Byzantium

JEAN-CLAUDE CHEYNET

The Roman Empire in the East that we call Byzantium is the only European or Mediterranean state formed in antiquity that survived into the dawn of the modern era by metamorphosing itself repeatedly.^[647] This demonstrates its capacity for adaptation despite tremendous challenges, since its geographic position meant that it was located on the path of every people on the move from the steppes of Central Asia to the hot deserts of the Arabian peninsula.

Over its long history, Byzantium faced three primary challenges. The first was to push back enemies on borders that stretched for a long time over several continents; the second, to create a political system that put the right leader as the head of the state; the third, to find a balance between support for its central institutions and the necessary room for local elites and populations to have autonomy so as to overcome the natural causes of division - ethnic and linguistic diversity and religious rivalries.

The rulers of Byzantium had major advantages as they faced these challenges. First, they had the Roman legacy of a government that adapted to the circumstances of its time. On the borders where it encountered organized adversaries, such as Persia, the Roman Empire endeavored to establish a network of states under its influence, as in Armenia or in the Arabian peninsula.

A second advantage was that one religion, Christianity, allowed the hope of religious unity centered on the sovereign. By about 500, Christianity was the religion of the majority of the population, and it served the sovereign, the lieutenant of God on earth. But the faithful were divided into branches, some of which had been rejected as heretical at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. One of these was the Monophysites, who held that Christ had only one nature - divine - rather than the two natures - divine and human - accepted by the majority of the church and the emperor. The Monophysites hoped for a long time to join with the emperor, and in 500 Emperor Anastasius (r. 491-518) was favorably disposed toward them. But from the time of Justinian in the mid-sixth century on, and despite the sentiments of the empress Theodora, orthodox Chalcedonians controlled the official Church. In the second half of the sixth century, the Monophysites formed autono­mous churches, including the Coptic Church and the Jacobite (Syriac Ortho­dox) Churches. The emperors were constantly concerned with attaining religious unity, a pipedream that was pursued in vain as long as the eastern provinces were a part of the Empire. The highest of the Chalcedonian hierarchy favored the imperial ideology of Constantinople, but this did not mean that the Monophysites envisioned or wished for the disappearance of the Empire.

The bishop of Constantinople was at the head of a patriarchate after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and the only rival to the pope of Rome following the Arab conquest of the eastern provinces. He directed a vast ecclesiastical administration whose jurisdiction was long interwoven with that of the Empire. The Saint Sophia church, neighbor to the Great Palace, was in the eyes of its Christian visitors a spectacular building without equal.

A third advantage of the Empire was a well-defended capital. The founda­tion of Constantinople gave the eastern part of the Roman Empire an admirably situated capital. On the Bosphorus between Asia and Europe, the city was easy to defend once the question of provisions of water and grain had been solved. Walls erected under the emperor Theodosius effect­ively protected a population that could number nearly 500,000 inhabitants, but which numbered only 60,000 to 100,000 inhabitants in the eighth century and fewer than 50,000 in the fifteenth. The city housed an administration that underwent great changes over the course of the Byzantine millennium, but whose continuity was ensured, except for the period of the Latin occupation between 1204 and 1261.^[648] (This episode was brief, but bore grave conse­quences for the future.) Constantinople offered an impressive background for imperial ceremonies, and the halls of the Great Palace were arranged so as to highlight the providential power of the sovereign.

A fourth advantage was the emperors' ability to keep the public treasury more or less filled and secure. Other than in 1204, the treasury did not fall into enemy hands and even then a large part had been carried away ahead of time. The tax administration never ceased to be efficient, even when it could not rely upon the network of cities inherited from Rome that were ruined by Persian invasions and economic decline, and had to look to villages, the sole stable element during the ruralization of the Empire that began in the sixth century. The stability of the gold currency created by Constantine, the nomisma, contributed to the prestige of the Empire over seven centuries, until the eleventh century. Because the populations of Arab-ruled Egypt and Syria had confidence only in the nomismata of the Byzantine emperors, the first caliphs were constrained to mint imitations of these Byzantine coins. Nomismata have been found throughout western Europe and also in China.

The stable treasury allowed the army to be continually paid, as long as it made adjustments to its account balances and the number of troops. This funding also supported a policy of prestige, implemented through the distri­bution of imperial dignities, a powerful factor of cohesion. These dignities were not only eagerly and long sought-after by the elites at the heart of the Empire, but also appreciated outside the Empire, and they served to promote alliances. Imperial munificence furnished such concrete advantages as the payment of an annual roga (salary) and gifts of precious clothing, which were often accompanied by pieces of high-quality silk.

These four major advantages - Roman traditions, an influential religious hierarchy, a well-defended capital, and a relatively stable financial system - allowed Byzantium to adapt to many of the challenges it faced in the Middle Millennium. Ultimately the three primary challenges - enemies on the borders, instability in the succession to the emperorship, and challenges by local elites - led the Empire to collapse, but this would be nearly a millen­nium after the end of the Roman Empire in the West.

Upheaval, adaption, and stability from 500 to 750

Toward 500, the Western Empire had dissolved, to the benefit of the great Germanic kingdoms that considered themselves the successors to Rome and therefore shared values with the Roman East that had remained intact: the Frankish king Clovis (r. 481-511), for example, liked the title of patrician given him by the emperor Anastasius. To a certain extent, the law also remained a link between the provinces of the Empire that were from this point on divided. Constantinople dominated a vast territory, but this generally included only two prefectures, those of the East and Illyricum. Under Justinian's rule, the reconquest of Africa and Italy allowed at least a partial recovery of at least two other prefectures (see Map 21. ι). But the arrival of the plague in 541, and the economic and especially demographic decline it caused, damaged imperial ambitions. The number of troops was not the same as at the time of Constantine.

