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Storia della Storiografia
Histoire de l’Historiographie
History of Historiography
Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung

Rivista internazionale · Revue internationale

International Review · Internationale Zeitschrift

71 · 1/2017

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 Autorizzazione del Tribunale di Milano n. 310 del 26/07/1982

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 Contents

Contents
Anna Maria Voci, Between History and Historiography. Ernst Schulin (12/10/1929-
13/2/2017) 9
Marco Fasolio, The Byzantine Aristocracy. Profile of a Historiographical Debate 15
S
Pärtel Piirimäe, Official Historiography and the State in Early Modern Europe 47 C
Sandro Landi, “Laissez écrire”. The Call for a Free Trade of Ideas in Raynal’s His- A
toire des deux Indes : a Long Enlightenment Belief 77 13
M
Paulo Teixeira Iumatti, Historiographical and Conceptual Exchange between Fer- P
nand Braudel and Caio Prado Jr. in the 1930s and 1940s : a Case of Unequal Positions S
in the Intellectual Space between Brazil and France 89 d
Jonas Ahlskog, The Evidential Paradigm in Modern History 111 P
B
review essays le
Jo
Guido Franzinetti, Franco Venturi in Retrospect 131 G
Notes on Contributors 151 N
 Marco Fasolio, The Byzantine Aristocracy.
Profile of a Historiographical Debate

The Byzantine Aristocracy.

Profile of a Historiographical Debate
Marco Fasolio

Abstract
The issue of aristocracy is one of the most discussed and controversial in Byzantine history be-
cause of the scantiness and of the intrinsic ambiguity of most contemporary and later sources :
this is probably the main reason why scholars still have not reached a definitive settlement on
many of the major topics and questions which concern it. After a short introduction that con-
tains a summary of the historical evolution and of the primary features of Byzantine élites, the
essay tries to reconstruct the historiographical debate around the problem of the lay aristocracy
inside the Eastern Roman Empire from the ninth to the middle fifteenth century. Although we
can trace the origins of byzantinology as an independent scholarly discipline at least from the late
sixteenth/early seventeenth century, a properly ‘scientific’ debate on the questions concerning
the aristocracy started only in the second half of the nineteenth century in the Russian Empire.
The aim of the article is to draw a picture of the most prominent historiographic theories and
scholars who tackled the issues related to the Byzantine ruling classes from that period onwards.
Its core is the analysis of how the historians and their thought influenced or fought each other
during one and a half century of academic confrontation and how this rich tradition of scholarly
studies led to modern ideas about the Byzantine aristocracy among contemporary byzantinists.
Keywords : Byzantine aristocracy, agrarian history, Byzantine Empire, medieval history,
byzantinology, feudalism.

I. Foreword
r istocracy is one of the most complex and discussed problems in the history of
A Byzantium, so much so that it has aroused the interest of many of the greatest
scholars on the subject. The outcome of the research and the considerations of gen-
erations of Byzantinists has been a wide-ranging debate about the nature and consis-
tency of the Romean 1 élite, which has produced a vast literature that has addressed
both the general characteristics and the specific aspects of the subject, ranging from
monographies, conferences, to articles in scientific journals.
The dialectic between the various theories that have been proposed by scholars
over the years is mainly known to specialists ; however, although there are publica-
1
The term ‘Romean’, henceforth used in alternation with the best known ‘Byzantines’, is the translit-
eration based on the phonetic rules of the medieval and modern Greek language ‘Rwmai`oi’. The latter is a
word with a strong semantic charge because it was adopted by the inhabitants of the basileia and, by the
Greeks subjected to foreign sovereignty to define themselves, following the gradual contraction of the im-
perial domains. Although its translation and the meaning the Byzantines gave it themselves was ‘Romans’,
as a sign of a claim on the political and cultural legacy of the ancient Roman Empire, it would be wrong or
at least confusing to indicate the subjects of the basileis as such, especially regarding the more appropriately
medieval period of the history of the Empire content of this paper. The use of ‘Romeans’, which has also
widely taken root in contemporary Italian Byzantine studies, appears, therefore, best suited to comple-
ment the traditional term ‘Byzantines’, although less deferential towards the ancient sources.

https://doi.org/10.19272/201711501002 · Storia della Storiografia, 71 · 1/2017

16 marco fasolio
tions on the history of Byzantine studies, particularly the most distant, there isn’t yet
a synthesis that collects and orders the narratives elaborated by doctrine on the is-
sues related to the aristocracy of the Romeans. Given the density of the stratification
reached by specialist literature, however, it would be naive to presume one might
provide a complete account here without falling back into a sterile bibliographic ex-
ercise. Our critical review, therefore, will be deliberately ‘partial’ in an attempt to
make the description of the topics discussed by scholars as fluid as possible, thus
highlighting the main lines of development and the fundamental milestones reached
in the historical debate over time.

