23; E. Trapp, “Die gesetzlichen Bestimmungen u¨ber die Errichtung einer ejpoch´,” ByzF 1 (1966): 329–33; G. Dagron, “Poissons, peˆcheurs et poissonniers de Constantinople,” in Constantinople and Its Hinterland (as above, note 179), 57–73.

372Novelles de Le´on VI, 57, pp. 214–17.

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well to the ecology of the Constantinopolitan region, which was characterized by the seasonal migration of mackerel, young tunny ( palamis), bonita, and tuna, which, after spawning, traveled in mid-spring from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, then returned in the opposite direction in the fall.373 At one stage or the other, they were caught in whole schools in the many trap nets on the Bosphoros and the Sea of Marmara, and fish constituted an abundant and inexpensive source of food for the city; the sources often credit it with moderating the effects of food shortages.374

These fishing grounds are described at the end of the tenth century in the Vita of Loukas the Stylite (d. 979) who, from the top of his column on the sea’s edge near Chalcedon, blesses the net installations that the fishermen have set up nearby, and receives every tenth fish as tribute (apodekatosis).375 The proliferation of fishing installations raised the juridical problem of who owned the shoals on which they were set up, that is, the annexation of these shoals by the owners of lands bordering the sea. In fact, following the Roman tradition, the sea and the shoreline were res communis.376 However, confirming a practice that closely resembles an abuse, Leo VI promulgated five novels that granted ownership of the shoals to the owners of the shoreline and required a clear distance of at least 700 m between any two net installations.377 He thus opened the door to all sorts of disputes and privileges, and permitted the lasting triumph of custom over law. Michael Attaleiates informs us that in the eleventh century the principal beneficiaries of these measures were the monasteries and the religious foundations, which owned the vast majority of skalai and fishing grounds and exploited them directly or leased them.378 In any event, the Bosphoros and the Sea of Marmara were covered with fishing grounds that supplied the fish most commonly sold in the markets of the capital.

The fishermen themselves, or members of their households, sometimes marketed their catch at the wharves or through itinerant sale.379 But the importance of fish in the diet led the prefecture to regulate distribution and price. Fishmongers, grouped into a guild and situated in markets, were required in principle to purchase the fish from the fishermen at the wharves or at the waterside; in order to avoid too high an incidence of retail sales and to permit more effective supervision, fishmongers were not permitted to meet the fishermen directly at the sea or on the fishing grounds.380 Fresh fish was sold in markets probably located at the Golden Horn (near Neorion?).

373See Devedjian, Peˆche et peˆcheries en Turquie.

374See above, 439.

375Chaps. 38–40, ed. F. Vanderstuyf, “Vie de saint Luc le Stylite,” PO 11.2, 229–33 Les saints stylites, ed. H. Delehaye, (Paris, 1923), chap. 16, pp. 212–13.

376Dig. 47.10.13.7 Bas. 60.21.13.7.

377Novelles de Le´on VI, 56, 57, 102, 103, 104, pp. 212–17, 334–41.

378Attaleiates, 277–78.

379See the letter of Tzetzes cited below (note 384) and ep. 43 (lines 40–41) of Patriarch Athanasios: A.-M. Talbot, ed. The Correspondence of Athanasius I, Patriarch of Constantinople (Washington, D.C., 1975), 90–91.

380EB, 17.3.

Unsold merchandise, dried and salted by the taricheutai, was sold to the local grocers; only this surplus could be exported.381 Thus there was control by the prefecture of marketing, but also of prices and profit margins: the leaders of the fishmongers’ guild were required to appear at the prefecture at dawn to announce the last night’s total catch of “white fish”382 in order to establish authoritatively a sale price intended to compensate for the wide seasonal variations in the catch. This sale price was supplemented by a “profit,” calculated somewhat curiously in two stages: at the time of the purchase of the fish from the fisherman, the fishmongers of each market collectively received 2 folleis and their prostates received 2 folleis (2⁄288, or 1.4% of the sale price), a rather low recompense that perhaps defrayed the cost of transport, or the various sportulae to be paid to the agents of the prefecture; on resale in the market they receive 1 miliaresion per nomisma (1⁄12, or 8.3%)—a perfectly normal profit margin.383 As indicated in a letter of John Tzetzes, even in the twelfth century the consumers of Constantinople maintained the limit of 1⁄12 on profit and denounced to the eparch those poor merchants who bought mackerel at 12 to the follis and resold them to the consumer at 10 to the follis (instead of 11), thus realizing a profit of 16.6% (rather than 8.3%).384 For this widely consumed, low-priced commodity, the housewives of Thessalonike, like those of the capital, were in the habit of asking the fishmonger, “Those mackerel— how many per obol?”385