On the economic level, trade in the Mediterranean took on a more markedly regional character even prior to the invasions of the seventh century. All the same, the assessment of the Justinianic reconquest is not

Map 2i.i. Byzantine Empire at the time ofJustinian, 555 ce

entirely negative, since the possession of the richest part of Africa and especially of prosperous Sicily contributed in the seventh century to the Empire's survival.^[649] Between 580 and 641, the date of the death of the emperor Heraclius, the Empire progressively became a reduced state, as much from a territorial point of view as from the point of view of financial resources, leading to a change in its structure.^[650]

The collapse was so sudden that the population was unable to measure its significance for a long time. In Syria, Palestine, and in Egypt, the inhabitants, despite having been for the most part Monophysites, long maintained the hope for a return of the Byzantine emperor and the re-establishment of Rome's eternal power, especially because the local administration had not changed, even if the taxes were now sent to a Muslim ruler.

The Armenian plateau had traditionally constituted a place of strategic importance. Even though the Armenians were Christians, their princes sealed a pact with the Arabs, which allowed them an autonomy long sought-after at the price of very moderate concessions. Such emperors of the second half of the seventh century as Constantine IV (r. 668-85) or Justinian II (r. 685-95 and 705-11) endeavored in vain to recover control of the region. When the Armenians came to understand that the Umayyad caliphs' demands - both of men and taxes - would increase, it was too late.

Between the death of Heraclius in 641 and the first great land victory over the Arabs at Akroinon in 741, the Empire was threatened with destruction. The Balkans had been long invaded by the Slavs, and then by a formidable people of nomadic warriors, the Avars, who were the first to besiege Constantinople in 626. From the end of the sixth century, the Slavs had penetrated all the way to the Peloponnese. The Byzantines no longer held anything but the islands and the coasts of the Aegean Sea, and the Via Egnatia, leading from Dyrrachion (Durrazzo, Durres) on the Adriatic Sea to Constantinople, was cut off for several centuries. This rendered communi­cation with Italy even more difficult, as it depended on maritime routes subject to the vagaries of climate and the threat of pirates. Africa and Italy, far removed from Constantinople, were governed from the sixth century by exarchs who had the freedom to take emergency measures in civil and military matters as required by the local situation.

In the eastern Mediterranean Cyprus was quickly neutralized, and the Cilician plain in Asia Minor became the strategic site of a bitter struggle that, in the first decades of the eighth century, ended with the victory of the Arabs, who fortified such cities as Tarsus that served as bases for raids on the Anatolian plain. The caliphs twice tried to take possession of Constantinople, around 670 and in 717-18, but the walls proved impregnable, and the Arab fleet suffered heavy losses due to the use of Greek fire, an incendiary fluid shot out of pressurized nozzles. Finally, toward the middle of the eighth century, a certain balance was established when the ‘ Abbasid caliphs, who had driven out the Umayyads, re-centered their empire in Mesopotamia, a shift symbolized by the foundation of Baghdad in 763. The border moved, in short, away from the Taurus and Anti-Taurus mountains, from Seleucia to Trebizond, and remained stable for two centuries after the creation of a sort of no-man's-land that protected each state's lands from raids. From the time of Constantine V (r. 741-75), the emperors had in effect begun to counter attack, aiming at the cities on the caliphate's border.

To come to such a point, the emperors had had to make progressive adjustments that profoundly transformed the organization of the Empire. The nature of these reforms is still under debate, especially regarding the most important reform, that of the army. How could the Empire have at its disposal a greater number of troops, when it had undoubtedly lost two-thirds of its fiscal resources and, with the exception of modest regional trade, its commerce had collapsed? One of the great unknowns is the demographic impact of the wars, epidemics, and natural catastrophes. One thing is certain, for it has been confirmed by archeology: cities had almost entirely disap­peared, except for Constantinople and a few towns that had strong garrisons such as Amorium. The others were reduced to a fortified perimeter that no longer protected anything but a modest part of the ancient section of the town, as at Angora or Pergamum, or even more dramatically at Ephesus.^[651] On the other hand, we do not know what the situation was in the country­side. We no longer believe in the theory of a Balkan revitalization by a Slavic influx, but we do not know if the number of peasants declined in the same proportion as that of city-dwellers. The situation was undoubtedly different depending on whether the province was affected or not by the plague, or located on the route of an enemy raid. It seems that the regions close to Constantinople (Thrace and Bithynia) were relatively spared, and that, besides episodes of siege, the prefecture of Asia escaped serious damage.

The financing of the army is also a subject of debate, because it is tied to issues regarding the organization of themes [themata]. One part of the army, once stationed in the far-off eastern provinces, was pulled back into Asia Minor where it progressively settled and recruited its soldiers.^[652] They were organized into new military-civilian administrative divisions of the Empire called themes, which over the course of the eighth and ninth centuries replaced the provinces inherited from the Roman period. Each theme was under the leadership of a strategos, a general who also often assumed civilian responsibilities of governance. Resources were adjusted by reducing the cash paid out and instead requiring peasants to provide supplies for men and beasts because of a shortage of monetary currency.

What saved the Empire in this moment of distress was the maintenance of a central power. It was, of course, sometimes feeble. For instance, between 695 and 717 multiple coups d’etat led to a series of short-lived emperors. However, the Empire was always able to count on the loyalty of the provinces that remained within its borders, including far-off Sicily, the only bright spot in terms of monetary and economic health. The provinces provided the expected taxes and recruits despite successive defeats, and for this reason, the Arabs were not able to gain a long-term foothold on the Anatolian plain.