II. Outline of the history of Byzantine aristocracy

If by the term ‘aristocracy’ we mean the uppermost layer of the internal hierarchy in
a structured human agglomeration, which boasts a more or less formalized familiar-
ity with the management of power, has a wide availability of economic resources
and exerts a considerable influence both on those who are appointed to govern the
agglomerate and on the other individuals who are part of it, there is no doubt that
the Byzantine ruling classes where an aristocracy. Moreover, apart from very rare
exceptions, most scholars took for granted, in the course of their research, that there
was a group of individuals, in the Eastern Empire, that was associated by a series of
profiles such as family prestige, availability of wealth and habitual exercise of specific
responsibilities in politics. Indeed, political anthropology has shown how within tra-
ditional societies there tends to be the establishment of a class or social class whose
members, by virtue of the possession of certain qualities, either inherited or acquired
during their lives, exert to some extent a dominance over the rest of the collectivity,
often associated with forms of economic and cultural hegemony. 2 Byzantium made
no exception to this assumption, because, for the duration of his existence, a vari-
ously composed élite flanked the emperor in all major government tasks.
Although historians mostly agree in saying that aristocracy was a fundamental ele-
ment of the Byzantine civilization, the debate on many of the aspects that concern
it has been rather passionate and is still open. Issues such as the genesis, the internal
structures, the essence and the development of the relationship with the basileus and
the rest of his subjects, the origin and the size of the liquid and land assets, the role of
the family and dynastic ties and the more or less risqué affinity with the contempo-
rary Western élites of the ruling Roman classes are constantly under the scrutiny of
scholars, but are far from having reached a final adjustment in doctrine. In addition
to the complexity of the issues and the relative ‘youth’ of the studies on Byzantium,
compared to the other historical disciplines, what has greatly contributed to making
precarious and problematic any synthesis made on the aristocracy – well beyond
what is customary for major topics in historiography – is the scarcity of sources, par-
ticularly the documentary ones, and the inherent ambiguity of many on which the
main reconstructions are based. It is likely, for example, that the mechanisms at the
basis of the creation of the medieval basileia’s ruling class will continue to be a sub-
ject of debate, because the sources available, for a good part regulations, are late and
depict an already advanced stage of social evolution, returning us the intermediate
2
Ted Lewellen, Political Anthropology : an Introduction (Westport : Praeger, 2003), 26 ff.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 17
steps only minimally. Moreover, a similar fate touches the patrimonial issues, be-
cause, whilst Byzantine historians provide rare hints to clarify the size and structure
of the aristocracy’s property, the monastic documents, virtually the only ones left,
might unravel a few knots, but show nevertheless a distorted view of the economic
processes. 3
The comparison with the scientific literature on the Western Middle Ages is mer-
ciless, because the contours that Medieval studies have outlined on the subject of
Latin-Germanic aristocracy, over the course of time, now appear to be clear, although
always liable to further adjustments. From Bloch 4 to Ganshof, 5 through Boutruche 6
and Tabacco, 7 finally reaching Karl Werner’s 8 synthesis, doctrine has progressively
freed itself from the stereotype of a mere feudal class, hence reaching a more complex
description of the Western European potentes. The model that the Medieval historians
have established is, in broad terms, the encounter, between the élite of the warriors
following the Germanic chiefs and the Roman senatorial and curial classes, which
took place during the reign of the Franks from the sixth century onwards. An encoun-
ter which led to an aristocracy with a strong military vocation, linked for economic
and political interests to the territory of origin, in which they usually had the highest
concentration of land, and with a well-established practice in the management of pub-
lic affairs. Although it was initially a group of individuals open enough to the entry of
new elements, the contribution of homines novi began to shrink with the slow devel-
opment of vassalage-beneficiary bonds, which tended to place its members in more
formal structures and which, usually, but not always, referred to the sovereign. The
progression of the early medieval structures towards a feudal hierarchical system –
which grew increasingly rigid as the years passed by, where power was handed down
by internal succession within the powerful families and the possession of land proved
hardly alienable or divisible – favoured the gradual transformation of the Latin-Ger-
manic aristocracy into something different : nobility. The last centuries of the Middle
Ages saw the establishment of a rather closed and homogeneous class, with a strong
sense of belonging and with its own ethics ; membership in it, its obligations to the
sovereign and the regnum, and its privileges were set by law and it would remain the
main counterpart of central power until the end of the ancien régime. 9
With a partial exception of the final centuries of the Empire, when sources become
a bit more generous for modern scholars, it is difficult to reproduce such a precise