Wine Merchants, Taverners, and Grocers In fourth-century Rome there was an arca vinaria and undoubtedly a double market for wine: a free market and one that was controlled by the state.386 Such a structure did not exist in Constantinople, but the “Edict of Abydos” notes frequent loads of wine from Cilicia, for which the regular tariff of sportulae was lowered.387 In the Book of the Eparch, the price of wine is also controlled. At each delivery, the guild masters of the taverners (kapeloi) negotiated with the eparch a sale price based on purchase price; as with bread, the eparch’s assessor was responsible for making the taverners put their measures into conformity with the price, that is, going to the taverns to verify that the negotiated price was reflected in the volume, or the weight, so that the sale took place at a fixed price.388 Other sources mention

381EB, 17.1, 2.

382EB, 17.4. In the context, it should be understood that the reference is to “white tuna,” distinguished even today from “red tuna.” It was caught in great numbers in trap nets (ejpocai´), especially at night, and were the most important for public consumption.

383EB, 17.1, 3. A discussion of these percentages appears in Dagron, “Poissons, peˆcheurs.”

384Tzetzes, ep. 57, 81–82; regarding this letter, cf. E. Papagianni, “Monacoi´ kai´ mau´rh agora´ sto´

12o aiw´ na. Parathrh´sei" se problh´mata tou´ Eparcikou´ Bibli´ou,” Byzantiaka 8 (1988): 59–76.

385Pseudo-Luciano, Timarione, ed. Romano, 69. “Obol” here means the copper follis, that is to say, the smallest monetary unit.

386A system described in particular by A. Chastagnol, “Un scandale du vin `a Rome sous le BasEmpire: L’affaire du pre´fet Orfitus,” AnnalesESC 5 (1950): 166–83.

387See above, note 317.

388EB, 19.1.

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certain well-known vintages from Bithynia, Mitylene, Euboia, Chios, Rhodes, or Crete,389 whose import and sale would not have been supervised.

At the same time that they marketed the wine (ordinary or vinegared wine: posca, phouska, oxykraton),390 the kapeloi served prepared dishes, in particular mezedes to accompany beverages. Patronized by idlers and wastrels, the taverns had a bad reputation. Specific “rules of urbanism” prohibited outside porches and benches, which would have allowed the taverns to spill out into the street and to make a public show of “debauchery;”391 they sought to limit the hours of operation in order to avoid scenes of all-night drinking and brawling and so that the faithful would not be diverted from attending the morning mass on Sundays and feast days.392 Conciliar canons often deemed it necessary to prohibit clerics from frequenting or using the kapeleia,393 but it is nonetheless the Lives of the saints—and in particular those of the troublesome “holy fools” (saloi)—that most realistically describe the conviviality of the Constantinopolitan taverns in the Artopoleia quarter.394

The term kapelos and its compounds have another meaning, just as pejorative, and designate (with the intent of stigmatizing it) resale at profit in small-scale trade.395 This practice was held to be especially shameful when it involved a sitokapelos who accumulated supplies with the intent of speculating in times of shortages,396 but it was condemned generally by ecclesiastical sources, which likened it to usury and speculation.397 Following the Roman tradition, the sources classify the merchants into two groups: those who sell products that they themselves have manufactured, transformed,

389These wines of quality are cited in particular in Theodore Daphnopates, Correspondance, ep. 37 (lines 5–45), pp. 207–209; Haldon, Three Treatises, 132 (lines 590–602); Theodore Prodromos, “Satire of the Higoumenoi,” Poe`mes prodromiques, 55–56, 60, 62 (III, lines 155–57, 195–200, 284–86, 312–15). See also the data provided by Hendy, Monetary Economy, index, s.v. “Wine.”

390See above, 440.

391Saliou, Le traite´ d’urbanisme de Julien d’Ascalon, 44–45 (chap. 17, 3); see also Psellos, ep. 83, Sathas, MB, 5:320.

392EB, 19.3, for which parallels exist with respect to Rome: Ammianus Marcellinus, 28.4.4, and with the later Byzantine period: Andronikos II, Novel 26, Zepos, Jus, 1:535 (§ 7), and letters 42 and 43, of Athanasios I, Talbot, Correspondence of Athanasius I, 86–91. Cf. G. Dagron, “Jamais le dimanche,” in Me´langes He´le`ne Ahrweiler (as above, note 214).

393Canon 44 “of the Apostles” (Rhalles and Potles, Su´ntagma, 2:71–73); Canon 24 of the Council of Laodikeia (ibid., 3:192), Canons 9 and 76 of the Council in Trullo (ibid., 2:326–28, 480–83).