The Empire's reorganization and

recovery, 750-1000

From the middle of the eighth century, when the epidemics of the plague had ceased and the Arab pressure had lessened somewhat, the militarization of the Empire and a succession of military emperors from the Isaurian dynasty onward ensured the Empire's survival. This occurred despite serious failures, like the death of emperor Nikephoros I (r. 802-11) in 811 on the battlefield against the Bulgars, or the defeat in 838 which allowed Caliph al- Mu'tasim to seize Amorion, capital of Anatolia, the first theme of the Empire.

Society was transformed, because the former senatorial elite disappeared, except at Constantinople, where it remained protected. A new aristocracy was founded on those faithful to the emperor, who amassed the principal military and fiscal offices and, in Anatolia, on families who distinguished themselves in the struggle against the Arabs.^[653]

The victorious resistance in Asia Minor came at a price for the West. In 751, the exarchate of Ravenna disappeared as a result of the Lombard attacks, and the pope, who traditionally had relied upon the Byzantines to repel Lombard raids, was obliged to turn toward the rising power in the West, the Carolingians. The Byzantines only kept isolated positions. Venice, a former Byzantine duchy, became independent in the ninth century, even though its leader, whom we call the doge, continued to receive Byzantine titles for centuries. The Empire was maintained in southern Italy as well as in Sicily until the emirs of Africa slowly took possession of these areas during the ninth century. Byzantine diplomacy endeavored to maintain within its sphere of influence the Lombard principalities of the South and the duchies of Gaeta, Naples, and Amalfi, which allowed the Empire to keep a close eye on the Western powers. The distribution of titles further helped to maintain links between some members of the foreign elite and the Empire.

Assured of survival and endowed with an effective military administration, the Empire recovered on all levels (demographic, economic, military) in the ninth through the eleventh centuries, reaching its maximum expansion in the eleventh century. At that time, the sovereign of Constantinople controlled territory that stretched from southern Italy to the Caucasus and from the Danube River to northern Syria. The sovereigns no longer relied on munici­pal elites as in antiquity, but on the local aristocracy. The officers of the armies of the themes came from this milieu. The most fortunate obtained important positions of command, such as the strategoi (military governors) of the Anatolic theme in Central Asia Minor or the domesticos of the Scholai, superior officers who commanded the army in the absence of the emperor. They were obliged to go to court, where they received promotions and the roga that corresponded to the offices they held and titles they bore.^[654] These important figures were surrounded by family members and servants who benefitted from the imperial favors conferred upon their leader. The leader intervened on their behalf, and they obtained either money or positions from the emperor. A solid although indirect connection was thus made between the local elites and Constantinople.

A similar policy of patronage and seduction was applied to the princes of states that were on the periphery of the Empire by the emperors who wanted to integrate them into their zone of influence. The titles conferred upon these rulers were often elevated, superior to those that imperial subjects were able to obtain. The ruler of Caucasian Iberia (in present-day Georgia), for example, until the middle of the eleventh century traditionally held the title of curopalate, which was normally reserved at that time for the imperial family. When they were paid, the rogai granted to these dignitaries consisted of large quantities of cash and numerous pieces of silk, which the beneficiary redistributed among his followers, creating a type of pressure favorable to good relations with the Empire. By this means the Empire created a network of rather faithful allies in Italy, Armenia, and the Muslim world, and was able to exercise an influence far from its frontiers throughout the Mediterranean world and the Latin West. The Fatimid sovereigns scrupulously recorded the gifts sent by the emperors of Constantinople. Greatly sought after, the Byzantine silks that were offered to Western sovereigns or to bishops are still preserved in numerous church treasuries, where they cover precious relics - which had themselves sometimes come from Constantinople, because they were widely distributed there to important visitors, who appreciated them greatly.

This evolution of the Empire did not go without consequences for society. During the “Dark Ages,” the army was idealized as the means of popular defense, and it is true that its social base was made of small and medium landowners. All the same, the great landowners were not entirely absent in this period. The old senatorial aristocracy, composed of rich absent land­owners, had undoubtedly suffered a severe setback with the loss of the Eastern provinces and the ravages of war in Italy. The fate of the aristocracy residing at Constantinople is more uncertain, because there was no rupture as in the East and West. In the eighth century, the emperor, the tax department, the monasteries and even such important private landowners as the mythic Saint Philaretos of Amnia - whose later hagiography empha­sized his boundless generosity - possessed vast domains. We also see a concentration of ownership that increased after the harsh winter of 927/28. Suffering peasants sold their fields to great landowners, public or private, becoming paroikoi, peasants bound to their tenure of their own lands. However, the tax system depended upon the solidarity of the landowners of the same village, which had become the administrative district par excel­lence. The destruction of this balance threatened the number of recruits and the financing of the armies.

The emperors reacted by promulgating a series of increasingly severe new laws in order to safeguard small estates. This was in vain, for the peasants were no longer interested in serving in the military, and many of them preferred paying a monetary tax, even selling their arms, rather than enlisting in person. The failure was predictable, despite terrible confiscatory measures taken by Basil II (976-1025).