3
For bibliographical references refer to the notes of the paragraph ‘The historiographical debate’.
4
Marc Bloch, La società feudale (Torino : Einaudi, 1999, orig. ed. 2 vols., Paris : Albin Michel, 1939-1940
(L’Évolution de l’Humanité, XXIV-XXIV bis)).
5
François-Louis Ganshof, Che cos’è il feudalesimo ? (Torino : Einaudi, 2003, orig. ed., Bruxelles : Office de
Publicité, 1944).
6
Robert Boutruche, Signoria e feudalesimo, 2 vols. (Bologna : Il Mulino, 1984, orig. ed., Paris : Aubier,
1968-1970).
7
See for example the reissued essays in Giovanni Tabacco, Sperimentazioni del potere nell’alto medioevo
(Torino : Einaudi, 1993), specifically nn. I-V, VIII-IX ; or Giovanni Tabacco, Egemonie sociali e strutture del
potere nel Medioevo italiano (Torino : Einaudi, 2000).
8
Karl Ferdinand Werner, Nascita della nobiltà. Lo sviluppo delle élite politiche in Europa (Torino : Einaudi,
2000, orig. ed., Paris : Fayard, 1998).
9
Werner, Nascita della nobiltà, 5 ff. ; concerning the developments of European nobility in the modern
era also refer to the synthesis by Jonathan Dewald, La nobiltà europea in età moderna (Torino : Einaudi, 2001,
orig. ed., Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1996).
18 marco fasolio
framework for the Greek medieval world and this is inevitably reflected in the his-
torical debate. Before reconstructing the main stages, however, it is worth mention-
ing at least an outline of some of Byzantine aristocracy’s history.
Considering the entire millennium of Byzantium (330-1453), the analysis must be
narrowed down to a smaller period, considering a period of time that ranges from
about the ninth to the mid-fifteenth century, in other words the truly medieval phase
of the basileia. It is a matter of opportunity, 10 because, at least until the years of Hera-
clius (610-641), the political and economic weight of the senatorial and curial classes
of Roman tradition had remained untouched. 11 The structures of the Late Antiquity
world, however, gradually crumbled during the turbulent Seventh and Eighth centu-
ries, when at the end of the great invasions of the Lombards, the Slavs, the Pannoni-
an Avars and the Arabs, the pars Orientis of the Roman world had taken on new con-
notations. The clarissimi and the clari, whose land ownership had been undermined
by the continuous instability besetting the basileia, disappeared from the horizon of
imperial power, to be replaced by a renewed ruling class. This had emerged during
the eighth and ninth centuries, in a society that had lost the traditional polarisation
of Constantine’s age, between colonists and large landowners, thus flattening out
into a structure that envisaged a wide spread of small rural properties. 12 The new élite
was a composite group, albeit with a core of common traits, which, by virtue of the
gradual adaptation to the changing historical conditions, formed the backbone of the
civil and military authorities of the Empire until the mid-fifteenth century. 13
Paul Lemerle was certainly right when he denied that in the years following the sev-
enth century incursions of the barbarians there was a revolution in the organization
of land tenure, which had already happened in the West, and that some large estates
survived or had re-established at that time without completely interrupting the con-
tinuity between the age of Constantine and the advent of the Basilid dynasty. 14 How-
ever, not even an eminent ‘continuist’ such as Lemerle missed that, even if through
gradual steps and without abrupt changes, the agrarian structure and the social fabric
of Byzantium in the late ninth and early tenth century had very little to do with what
could have been observed during the reigns of Theodosius II and Justinian.
The new potentes, risen from the ashes of late antiquity, were no longer Roman
clarissimi or curiales, but – as is clarified by the hagiographic, historical, and legislative

