II. The Church, the Land and the Empire: Byzantium and the Law of the Land

The concept of property in Byzantium is one that is not often associated with discussions on the matter of medieval history of the great Empire, but it is however one that paints a very interesting image that is certainly worth exploring further. An important concept when analyzing this aspect of Byzantium, and generally medieval economic systems, is that of feudalism. Feudalism in Byzantium is a highly debated topic because many scholars claim it was non-existent as a system therein, due to Byzantium’s direct Roman legal and economic heritage. Others claim that Byzantium had forms and institutions that were quasi-feudal, and in any case, in its long history it had certain points during which its system was influenced by in that domain of its existence through the Crusades, trade and various migrations.

To begin with, we must look at the most important part of the exploration, which is the terminology. Feudalism in the context of this investigation will refer to the system of social and economic organization that researchers mainly attribute to the Western European medieval states. In Byzantium there is a long history of Roman law that pretty much sets the ground for Byzantium’s own legal and economic organization that is quite different from feudalism. In Eastern Rome, the continuity of the Roman system did not allow for feudalism to grow, at any rate in no way nearly as it did in the former Western Roman lands.

Alexander Kazhdan offers an intriguing way of examining the concept of property in Europe at the time, in order to discern between how economic society was organized in Byzantium in contrast to the West. He offers three distinct ways of looking at the concept of property; i) private, ii) feudal, iii) state. These did not obviously exist simultaneously in the Byzantine or medieval world at large, but are instead different and separate ways of property. The distinctions of property are important because they are largely what defines the system in which a society organizes itself economically.

Private property is a concept that Kazhdan attributes to Roman law, which therefore defines Byzantine economic life due to unbroken legal continuity. Feudal property refers to ownership in the form of fiefdom, and finally state property relates to more “oriental” kinds of polities like those of Persia and China. Kazhdan correctly focuses mostly on private property whereby in the Byzantine Empire, every citizen owned a plot of land, monasteries governed in small groups owned larger plots of land and overall the family was considered the unit around which these holdings were administered (in the monasteries under the abbots’ leadership). Kazhdan develops the theory that individualism was the central theme in socio-economic affairs in Byzantium due to this private-property system that governed the affairs of the land. This individualism developed in a religious context as well, aligned with the development of Church and therefore social doctrine in Byzantium. In the West, where feudalism offered a much more communitarian alternative than in Byzantium, this was in tandem with the Church doctrine of “salvation only within the Church.” Society had to function as a group, and therefore it is only rational that the economy take a more group-oriented approach. In Byzantium on the other hand, the Orthodox doctrine which offered emphasis in the individual’s deeds and thoughts as parts of the spiritual journey to salvation, and the synergeia (God working through man’s individual thoughts and deeds) of God’s presence therein, individualism made much more sense in a socio-economic context as well.

A great example of this is the village, and village life in Byzantium, which provides an excellent case study to demonstrate this point. In a village community,the families that constituted it, would own plots of land and their labor would serve themselves and their own property. There would be shared rights to forests, or water sources but otherwise, the small family collectives would govern their own land, and as an association would act as unified agents against outsiders. Small scale markets, and event-based irregular markets would be held to sell the products produced individually, as well as represent the village produced products as trade-associations against other collectives. While this, which is not a feudal system in the slightest was the norm in Byzantine society, there were certain quasi-feudal forms of ownership which we’ll examine below.

Specifically, Kazhdan offers three kings of such ownership: a) state-private ownership (πρόνοια), b) Charistikhion, c) lord-tenant ownership.

a) State-private shared ownership, or pronoia (πρόνοια): This was a conditional donation from the state/ Empire, to private individuals, similarly to fiefdoms. Cooperation with the state in the management thereof was mandatory.

b) Charistikhion: This referred to donations from monastic estates to lay persons and others in a three-tier ownership system; wherein the Emperor acted as a supreme authority, the Church as the direct donor and the private owner or lay person as the receiver.

c) Lord-tenant Ownership: This was a rent-based ownership system which did exist with rent paid in coin, kind or corvee, and which though not as well spread did exist.

The Emperor’s role in this whole system is left out but important to discuss nonetheless. The economy was state-oriented; taxes existed and served the welfare of the state in a centralized manner, much more so than anywhere else in Europe at the time. The state manipulated taxes according to its needs, and the Emperor was theoretically considered the possible owner of all land within the Empire, which in times of need could be confiscated according to the Empire’s will and needs. In terms of trade, the state controlled it through customs. It organized, controlled and directed certain key industries, like building, mining, minting and ship-building as well as the production of purple silk etc. Other than that, private enterprise controlled by the family and organized in small privately-directed communities was the norm, which however was overseen and organized by an economic superstructure administered by the Empire.

The state’s economic superstructure did not contradict private enterprise bu smoothly coexisted with it, and their collaboration was, for a certain period, the cornerstone of Byzantine economic predominance in medieval Europe. 1

Vasiliev, a foremost authority in Byzantine history, similarly explores the concepts of pronoia, charistikhion and adds a few more interesting items delving deeper in the concept of land-holding in Byzantium as well as the importance it had in the Empire’s course.

Firstly, Vasiliev introduces three ideas, i) that of the Roman beneficium which became in medieval Western Europe, feodum; that is from land given for temporary use for life in the Roman context, to hereditary possession of land on conditions in the form of medieval fiefdom- ii) that of patronage which became commendatio; which is the placing of oneself under the protection of another (usually a lord), in both settings- and iii) immunitas which was state rights granted on individuals (essentially exemptions and rights on state property). Vasiliev explains that though these three were separate entities in the Roman context and remained so in the Byzantine, in the West, as central power expired the three came closer and eventually merged in what became the feudal system.2

Because of the separate nature of these, in combination with the potential of private ownership, the Empire eventually gave birth to large landowning families which being able to amass armies in their name, and naturally take full control of the vast land holdings they posessed, became a cause of uncertainty in the Imperial court. Vasiliev brings the example of the Apions of Egypt, and many other such families who Justinian attemted to fight but ultimately did not manage to curtail. The second largest group which acquired immense holdings in the Empire were the monasteries, which often formed what in the West would be considered princedoms and small kingdoms, with vast ammounts of land led autocratically under the local monasterial leadership and abbots.

The exarchs (governors of large divisions of Imperial land) would also be forces that amasssed great power within their dominions, often looked at as Emperors therein, and greeted in exactly that manner when reaching the Imperial capital. In the later days of the Empire, the Kavallarioi (meaning riders or knights) and Akritai (literally meaning those living on the edge/ border); families which lived on the borders and were responsible thus for the defense of the Empire, managed similarly to take control of their domains entirely. In one form or another, big land-owners always provoked complication for the Imperial court’s attempts to control the imperial border, economy and military -just as Justinian foresaw- but which ultimately also provided for immense flexibility in organization and response to threats. This is not to say that they were a malfunction within the Empire, but that with mismanagement they could prove a breaking point in Imperial internal affairs.

These groups; the magnates, the monasteries and the akritai, each in their own time during the Empire’s troubled history, represented a unique example of how under a centralized economic system, private enterprise still managed to take a leading role in internal affairs, always in accordance with Church doctrine of synergeia, and the family being the central economic unit in society. This poses a fundamental distinction with the western feudal system, but a unique alternative that is extremely fascinating in its complexity.