The possibility given to the peasants to buy back their land was an unrealistic arrangement, because it presupposed that they had the funds with which to do so. Byzantine strategoi did not really miss soldiers who were not very motivated. Money, which came from making the Strateia (here, military service) subject to tax, went to pay professional soldiers, Byzantine or foreign, who were more and more numerous in the central army of the tagmata, the elite regiments of the guard first reconstituted by Constantine V, formed in great part of the cavalry.^[655]

The army of the themes also underwent transformations. Troops were recruited locally, and the larger themes were broken up, so as not to concentrate too much power in the hands of a single StrategoS. Several times the strategoi of the Anatolics rebelled, and some even seized power, such as Leo III the Isaurian (r. 717-41) or Leo V the Armenian (r. 813-20). The early great themes of the Anatolics, Armeniacs, and Opsicians were greatly reduced in size, even if in the Taktika - treatises on court protocol - their rank was not called into question.^{[656] [657]} Reconquest in the Balkans and in Anatolia noticeably increased the number of themes. At the end of the tenth century, small themes, often peopled by Armenians, were created on the eastern frontier, sometimes around a simple fortress. It is unclear whether after the phase of conquest these strongholds were still staffed with a strategos and a garrison. In order to avoid a splintering of power, these frontier themes were often grouped into large districts in the hands of a duke or another officer called a catepan; these districts included the duchies of Antioch, Iberia, and Italy. In the century that followed, all the frontiers had been reorganized based on this model.

In the Balkans, the navy, organized on the model of the land army with provincial squadrons, and then enlarged by a central fleet,¹¹ was maintained on the Aegean coasts and a few coastal fortresses of Epirus and of Dalmatia, chief of which was Dyrrachion, the beachhead of the Via Egnatia. The interior of the Balkans was inhabited in the south by Slavic tribes and in the north by a powerful state ruled from the seventh century on by the khagan of the Bulgars. Regaining control of the Balkan peninsula required more than three centuries. The reoccupation of Hellas and of the Pelopon­nese happened rather easily over the course of the ninth century through a mixture of military pressure and the standard policy of patronage and seduction, in which leaders in semi-autonomous territories, the sklavinies, were introduced into the Byzantine administrative system. The scaling-back of the Bulgarian state was much more difficult. This warrior people inflicted tremendous losses upon the Byzantine army; and their leaders, Krum and then Simeon, even besieged Constantinople, although this was in vain.

Expansion and its limitations in the

East and the West

The effectiveness of armies and Byzantine gold was reinforced by missionary activity. The emperors favored the expansion of Christianity in the pagan world, in the hopes of seeing the religion inculcate in the newly faithful the respect due to the universal sovereign chosen by God.^[658] Such a policy was unthinkable with regard to the Muslims. In the Balkans, the reoccupation of the Peloponnese and Hellas was accompanied by the restoration of the network of bishoprics that had been constituted during the proto-Byzantine period, but which had been lost when the pagan Slavs invaded. In 865, the Bulgar khagan Boris converted, taking the name of his godfather, the emperor Michael III (r. 842-67). The Bulgar sovereign, however, did not feel at all subject to the emperor or regard him as the “father” of Christian nations. After several decades of conflicts, independence ended only in 1018, when Emperor Basil II succeeded in overcoming the last remaining resist­ance among the Bulgars by promising titles and offices to the noble boyars who had been won over.

In the East, the Byzantine advance was slow in taking shape, because the balance of power evolved slowly. The ‘ Abbasid Caliphate, capable of organ­izing large expeditions, began to break apart in the second half of the ninth century. Compared to the Empire, it suffered an organizational weakness in its tax system. In fact, the provincial governors who collected taxes paid their civil service and troops before sending the surplus to Baghdad, whereas in the Empire provincial civil servants sent the tax revenues paid in gold first to Constantinople. The tax administration in the capital, in the person of the logothete of the genikon and of the Stratiotikon, then sent back the salaries of the provincial civil servants and soldiers. This system had a significant drawback, since a lot of gold circulated, and there are many references in the sources to the roga of a theme being captured by the enemy. The advantage for the central authority, however, was that it remained in control of the movement of funds. The governors of large provinces of the caliphate such as Iran or Egypt, by contrast, simply ceased sending the surplus, and in this way easily became autonomous.

The decline of the caliphate was in part counterbalanced by the emergence of emirates at the Byzantine frontier, those of Melitene, Tarsus, and Aleppo, which concentrated the efforts of jihad. These emirates no longer had the capacity to threaten the heart of the Empire on a long-term basis, but, after grave losses, they reconstituted their troops by making an appeal for volun­teers to the jihad and for money to combat the infidels. Over more than a century, at passes in the Taurus mountains the thematic armies, sometimes reinforced by contingents from the central army, clashed with the troops of emirs, whose numbers were increased by volunteers. The goal was no longer conquest, but enrichment by means of pillaging and selling prisoners cap­tured in raids. The exploits of Sayf al-Dawla, the Hamdanid emir of Aleppo, were answered by the exploits of the brothers Nicephoros and Leo Phokas, both powerful and wealthy Byzantine generals. On both sides of the frontier two societies were formed, but sharing one way of life, often termed “acritic” from the Greek word akritai, meaning border guards. Both sides shared common values: to fight for the salvation of co-religionists by exalting the soldiers fallen in combat, who were considered martyrs by both the Byzantines on the frontier and their Muslim adversaries across the border. An admiration for battle exploits was common to both: the poetry of Abu- Firas and Mutanabbi exalting the victories of the Hamdanid Sayf al-Dawla is matched by the popular songs celebrating the Digenis Akritas, a hero born of the union of a Byzantine noblewoman and an Arab emir.^[659]

This advance in the East was accompanied by the recovery of ecclesiastical centers, of which the most famous was that of Antioch. New sees were reorganized. During the reconquest, the emperors called on the Syriacs (Monophysite Christians living under the authority of Muslim princes), to repopulate the zones taken back from the Arabs, and they left on-site important Armenian garrisons. A network of Armenian or Syriac bishoprics was formed, and at first the emperors supported the foundation of great Syriac monasteries, some endowed with scriptoria. This religious diversity created conflicts, but nothing indicates that non-Chalcedonians would have preferred living under the authority of the Turkish invaders.