10
It is an established practice in doctrine to divide Byzantine history into three periods : a proto-Byzan-
tine or Late Roman one (second quarter of the fourth-early seventh century), a ‘middle’ one, which ends
with the siege of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, and a ‘late’ one, which ends roughly in the
mid-fifteenth century, when between 1453 and 1479 the Turks occupied the last strips of land in the hands
of the Romeans. The most famous partition of this kind, although it was later partially reformulated is
found in Georg Ostrogorsky, Storia dell’impero bizantino (Torino : Einaudi, 1993, orig. ed., Münich : Oscar
Beck, 1963), 23 ff. The support system of Ostrogorskian partition, however, remained intact. Testimony of
this, for example, is given in the last great general synthesis on Byzantium translated into Italian, whose
three volumes are modelled onto the same chronological details, in Il mondo bizantino, 3 vols., ed. by Cécile
Morrisson, Silvia Ronchey, Tommaso Braccini, Jean-Claude Cheynet and Angeliki Eleni Laiou (Torino :
Einaudi, 2007-2013).
11
Mario Gallina, Potere e società a Bisanzio. Dalla fondazione di Costantinopoli al 1204 (Torino : Einaudi,
12
1995), 18 ff. Gallina, Potere, 75 ff.
13
Évelyne Patlagean, Un Medioevo greco : Bisanzio tra IX e XV secolo (Bari : Dedalo, 2009, orig. ed., Paris :
Albin Michel, 2007), 89 ff.
14
Paul Lemerle, The Agrarian History of Byzantium from the Origins to the Twelfth Century (Galway : Gal-
way University Press, 1979), 51-54.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 19
sources of the ninth and tenth centuries – a different and fully Byzantine social class,
known as dunatoi;. 15 Although already in the ninth century in the life of St. Philar-
etes 16 and in Theophanes’ 17 chronography the outlines of a new group of potentiores
appear, standing out from the mass of peasant-owners or simple citizens or soldiers,
it is in the novellae of the epigones of Basil I (867-886) that we see the profile of the
new élite being defined. In a provision dated 934, Romanos I Lekapenos (920-944)
counted amongst the dunatoi; :
the magnificent magistri or patricians, those who hold civil or military positions and dignity,
members of the senate, 18 archons or former archons of the themes, metropolitans, archbish-
ops, bishops, hegumens or ecclesiastical rulers, lovers of God or those who oversee sacred or
imperial foundations.
Moreover, in the same new law, the basileus forbade them all to buy the land and
property of the weak, alternately known as penhvte~ or ptwcoi;, leveraging their con-
dition of social disadvantage against the weight of their huge financial resources and
family prestige. Romanos Lecapenus’ provision was conceived with the specific pur-
pose of preventing ptwcoi; from renouncing economic independence for themselves
under the protection of a dunato;~ and become his pavroikoi, i.e. farmers-employees,
thus escaping to the tax collectors of Constantinople. 19 If we exclude the religious au-
thorities which rightly fall among the powerful of Byzantium – they are a special case
with respect to the lay aristocracy – the picture that emerges is one of a functional élite,
that rose over the ‘weak’ because of their dignity, prestige, and consequent wealth. An
élite that exploited economic and political power to consolidate their land ownership
and get rich at the expense of the village communities, eroding free rural property.
The emperors of the house of Basil from Leo VI to Constantine VIII were aware of
the danger of this disruptive action, as it tended to undermine the basis of the tax sys-
tem, which was hinged on the collective responsibility of the members of the village
communities, i.e. the cwriva, fulfilling the basic and supplementary land ownership
taxes. Many of the new laws of these sovereigns were intended, in fact, to limit or
exclude the dunatoi;’s possibility to purchase real estate within the cwriva, in order to
preserve the administrative integrity of the tax units and prevent them from seizing
the lands encumbered by strateiva, 20 which allowed the upkeep of the soldiers and
sailors of the imperial army and fleet. 21

15
Although the meaning of this term is by all means ‘powerful’, in the Byzantine sources of the VIII-XI
centuries, it takes on a specific and technical meaning that we discuss below.
16
Marie-Henriette Fourmy and Maxime Leroy, “La vie de saint Philarète”, Byzantion, IX (1934) : 85-170,
see 115.
17
Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. by Carl De Boor (Lipsiae : Teubner, 1883), 486-487.
18
The new Senate, although in principle placing itself in continuity with the one inherited from Rome,
had nothing to do with the late antiquity institution shifted to the Bosphorus by Constantine, because its
members were co-opted by the emperor amongst the greatest civil officials and holders of public honor-
ary titles.
19
Carl Eduard Zachariae von Ligenthal, Jus Graeco-Romanum, 7 vols. (Lipsiae : Weigel, 1856-1884), III,
246-252 ; the translation in quotes is ours.
20
The owners of these lots were required to personally serve in the army or equip someone else who
would serve for them, in exchange for a substantial tax exemption ; they were not too dissimilar from so-
called limitanei of the late Roman army.
21
These are the new laws found in Zachariae von Ligenthal, Jus, III, 220-318, for a more detailed analysis
refer to Lemerle, The Agrarian History, 87 ff., while for an overview of these issues, to Gallina, Potere, 227 ff.
20 marco fasolio
The unique characteristics of the new aristocracy were not just the titles, the land-
ed property, and the riches, because already between the ninth and tenth century,
family prestige played a key role in determining whether a man could be defined as
powerful and access the most conspicuous positions of the State. The emergence,
from the eighth century, of a new system of surnames, different from the Roman
tria nomina, was crucial in consolidating this trend. The new proto-surnames initially
sided the personal name as nicknames, generally derived from the trade, a physical
characteristic or the character or the place of origin of the bearer ; over time they
became a family legacy that set it apart from the others thus making it recognizable.
It was as much of a rapid process, as the members of the ruling class of the Empire
tended to rise over the rest of the population, stressing the prestige derived from
belonging to a house that had covered previously considerable honorary positions
or appointments. 22 The ‘surnaming’ of nicknames, along with factors we briefly dis-
cussed earlier, favoured the creation of lineages specialized in the exercise of certain
positions in the imperial administration. This, however, did not exclude the entry
within the aristocracy of homines novi, recruited on the basis of their education and
personal skills, nonetheless essential even for members of the most illustrious fami-
lies.
Leo VI (886-912) himself – who was also the first to enact the new laws that the
tradition of Byzantine studies conventionally calls anti-magnate, since they were in
defence of the properties of the weak and of the strateiva service holders – stated in
his military manual, the Tactica : “thus shall the good, noble and rich be nominated
strategos, but the poor endowed with virtue not rejected, even if his ancestry does not
come from illustrious and famous forefathers”. 23 A statement that, whilst conform-
ing the traditional canons for the selection of public officials in the second part, also
recognized the influence that a good birth, ejugeneiva, had reached in the attribution of
top military administration appointments. His son Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus
(912-959) in the Book of Ceremonies described how, even in his time, Constantinople’s
demes applauded those who had just been awarded an honorary title or civil assign-
ment from the basileus addressing them with these words : “welcome to you who are
noble thanks to your ancestors”. 24
The role played by family tradition in the designation to high state positions by
the sovereigns had led to a certain degree of accumulation of appointments and
honorary titles in the hands of a relatively small group of families. It can be said that,
in that context, with the full awareness of its contemporaries, there was the cryst-
allisation of a new ruling class, the access to which had become much harder than
in previous centuries. Although it was not a nobility whose status was defined by
law, just as it would eventually occur, albeit in numerous regional variations, in the