394Das Leben des heiligen Narren Symeon von Leontios von Neapolis, ed. L. Ryde´n (Stockholm, 1963), 147, 153, 164–65; Vie de Jean de Chypre, chap. 14, pp. 362–63; Life of St. Andrew the Fool, 2:28–31, 36–39, 40–41, 92–95, 96–97 (lines 232–71, 351–70, 408–21, 1217–40, 1262–63).

395The verb kaphleu´ein appears as early as 2 Cor 2:17, to designate those who “barter with” the word of God. Note EB, 11.1, in which the keroularioi, lacking their own shop, lay in stores (ejgkaphleu´- ontai) of candles, which they later sell on the market.

396Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 16.19 and 43.34, PG 35:960 and PG 36:544, respectively; see the passages (cited above, 444–45) in Theophanes Continuatus, 479 (regarding the famine of 960) and Skylitzes, 277–78 (the shortage of 967); Athanasios I, in 1304, threatened to anathematize all sitoka´ phloiÚ Talbot, Correspondence of Athanasius I, 266–67, ep. 106.

397A canon attributed to Nikephoros the Patriarch, but of uncertain date, likens (more or less) the kapelos to a usurer and limits profit to 10%: J.-B. Pitra, Juris ecclesiastici Graecorum Historia et Monumenta

(Rome, 1868), 2:323–24. The typikon of Constantine Monomachos for Mt. Athos renews the interdic-

or imported from a distance, and those who add no “labor” to the products that they market and are moved solely by the “lure of profit.”398

There nonetheless existed in Byzantium, as everywhere else, “grocery shops,” which the Book of the Eparch defines and whose specific economic functions it describes: these were readily accessible businesses, scattered throughout the city “so that the populace may have at hand that which it needs to live” (as distinguished from other trades whose concentration in one or another district or street was a function of their high degree of specialization, of competition, and of control). The grocery shops sold a diverse range of products at retail (salted or dried fish and meat, butter, cheese, oil, honey, vegetables, dried legumes, hemp, linen, various containers, nails); the difficulties of provisioning, stocking, and sale justified a high margin of 1⁄6, or 16.6%.399 It is clearly specified, however, that these grocery shops could not encroach on other specialties, in selling, for example, soap, cloth, wine, fresh meat, wax, and, especially, luxury products reserved to druggists-perfumers. With respect to the latter, the dividing line, we are told, was between “what smells bad and what smells good”—between items of regional production and those that were imported from great distance (pepper, cinnamon, aloe wood, musk, incense, etc.) and whose quality was to be safeguarded; the criterion was that the grocers made use of the “Roman scale” (steelyards; kampana) and not the delicate double-pan (zyga) balance scales, used for the more precise measurements of the druggist-perfumer.400

This same concern for product quality and fear of contamination with the “grocery trade” is evident in the prefectural regulations concerning chandlers, whose shops tended to be concentrated around churches; it was feared that they might adulterate the candles by including animal fat or by using residues.401 Similar concerns may be seen with regard to soapmakers (or washers) suspected of engaging in magic or felonious practices.402

tion for the monks of this kapelikos porismos, which consists of purchasing to resell at profit: Proˆtaton, no. 8 (lines 58–59, 133–34).

398See in particular Giardina, “Modi di scambio,” esp. 535–48.

399EB, 13.1, 5.

400EB, 10.1, 5–6; 11.8; 13.1.

401EB, 11.4. The trade probably tended to be geographically dispersed, for the regulation stresses the grouping into ergasteria and the prohibition of itinerant sale and resale on the market (11.1). There was evidently a fairly dense group of khroula´ ria at Hagia Sophia, which caused a fire at the end of the reign of Leo VI (Theophanes Continuatus, 377). We have the example of a keroularios, set up in the Forum of Constantine under Nikephoros I, who amassed a fortune of 100 pounds of gold, confiscated by the emperor (Theophanes, 487–88). Particular importers of wax into Constantinople were the Bulgarians and the Russians.

402EB, 12.4–8; on the manufacture of soap, cf. R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology (Leiden, 1955), 3:174–82. The soap termed “Gallic” (EB, 12.4) was apparently limited to medicinal uses. For a miraculous healing due to soap sold at the gate of a church, see Vie et miracles de sainte The`cle, ed. G. Dagron (Brussels, 1978), 400–403, no. 42.

464 KLAUS-PETER MATSCHKE

there were shifts in the balance of elements and factors that shaped this economic character, shifts in how they interrelated and interconnected.