The Empire did not mark the same success on the Latin side. In the West, Byzantium managed to retain only the province of Apulia in southern Italy, which it used as a base for observation and later intervention. The Western monarchies reorganized, and twice sovereigns claimed that they were bring­ing the Empire back to life in the West: Charlemagne in 800, and then Otto in 962. Besides a rather secondary quarrel over rank, concerning the use of the imperial title, when the sovereigns of Constantinople preserved the monopoly of the Roman basileia, the only point of contention was the possession of Italy and Rome. The Western sovereigns had not forgotten the division of 395, which placed all of Italy and a part of Dalmatia under the authority of the Western emperor, but Byzantine ambitions were limited to preserving their positions in the south of the peninsula and to preventing any other power from dominating all of Italy and especially Rome.

Developments of the eleventh century

The eleventh century has fascinated historians, because it shaped the final centuries of the Empire. At the height of its power in 1025, the Empire seemed in agony by 1081 (see Map 21.2). This century was also marked by the awareness of the Latin world's renewed power. This brutal subsidence was not due to a demographic decline, because Byzantium continued to be a part of the slow but steady population growth in Europe and the Mediterranean world, except in regions temporarily exposed to invasions. The failure has been attributed to the progressive disappearance of the thematic armies, at least as effective combat units, although these survived until the second half of the eleventh century.

The demographic growth in Europe that revived trade circuits, especially in Italy, produced a sustained increase in trade in the Mediterranean that benefited Constantinople, which became again a megalopolis of perhaps 300,000 inhabitants under the Komnenoi dynasty in the eleventh century. It was a major center of consumption that attracted merchants from the whole Mediterranean. They came seeking luxury goods that the craftspeople of the capital furnished in abundance: silks, bronze doors, ivories, mosaics, precious icons. However, contrary to the deep-rooted image, Byzantine merchants did not simply wait for clients, comfortably seated in their shops in the capital, but instead they braved the sea in order to gain riches abroad. They

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Map 2i.2. Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century

undoubtedly no longer visited the Red Sea, Ethiopia, and perhaps India as they had in the time of the famed merchant and geographer Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century; however, many of them, notably provin­cials, visited Mediterranean ports, in particular Alexandria, and entered by way of land routes beyond the Euphrates. In the Middle Ages, perfumes and precious wood from India arrived in the markets near the Great Palace, where Latin merchants came to buy supplies for their own commerce.^[660] The Byzantine state was hardly interventionist in terms of the economy, although it did control the activities of certain professions of Constantinople, notably those that concerned precious materials, such as money changers and smiths, or those that involved the capital's food security, such as bakers and butchers, because these were a matter of public order.

As regards foreigners, the emperors tried at first to limit the exportation of the most precious silk cloth, forbidding even the export of purple dyes because this color was reserved for the emperor. The treaties made with the Bulgars and the Russians in the ninth and tenth centuries should be seen in this light, for these peoples were avid purchasers of Byzantine luxury goods. In the eleventh century, the emperors granted to Italian cities even greater privileges in exchange for the use of their military fleet. Venice was the first to benefit from this in 1082, and then Pisa and Genoa followed, under conditions a little less favorable. These agreements had as a consequence an increased circulation of Byzantine goods, but also an eventual weakening of Byzantine merchants, who were placed in an unfavorable position relative to their Italian rivals. Under the Palaiologoi dynasty that ruled from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, the emperors lost trade revenue to the Italians, notably to the Genoese, solidly established at Galata, across the inlet of the Golden Horn from Constantinople.

The poet Tzetzes, a contemporary of Manuel I Komnenos (1143-80), heard and commented on all the languages spoken in Constantinople by the merchants and others who came to the city. At the same time, a major fair in Thessalonica, held during the feast of Saint Demetrius, the patron saint of the city, brought together for a few weeks merchants from all of Europe and the Caucasus.

Economic expansion and territorial growth, notably the annexation of cities of great commercial dynamism such as Melitene, Antioch, and Edessa in the East, increased the financial resources of the state. Additionally, the emperors had learned the lesson from the failure of the Macedonian legislation to preserve medium-sized property, and they reorganized the tax system.

From this point on, the tax administration maintained and cultivated the estates obtained in great number from conquest, confiscations, and the abandonment of land by peasants who resettled elsewhere for tax reasons. The traditional offices of the tax administration disappeared, replaced by the office of oikeikon (private property).

The provincial military aristocracy formed the backbone of the army, but it could become dangerous for the emperor because its regiments were made up of a network of family members and supporters who were more loyal to each other than to him.

In the tenth century, the Empire experienced great danger when it was almost taken over by a rebellion of the noble Phokas family, the military commanders who dominated central Anatolia.^[661] Although one of the Phokas clan did briefly become emperor, the revolt was put down, and under Basil II the empire began the reconstruction of the military aristocracy by incorpor­ating such homines novi as the Komnenoi family and numerous foreigners, notably from the Caucasus. At the same time, the emperors promoted the settling of aristocrats in Constantinople, and it was increasingly necessary to be present at court there in order to have a career. This evolution had two consequences. First, the power of important families was harnessed, except for those living in Adrianople, a town that is rather near Constantinople. Second, the elites at least partially abandoned their provinces; a situation that proved to be dangerous during later invasions, because the inhabitants no longer had leaders to encourage them to resist fiercely, as they had in the time of the Arab assaults.