22
Alexander Petrovič Kazhdan, L’aristocrazia bizantina dal principio dell’XI alla fine del XII secolo, ed. by
Silvia Ronchey (Palermo : Sellerio, 1997), 167-170 ; Jean-Claude Cheynet, “L’anthroponimie aristocratique a
Byzance”, L’anthroponimie, document de l’histoire sociale des mondes méditerranéens, ed. by Monique Bourin,
Jean-Marie Menant and François Menant (Roma : École française de Rome, 1996), 267-294.
23
Leo VI, Tactica, 2 vols., ed. by Rudolf Vári (Budapestini : Typis Regiae Universitatis Scientiarum Bu-
dapestinensis, 1917-1922, Sylloge Tacticorum Graecorum, 3), I, 29 ; our translation.
24
Constantinus VII Porphyrogenitus, De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae libri duo, 2 vols., ed. by Johann Jacob
Reiske (Bonnae : Impensis E. Weberi, 1829-1830, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, XVI-XVII), I, 253
ff ; our translation.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 21
West in the late Middle Ages, the Romean aristocracy had acquired some traits that
set it apart from the rest of the population : land tenure or liquid wealth, family pres-
tige and possession of honorary titles and public appointments. The lineages thus
made up were inclined to specialize on a specific part of the administration, depend-
ing on the prevailing family tradition, the place of residence and the nature of the
assets owned, to create a de facto division within the élite. Right from the embryonic
stages of the aristocracy’s genesis we can, in fact, distinguish between a group of
families dedicated to civil administration and another engaged in the management
of military affairs. The former was basically made up by the capital’s urban nobility,
whose assets were mainly property or commercial activities, and, because of their
civil honorary titles, they occupied almost the entire Constantinople senate. The
latter, however, consisted mostly of the notables and magnates of the provinces,
especially the Anatolian ones, whose riches were to a great extent the result of large
estates, that made them particularly prone to engage in the defence of the borders
of the Empire. 25
With the death of Constantine VIII (1025-1028) and the end of the Basilid dynasty,
that had made the utmost efforts to curb the aspirations of the civil and military élites,
the road to a new order in Byzantium was open. Romanos III Argyros (1028-1041),
who had gained the royal title thanks to his marriage with princess Zoe, daughter of
Constantine VIII, and was himself a member of an illustrious Anatolian lineage, be-
gan the dismantling work of the anti-magnate legislation of his predecessors. 26 Basil
II (976-1025) had forced on the dunatoi; the inclusion in the collective fiscal responsi-
bility mechanism, requiring them, should their neighbours not be able to meet their
obligations towards the treasury, to shoulder the burden of the defaulters with the
rest of the village community. 27 Romanos III, who needed the support of the power-
ful that found this rule particularly indigestible, repealed it, thus removing the first
barrier to the definitive ascent of the aristocracy. 28 The great houses now not only
occupied the most conspicuous positions of the State, but, even without being able
to establish stable dynasties, were also vying for the throne, from where they were
able to remove all obstacles to the full achievement of their schemes of political and
economic hegemony. 29 In addition to tax exemptions aimed to ensure the benevo-
lence of the most influential families, charisticary appointments became a very com-
mon tool by the basileis to reward officials or friendly personalities for a rendered ser-
vice or as compensation for an action to be performed. The new institute made the
provision that a man, the charisticary, in most cases a member of the aristocracy, was
entrusted with the management of a monastery in a difficult economic state, to turn
over its economic fate. After paying the necessary amount in the treasurer’s coffers
for the maintenance of the monks, he could keep the rest of the annuity as compen-
sation for his administrative work. The instrument was intended initially to relieve
monks and hegumens from materials chores and give a more rational order to the