From an economic point of view, the late Byzantine city was, first of all, a concentration of consumers, a center of demand for and consumption of material goods. Late Byzantine cities also remained centers of state and church administration. After 1261 Constantinople became once again the focal point of the imperial court and the orthodox patriarchate. This also made it the main seat for a bewildering array of governmental and ecclesiastical officials and dignitaries, and the place where they preferred to satisfy their varied and sophisticated material needs. However, already during their exile in Asia Minor, the late Byzantine emperors had resided not only in the official capital of Nicaea; they may have spent just as much time in two other cities of their empire: Nymphaion and Magnesia. At first the emperors of the Palaiologan dynasty continued this practice; it was not rare for them and their court to spend longer periods of time in Thessalonike and Didymoteichon, and for a brief time they were also forced to reside in Adrianople. The result was that at least Didymoteichon experienced for a time a noticeable economic upswing.

What made late Byzantine cities centers of individual and collective consumption was also the fact that most of the late Byzantine aristocracy continued to reside there. To be sure, quite a few archontes and dynatoi from the capital and various larger provincial cities, such as Thessalonike, sometimes spent a considerable portion of the year on their domains, in their residential towers and manor houses near the cities. Even so, they kept their chief urban residences to which they retired, at least during the winter, along with their retainers and the products of their estates. And throughout the year they used their close ties to the city and urban markets to pursue a variety of commercial activities that offered profit of every kind.

The needs of the common city dwellers were modest and much the same winter or summer; the needs of most people were limited to a minimum of food—some bread, vegetables, fish (but not everywhere), very little meat—and a few simple pieces of clothing. But since the middle and lower classes were generally much more numerous than all the resident officials, aristocrats, military men, and intellectuals combined, they shaped the character of the cities as centers of consumption at least as much as did the much more sophisticated and varied needs of the upper class.

The function of the late Byzantine city as a center of consumption was noticeably affected, however, by the fact that the weakening of the empire and the shrinking of its territory necessitated a successive dismantling of the administrative apparatus of the state and the church. To the very end, governmental offices and sinecures figured prominently in the considerations of the upper class; for some, indeed, they were of existential importance. Yet the attraction of government service waned with the declining profitability of state sinecures. Another factor that had more negative repercussions than before is that the late Byzantine aristocracy as a whole was not highly developed; in some cities it seems too small in sheer numerical terms to secure economic stability and create a well-funded demand for material goods.

Moreover, the numerical weight of the other groups of urban consumers also did

not increase over the long run. Rural dwellers who fled into the late Byzantine cities were demographically offset by urban dwellers who fled to foreign lands or switched sides to join the victorious enemies of the empire. Constant military pressure led to additional population losses. Finally, we must add epidemics that began with the great plague of 1347/48 and troubled the empire to the very end; as in the West, the impact was probably more severe in the cities than in the countryside.

Thus, despite the growing importance of the city in late Byzantine society, population figures for the cities generally declined. Only two cities during this period are known to have had more than 10,000 inhabitants. The population of Constantinople may have even exceeded 100,000 during the early Palaiologan period, though shortly before the city fell to the Turks the number was barely half that. The population figures for Thessalonike were on the same order of magnitude—about 40,000—when the city came under Venetian administration in 1423, and they continued to decline until the final occupation by the Turks. Didymoteichon, Serres, and Ioannina may have experienced a short-term population growth during the early Palaiologan period, and the population of Mistra may have continued to grow even into the fifteenth century. But none of these cities is likely to have crossed the ten thousand mark during Byzantine times, and the basic negative trend, which amounted to a diminution of the role of the late Byzantine city as a center of consumption, was not substantially affected by these scattered and short-lived countervailing developments.

In principle, the late Byzantine city also continued to be the place where society’s material resources were gathered and concentrated—society’s treasuries. The late Byzantine court was not only a center of consumption. It also disposed of all essential commodities and many luxury articles that made this consumption possible. The residences of late Byzantine city governors had warehouses of foodstuffs, grain, oil, salt, and wine. These provisions were used to supply local demand, secure the city’s needs in times of crises and war, and engage in commercial and speculative activities during war and peace. The urban residences of the aristocracy included large storehouses, clothing stores, and stables. In preparation for lengthy sieges, the population of the capital, and perhaps of other cities as well, was required to lay in a stock of foodstuffs with governmental subsidies or at their own expense.

In addition to products of the soil, foodstuffs, and luxury articles, the wealth in precious metals—coined and uncoined—was also concentrated in the cities. Revenue from taxes, tariffs, and other state prerogatives such as confiscations, treasure finds, and certain inheritance rights flowed into government coffers. Members of the aristocracy deposited their money and valuables in wooden boxes, chests, and copper vases, sometimes under their own beds in the chambers of their city palaces. Some members of the imperial family and the ruling family clan even had treasurers in their retinue. In times of political crises and threats of confiscation, those at risk tried to bury their wealth or deposit it with friends and acquaintances; evidently the possibility of concealing it in bank accounts did not exist yet. In the early years of the Palaiologan period, however, we notice a trend among aristocrats: they left the restless and dangerous cities with their material assets and sought safety in specially constructed treasure strong-