The new professional army in which foreigners were more numerous, combined with the traditional support of the Armenians and the arrival of the Varangian Guard and then the Franks as troops, did allow the reconquest of northern Syria and Bulgaria, followed by the annexation of Armenian princi­palities.^[662] But the Empire still experienced a setback in the middle of the eleventh century because of weakness in the imperial succession. Under normal conditions, the son succeeded his father. However, a victorious usurper at times seized power, which often improved the quality of the government because a dynamic emperor took the place of a less competent one, but still created instability. The Macedonian dynasty had ruled Byzan­tium from 867, but from 1028 it was clear that that dynasty was going to fade away, although two daughters of Constantine VIII were named official successors - called Porphyrogenitoi, literally “born in the purple,” from the purple room in the palace in which they were born - and the choice of a new dynasty was momentarily postponed.

Over the next half-century, successive coups occurred at a time when threats on the border were multiplying. The combination of the two was fatal. The events surrounding the battle of Manzikert in August 1071 are representative. The emperor at the time, Romanos Diogenes (r. 1068-71), had come to power by marrying the widowed reigning empress, a situation that was not without precedent. Chosen for his military expertise, he was sup­posed to protect the Empire until Michael VII Doukas (r. 1071-8), the son of the previous emperor, was ready to rule. The Byzantine army was still operational, and the number of troops remained considerable. By chance, Diogenes and his army met the army of the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan, whose aim in fact was to combat the Fatimids, the Muslim rulers of Egypt. Diogenes refused to negotiate, because he needed a military triumph to cement his power as emperor. The interests of the leader of the rear-guard, Andronikos Doukas, the cousin of Michael VII, were the exact opposite. Andronikos Doukas' desertion from the field appears to have allowed the Turks to win the battle and to encircle and capture Romanos Diogenes. He was held only a short while, and released with the promise of a large ransom payment, but civil war, intrigue over the throne, and revolts by generals followed, which opened up Asia Minor to the Turks.

The attempt at balance under the Komnenoi

Struggles for imperial power lessened when Alexis I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118), a member of a prominent noble family who had married into the ruling Doukas dynasty, took power. He found a different Empire than had been the case under Basil II half a century earlier, and he adapted his administration to the new circumstances. Asia Minor was largely lost, even if the Byzantines were able to take the rich plains of western Asia Minor from the Seljuks of Nicaea. In the Balkans, however, Alexis defeated the Pecheneg nomads, a Turkic people who had threatened Byzantium, and the Balkans became the economic heart of the Empire. Administrative units were concentrated, and the most important - and least numerous - positions, especially those of army commanders, were conferred upon the emperors' supporters, most often family members.^[663] The administration of finances was in the hands of two officials called megas Iogariastes (grand accountant); one in charge of the central fiscal offices of the Empire (the sekreta) and the other in charge of religious foundations.

After a period of some disorder in the last quarter of the eleventh century, the administration of the provinces went back to being organized into large districts in which a duke supervised all the provincial departments, including the tax administration. In order to prevent an official's putting down roots, the emperor did not leave the same governor in place for too long, although sometimes a civil servant held the same position twice over the course of his career. The seals of governors seldom mention where they held their charge. Instead they refer to the family ties that linked them to the emperor. From this point on, these links determined the hierarchy. The personal tie with the sovereign was reinforced, as the expression “emperor's man” attests, which became official in documents and on seals beginning in the eleventh century.

An expanding hierarchy of titles, many of them honorific, also indicates this change. Under the Komnenoi, the title of sebastos was reserved for family members and those closely connected to the emperor. The brothers of the sovereign, for example, were sebastokratores, and so on. The roga was pro­gressively, though not entirely, replaced by the pronoia, a temporary grant of a stream of income that could be revoked by the emperor. The beneficiary of a pronoia received the right to take a certain amount of taxes or public revenue, determined in advance by the document awarding this pronoia. Holders of pronoia sent their own agents to collect the revenues, who replaced imperial tax collectors. The emperor saw advantages in this, since this institution reduced the number of levies and fiscal civil servants required. The family of the emperor received immense pronoiai, whereas simple officers received only those in keeping with their status. The danger that the holder of the pronoia might end up acting as its permanent owner was limited, since the pronoia was an annuity, or offered as compensation for a specific function, and was returned as soon as it was completed. In principle, strict control and recourse to the courts prevented the holder of the pronoia from taking more than his due.

This very centralized administration narrowed the possibilities for oppos­ition, although this did not prevent several dukes placed at the head of frontier provinces from plotting with the adversaries of the Empire against the sovereign. For example, Andronikos Komnenos when he was duke revolted against Emperor Manuel I (1143-80). But this “legacy” system ensured interior peace, and in fact, from 1081 to 1180, no large military revolts took place as had happened in the preceding centuries.

The place of the Empire in the concert of nations also changed after the Macedonian dynasty ended in 1056 and especially after the Komnenoi came to power. Basil II had agreed to give his sister, Anna Porphyrogen- ita, in marriage to Prince Vladimir of Kiev because, faced with the revolts of Asia Minor, he was in a critical military situation. He also demanded Vladimir's conversion. Beginning with the dynasty of the Doukas, the emperors, while continuing to claim superiority over other sovereigns in principle, agreed to negotiate as equals with other Christian sovereigns, notably with the German emperors. Their matrimonial policy reflects this change. Traditionally the emperors had married within the Byzantine aristocracy, except in rare moments of crisis. However, beginning with Michael VII Doukas, and except for usurpers who were already betrothed or married, the Byzantine emperors married foreign princesses in order to reinforce ties with other sovereigns. Even Manuel I Komnenos, whose official panegyrics made him out to have restored Roman universal grandeur, adopted a very pragmatic attitude. Concerned with the Empire's defense and the restoration of secure borders, he married the sister-in-law of the German emperor Conrad III and then the daughter of the French ruler of one of the Western states.