25
Kazhdan, L’aristocrazia, 67 ff ; on this see also the contributions referred to at nos. 65, 85-87.
26
Michael Angold, The Byzantine Empire, 1025-1204 : a Political History (London, New York : Longman,
1984), 5-11.
27
John Zonaras, Annales, 3 vols., ed. by Moritz Pinder and Theodor Büttner-Wobst (Bonnae : Impensis
E. Weberi, 1841-1897, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, XLVII-XLIX), III, 561.
28 29
John Zonaras, Annales, III, 573-574. Angold, The Byzantine Empire cit., 12 ff.
22 marco fasolio
resources of the individual religious institutes ; however, as is easily understood, it
immediately gave way to abuses of all sorts, becoming de facto a stately annuity at
the expense of the Church. 30
The policies of the Basilid emperors’ successors hardly had a beneficial effect for
the imperial treasury, because, in fact, they endorsed the dissolution of the cwriva, the
basic tax units that allowed the maintenance of the state apparatus, and the trans-
formation of increasingly significant numbers of farmers-owners, who were subject
to the payment of taxes, into pavroikoi employed by some large landowner. At that
point, a total overhaul of the administrative system was necessary, all the more en-
couraged by the relative silence on the borders of the basileia, leading to a gradual
demilitarization of the themes 31 and to an increasing taxation of the services related
to the strateiva. These measures effectively gave the treasury a break and, along with
the freedom granted to the magnates to invest their resources as they wished, it stim-
ulated considerable economic growth, 32 but they had deleterious effects on the stabil-
ity of the Empire. While the new mercenary army proved costly and often unreliable,
the great lineages were taking advantage of the increasingly chaotic situation in the
capital to increase, along with land ownership, their influence in the areas where they
were concentrated, gradually freeing themselves from the control of officials, who
were now devoid of those legislative instruments needed to contain the resourceful-
ness of the potentes. The system showed its dramatic inadequacies, when, after the
defeat of Romanos IV Diogenes (1068-1071) against the Turks of Alp Arslan at Man-
zikert in 1071, the Empire found itself on the brink of a military and financial collapse
in the brief span of a few years. The provincial houses, whose interests no longer co-
incided with those for the good performance of the basileia, refused to cooperate in
the defence of the State, or undertook personal initiatives unrelated to government
planning, and, with the substantial quota of private armed forces that they were able
to accumulate undisturbed in the nearly 50 years subsequent to the death of Constan-
tine VIII, they fought against each other to conquer Constantine’s throne. 33
Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118), the latest in a long line of usurpers belonging to
the most distinguished military dynasties of Anatolia, put his hand to a comprehen-
sive reorganization of the central government, which would have allowed his family
to firmly establish itself at the head of the Empire, breaking the decades-long series
of civil wars over the throne. Alexios reformed the entirety of the imperial titles,
partly demeaning, and then abolishing the older ones, in order to build a new model
that had its cornerstone in the kinship with the basileus : the more one was close to
the emperor or his family, the more conspicuous were the positions or the offices at
which one could aim. Thus, a kind of galaxy was created where the sovereign was
at the centre, while his relatives and cognates were distributed in concentric circles,
varying in distance from the core of the system, according to their degree of close-
ness to him. The lineages that could form a marriage alliance with the Komnenos

30
John Philip Thomas, Private Religious Foundations in the Byzantine Empire (Washington D. C. : Dumbar-
ton Oaks, 1987, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, XXIV), 167 ff.
31
The Byzantine provinces, administered by strategoi, governors appointed from Constantinople with
civil and military powers.
32
Angeliki Eleni Laiou and Cécile Morrisson, The Byzantine Economy (Cambridge : Cambridge Univer-
33
sity Press, 2007), 90 ff. Angold, The Byzantine Empire, 12 ff.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 23
clan had access to the most notable offices and public honours, while those who
were not able, or refused to do so, were excluded from participation to the political
power or relegated to secondary positions, even if they could boast all the credentials
to be included amongst aristocracy. In addition to prestigious positions, the mem-
bers of the ‘Komnenian Galaxy’ were granted appanages drawn from imperial state
property which might consist in tax revenues of an administrative district, in the
tax-exploitation of certain plots of public land or in exemptions from specific estate
taxes. The magnitude of these privileges was clearly commensurate with the degree
of relationship that the beneficiaries could claim to have with the emperor and with
the public position that this could achieve. 34 The great Anatolian lineages that had
not come to terms with the Komnenos clan were almost completely excluded from
the donations. These hence underwent a rapid process of marginalization and deca-
dence, impoverished by the Turkish invasions, and removed from imperial admin-
istration. 35
Starting from Alexios I’s reign, and with increasing intensity from his grandson’s,
Manuel I (1143-1180), the emperors experimented and then perfected pronoia, as
shown by the criticisms of Niketas Choniates. 36 This was a new army recruitment
method to make an adjustment to the Romean armies with the standards of late
medieval warfare, which provided for a more massive use of heavy cavalry and re-
quired more professionally trained soldiers than in the past. The pronoiarios (grantee)
was required to obtain a warhorse with the necessary weapons, armour, attendants,
and squires, in addition to showing up in battle if circumstances made it necessary,
and was rewarded for his military service with a revenue drawn from imperial state
land property. The pronoia was generally configured in what sources indicate as ‘gift
of pavroikoi’, i.e. the granting to the beneficiary of a lifetime or temporary annuity
of the taxes that the peasants-state employees would have had to pay the treasury,
sometimes combined with the revenues of the state-owned land cultivated by these ;
at the end of the service, the land and pavroikoi would return into the full tenure
of the treasury. The pronoiarios, whilst never becoming a numerically large force,
joined the mercenaries and gradually replaced the theme armed forces who were
now in rapid decline and of little use on the battlefield. Although, at times, the pro-
noia was a means to also reward the most prominent members of the ruling clan, it
was usually employed to engage the provincial notables in the defence of the State.
The beneficiaries of the ‘gifts of pavroikoi’, often already belonging to wealthy fami-
lies, were a kind of ‘second-tier nobility’ : although it was subordinate to the great ar-
istocracy that gravitated around the Constantinople court and that boasted fabulous

34 35
Patlagean, Un Medioevo, 148-166. Kazhdan, L’aristocrazia, 100 ff., 229-238.
36
Niketas Choniates, Historia, 2 vols., ed. by Jan Louis Van Dieten (Berolini, Novi Eboraci : de Gruyter,
1975, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, XI, Series Berolinensis), I, 208-209 ; although Niketas does not
expressly mention the pronoia, much like most of the Byzantine authors (in Mark C. Bartusis, Land and
Privilege in Byzantium. The Institution of Pronoia (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012), 112 ff.) and
this is one of the most controversial passages of its history, particularly regarding the origin of the institu-
tion’s beneficiaries, it clearly shows the increase in concessions during Manuel’s reign. For a comprehen-
sive treatment of the subject refer to Bartusis, Land and Privilege, 87-111 and Niccolò Zorzi, La storia di Niceta
Coniata. Libri I-VIII : Giovanni II e Manuele I Comneno. Materiali per un commento (Venezia : Istituto ellenico di
studi bizantini e postbizantini, 2012, Biblioqhvkh tou Ellhnikouv institouvtou Buzantinwvn kai Metabuzantin-
wvn spoudwvn Benetiva~, 31), 302-306, which summarizes and enriches the previous historiographical debate.
24 marco fasolio
riches and entourages sometimes worthy of the basileus himself, it was sufficiently
rich and powerful to afford the lifestyle of noblemen, multiple armed men and ser-
vants, and to decisively influence the life and the administration of the provinces. 37
The government system, and the social framework of the basileia, typical of the
regime established by the Komnenians were decisive in the history of Byzantium.
In fact, despite some attempts to restore the old, albeit anachronistic and unrealistic,
modes of power management, like the bloody and brutal ones of Andronikos I Kom-
nenos (1182-1185) or the more moderate ones of Isaac II Angelos (1185-1195) 38 and of
Theodore II Laskaris (1254-1258), 39 the imprint, given to the Empire by Alexios I and
completed by his successors, never ceased to exercise its decisive influence until the
end of the political parable of the basileia. 40 What is certain is that the introduction
of reforms that altered the structure of the State so deeply was neither painless nor
free of protests, particularly from civil aristocracy, who was dispossessed of the pow-
ers it had formerly enjoyed, as proven by the allegations made against the Komne-
nian methods by the historian John Zonaras. 41 Nonetheless, the new system endured
the passage of time and even after the fourth Crusade, the Laskarids and Palaiologoi
adapted to it without making significant alterations, except for very few and physi-
ological corrections needed to face the new social, economic, and political conditions.
The outcome of such a long duration of the system created by the Komnenians
was the slow and steady development of the social and administrative structure of the
Empire, with results that would become evident in the second half of the fourteenth
century. Byzantine society had undergone a growing polarization, where, next to the
great mass of pavroikoi, which had almost completely replaced the farmers-owners,
thrived a small group of aristocrats, linked to court because of family ties, honorific
titles and tax exemptions, which maintained multitudes of famuli, lived in sumptuous
palaces, was patron of monasteries, artists and thinkers and held the reins of politi-
cal power. The dramatic collapse of the imperial prestige, after the death of Manuel
I Komnenos (1180) and the political crises of the late twelfth century and the whole
of the fourteenth century, had induced the sovereigns toward an increasing decen-
tralization of administration, aimed at reducing the demands for autonomy or the
open rebellions of those provincial archons – often intermarried with the reigning
dynasty – who had turned their appanages and immunities into bases of resistance
against a basileus that had lost its coercive force. Starting from the second half of the
fourteenth century, what was left of the imperial territory was divided into a series of
personal and inheritable lordships, that were more or less extended and governed by
a handful of great aristocrats, whose exercise of power was based on the cooperation
with the local notables. The emperor, in addition to his kinship and a certain power