Power relationships changed because of the strength of economic and demographic growth of the Latin West. The Venetians promised military support to Alexis Komnenos in exchange for important trade benefits, sanctioned by the chrysobull, or imperial decree with a golden seal, of 1082. This trade and defensive agreement was at first beneficial to the large Byzantine landowners who exported grains, oil, cheese, but it also placed the merchants of Constantinople at a disadvantage. Italian trading cities, among them principally Venice, became ever more powerful. Their fleets became the masters of the Mediterranean, even if Manuel I was still capable of constructing Byzantium's last great war fleet. Foreign princes also had the means to form large armies. The Crusaders, whose arrival benefited the Empire with regard to the Turks, demonstrated the capacity of the Latins to send powerful expeditionary forces very far from their borders.

This ambiguous relationship with the Latins, who were at times allies and at times adversaries, was made more difficult by religious quarrels. These became poisonous after the crisis of 1054, when the popes, shaped by the Gregorian reforms, claimed hegemony over all Christians.

Continuing problems and final collapse

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the classic schema of Byzantine weakening happened again. The instability of imperial succession after the death of Manuel I Komnenos in 1180, the victorious revolt of the Bulgars, the exacerbation of “nationalist” sentiment in the population of Constantinople - wary of those who were not Greeks - and the arrival of the knights of the Fourth Crusade, resulted in the unexpected installation of a Latin emperor in April 1204. This left the Byzantines with an unprecedented situation: the emperor who was established on the throne was a foreigner. Certain Greeks might have rallied to a sovereign capable of restoring imperial grandeur, but the Latin forces were defeated at Adrianople by the Bulgars in 1205, which eliminated that possibility.^[664]

The people from the provinces stopped looking toward Constantinople for leadership and instead endeavored to reconstruct a Greek state without the city. Two attempts were somewhat successful: that of Theodore Lascaris in the East and that of Theodore Doukas in Epirus on the Ionian Sea, both of whom re-established the title of emperor. The Lascarids rapidly became the more powerful. In 1211, at the battle of Antioch-on-the-Meander, Theodore Lascaris saved his small nation from conquest by the Seljuk Turks thanks to the sacrifice of the Latin mercenary cavalry. His grandson, Theodore II Lascaris (1254-8), proposed the recruitment of a national army, which was supposed to cost less than Latin mercenaries and to remain loyal to the emperor, but he reigned for too short a time to put his project into place. Such proposals worried the Latin mercenaries, however, and they supported the seizure of power by their leader, the commander Michael Palaiologos (r. 1259-82). In Asia Minor, which was the Lascaris' power base, Michael VIII had deposed and blinded the young John IV, the Lascaris claimant to the throne, in his rise to power. He continued to clash with supporters of the Lascaris dynasty, which alienated the Palaiologoi from a large part of the population on a long-term basis.

Despite his victory over Guillaume of Villehardouin, the Latin prince of Achaea, in 1259 at Pelagonia, Michael VIII was unable to convince the Greeks of Epirus to accept his legitimacy. Instead they remained independent, although the price of this was an alliance with the Latins.^[665] Other Greeks, who half a century earlier had founded the small state of Trebizond on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, also preserved their complete independence, and were preoccupied with surviving amidst potentially hostile emirates.

In 1261 Michael VIII Palaiologos took Constantinople back from the Latin emperor and his Venetian allies. This return to the capital did not cancel out the events of 1204, however, because when Michael Palaiologos returned to the city, the Greeks did not all rally around him. Provincial people had gotten into the habit of governing themselves without the existence of a central power.

Michael VIII had the ambition of reconstructing the empire of the Kom- nenoi and the institutions had changed little. The armies were thus still composed of mercenaries, which was the most economical solution for recruiting soldiers, of whom the most effective were the Latins.^[666]

Michael VIII was able to create the illusion of the Empire's power by pushing back the challenges of Charles of Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily, but this was at the price of the Asian provinces. The defense of Constantin­ople cost dearly, because it was necessary to maintain and reinforce the walls. This effort could not be continued under his son, Andronikos II, during whose long reign (1282-1328) the collapse in Asia took place. The responsi­bility was not only the emperor's, however, because the pressure of the Mongols, who took control in Asia Minor, pushed the Turkish tribes toward the Byzantine provinces. The necessity of finding further financial resources had pushed Michael VIII to eliminate the tax advantages given to soldiers who guarded the border on the Turkish side, and some deserted. In less than three decades, the rich provinces of Asia were lost to the emirates, the most dynamic of which, the Ottomans, was established in Bithynia, directly across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. In a last-ditch effort, the emperor Andronikos II recruited Western troops comprised of Catalans. But the state had no more resources to pay them, and therefore, despite their superiority over Turkish forces, they turned toward the European part of the Empire, which they laid waste. It was no longer possible to maintain a local army of sufficient size.

Andronikos III (1328-41) failed in Asia Minor, but assisted by an active general, his relative John Kantakouzenos, he succeeded in reconstituting a homogenous state in Europe that stretched, with the recovery of Dyrrachion, from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic. The Frankish barons of the Peloponnese and Attica were just about to rally around him, but Andronikos III died suddenly, which provoked a terrible civil war between the young John V Palaiologos, son of Andronikos III (r. 1341-76 and 1379-91), and John VI Kantakouzenos (r. 1347-54, as co-emperor with John V Palaiologos), who temporarily won the day in 1347. John Kantakouzenos introduced Serbian and Turkish foreigners into the Byzantine provinces on a massive scale, thus laying the ground for the ultimate dismemberment of the Empire. The return of the plague added to the general pessimism and provoked a demographic disaster. The civil war also revealed sharp new tensions at the heart of society, as violence included the murder of landed aristocrats by the mercantile classes of the cities. In Thessalonica, an anti-aristocratic group called the Zealots took over the city for seven years. Constantinople's resistance to Kantakouzenos was also led by merchants and craftsmen.

These developments led to the final transformations of Byzantine society. The resistance to taxes increased. Certain people felt that the emperor should live on his own revenues, and the monasteries refused to see their lands broadly confiscated. Beneficiaries of pronoiai succeeded in making them more or less hereditary, depriving the emperor of money and room to maneuver. The emperor gave cities such as Ioannina and the great port city of Mon- emvasia important tax concessions in exchange for their loyalty. The terri­tory of the Empire ceased to be maintained. The emperors relied upon privileges conferred to family members.

In the second half of the fourteenth century, the aristocrats lost the greater part of their lands during the rapid advance of the Ottomans in the Balkans. Those who did not succeed in changing to careers in commerce and banking were ruined. The governors of Morea, a province that included most of the Peloponnese, were temporarily an exception to this, as they managed to extend their territory as the Ottomans advanced and were not conquered by the Ottomans until 1460.

Map 21.3. Byzantine Empire in 1350 ce

The emperors, notably John VI Kantakouzenos, tried in vain to break free of the hold that the Italian merchants had on the economy, but the Italians continued to dominate trade. John VI even failed at ousting the Genoese, who were settled at Galata on the Golden Horn across from the port of Constantinople. However, some Greeks succeeded in making a fortune in trade, most often in association with such Italian merchant families as the Notaras or the Goudelai. They cautiously placed their fortunes in Genoese or Venetian banks, and often combined a great confidence in Italian banks with a hostility toward the papacy.

The Empire temporarily recovered a few territories after Timur defeated the Ottomans at Ankara in 1402, but Constantinople was reduced to a city­state of around 50,000 inhabitants. It still represented a major stakeholder, for it prevented the Ottomans from having a completely unified state, and allowed Latin merchants access to the foreign trading posts of the Black Sea. Despite the wealth of its elites, however, the state was devoid of the means of self-defense. It could only count on Western assistance: in 1430 Thessalonica was besieged by the Ottomans, and the defense was entrusted to the Venetians. The price consisted of concessions regarding the Union of the Western and Eastern churches. Motivated by the inability of the Empire to defend itself, John VIII Palaiologos (r. 1425-58) even agreed to such a union, under papal leadership. The Union was approved by representatives of both churches at the Council of Florence-Ferrara in 1439. This provoked strong tensions in the Byzantine church and within the population. George Scholarios, the first patriarch of the Ottoman period, opposed the Union, and it was never accepted by the Eastern Church.^[667]

The Latins present in Constantinople participated heroically, often at the cost of their lives, in the siege of 1453, and the city's Greek residents fought vigorously as well. They were not successful, and Ottoman forces took the city, in a battle in which Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos (r. 1449-53) himself was killed. The entry of Mehmed II into Constantinople on 29 May 1453 led inevitably to the surrender of other parts of the Empire, including Trebizond and Morea.

Conclusion

Contrary to the image of stability emanating from official discourse, the structures of the Byzantine Empire were constantly being transformed. Byzantium's greatest weakness came from the system of selecting the emperor, which several times provoked civil wars and, combined with invasions, ended up bringing about its downfall. The evolution of the Empire is to be located in a European context. It benefited from the common demographic growth that continued from the eighth century to the begin­ning of the thirteenth, and suffered from the same catastrophic epidemics as did the rest of Europe. Social transformations were not as radical as in western Europe. However, under the Palaiologoi, the importance of Byzan­tine cities and their populations of merchants and craftsmen can hardly be differentiated from those of contemporary Italian cities, nor can their hostile reactions to the landed aristocracy or their challenging of taxes. On the other hand, the great Western monarchies, France and England, progressively formed state structures around a sovereign, whereas the Empire followed an opposite path, which led from a quasi-absolute monarchy to disintegration into more or less autonomous entities around an impotent sovereign, Con­stantine XI, who was unable, at a crowning moment in 1453, to mobilize the fortunes of the last opulent Greeks for the defense of the city.

Translated by Michelle Bolduc

FURTHER READING

Angold, Michael, ed. The Byzantine Aristocracy, rx to xrrr Centuries. Oxford: BAR, 1984.

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Bartousis, Mark C. The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204-1453. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

Blanchet, Marie-Helene. Georges-Gennadios Scholarios (vers 1400-vers 1472): un intellectuel orthodoxe face a la disparition de l'Empire byzantin. Paris: Institut Franςais d'Etudes Byzantines, 2008.

Brandes, Wolfram. Finanzverwaltung in Krisenzeiten: Untersuchungen zur byzantinischen Verwaltungsgeschichte. Frankfurt am Main: Lowenklau, 2002.

Cheynet, Jean-Claude. The Byzantine Aristocracy and its Military Function. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

Pouvoir et contestations a Byzance (963-1210). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1990. Cheynet, Jean-Claude, Angeliki Laiou, and Cecile Morrisson, eds. Monde byzantin, 3 vols. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2004-11.

Foss, Clive. Cities, Fortresses and Villages of Byzantine Asia Minor. Aldershot: Variorum, 1996.

Dagron, Gilbert. “Byzance et le modele islamique au xe siecle: a propos des Constitutions tactiques de l'empereur Leon VI,” Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres 2 (1983): 219-43.

Haldon, John F. Byzantine Praetorians: An Administrative, Institutional, and Social Survey of the Opsikion and Tagmata, c. 580-900. Bonn: Habelt, 1984.

State, Army and Society in Byzantium. Aldershot: Variorum, 1995.

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