37
Bartusis, Land and Privilege, 32 ff.
38
Charles M. Brand, Byzantium confronts the West, 1180-1204 (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1968), 40 ff.
39
Michael Angold, A Byzantine Government in Exile. Government and Society under the Laskarids of Nicea
(1204-1261) (London : Oxford University Press, 1975), 76-79.
40
Donald MacGillivray Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium 1261-1453 (Cambridge : Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1993, orig. ed., 1972), 39 ff.
41
John Zonaras, Annales, III, 766-767 ; on the criticisms to the Komnenian system, even posterior to
those of Zonaras see Paul Magdalino, “Aspects of Twelfth-Century Byzantine ‘Kaiserkritik’”, Speculum, 58
(1983) : 326-346.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 25
of appointment, could only boast a nuanced form of sovereignty on these lords of the
Empire, despots of Morea, of Selymbria or Thessalonica. 42

III. The historiographical debate

Interest in Roman aristocracy dates back to the dawn of Byzantine history studies,
when one of the fathers of the discipline, Charles du Fresne du Cange (1610-1688)
dedicated the first part of his Historia Byzantina duplici commentario illustrata (Paris
1680) to the study of the imperial dynasties of Byzantium. His Familiae Augustae Byz-
antinae, 43 that traces the genealogy of the families that, from Constantine the Great
onwards, succeeded to the throne of Constantinople, are an extraordinary conden-
sation of seventeenth-century erudition, where the author, who also did not lack a
consolidated European tradition of research related to his, tried to explore the origins
of the most conspicuous Byzantine ancestries for the first time. Du Cange’s work,
although inevitably aged in some parts, after almost three and a half centuries is still
a very useful tool for the contemporary reader to unravel the endless ramifications
of the major houses of the Eastern Empire. Although the great French historian,
philologist and linguist could count on a wealth of scholarly interest in the edition
of the Byzantine writers, which was already quite substantial and that dated back to
the second half of the sixteenth century, 44 no one before him had engaged in a com-
prehensive survey of Romean civilization. A civilization in whose aristocracy he had
identified an aspect of vital importance and therefore worthy of special attention.
The work of the French Byzantine scholar marked the course of the subsequent
studies, culminating in the work of the Enlightenment’s Edward Gibbon, whose His-
tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London 1776-1789), 45 although largely
superseded, still deserves to be read, and Charles Le Beau, author of a monumental
as lengthy Histoire du Bas-Empire in over thirty volumes, between 1757 and 1784. 46 In

42
Patlagean, Un Medioevo, 291 ff., concerning the evolution of the administrative system in the late
Empire refer to Ljubomir Maksimović, The Byzantine Provincial Administration under the Palaiologoi (Am-
sterdam : Hakkert, 1988, orig. ed., Београд : Византолошки Институт Спрске Академије Наука и Уметности,
1972), 10 ff.
43
Charles du Fresne sieur du Cange, Historia Byzantina duplici commentario illustrata (Augustae Parisio-
rum : Ludovicus Billaine, 1680), 16-413.
44
As an example, we remember the editions edited by Hieronymus Wolf and his students and the work
of Petavius, John Leunclavius and Leo Allatius. Drawing on the pioneering work of the sixteenth century
scholars, the European interest in the sources of Byzantine history grew, until it reached its peak in France
with the preparation of the so-called corpus of the Louvre. The De Byzantinae historiae scriptoribus, 38 vols.,
ed. by Philippe Labbe et al. (Parisiis : Imprimerie royale du Louvre, 1645-1711), were a collection of editions
of the main Byzantine historians in 38 folio volumes sponsored by Colbert, initially under the direction of
the Jesuit Philippe Labbe and then under the guidance of other eminent Hellenic scholars, including du
Cange himself. For a discussion of these issues and, in general, on the origin of the studies of Byzantium
and the legacy of Romean civilization in European culture in modern times we point out among the many
contributions Sauver Byzance da la barbarie du monde, ed. by Liana Nissim and Silvia Riva (Milano : Cisalpino,
2004, Proceedings of the conference. Gragnano, 14-17 May 2003) ; Byzance retrouvée : érudits et voyageurs fran-
çais (16.-18. Siècles), ed. by Marie-France Auzepy and Jean-Pierre Grélois (Paris : Centre d’études Byzantines,
2001, Proceedings of the conference. Paris, 13 August-2 September 2001).
45
Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols. (London : Strahan & Cadell,
1776-1789).
46
Charles Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire en commençant à Constantin le Grand, 32 vols. (Paris : Desaint
& Saillant, 1757-1811).
26 marco fasolio
those same years, Montesquieu wrote in his Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur
des Romains et de leur decadence that Byzantium was “a fabric of revolts, riots and vari-
ous infamies”. 47 A judgment in substantial agreement with the prevailing thought
amongst the scholars of his time, who considered the Eastern Empire the reign of
obscurantism and of an infinitely protracted decline of the Roman civilization. Even
the works of Gibbon and Le Beau, who had nevertheless applied themselves with
acumen to the reconstruction of Byzantine history, were not immune to those preju-
dices. 48 It is easy to see, then, how Byzantium, the synthesis of the most odious thing
that could exist for ‘enlightened’ thinkers, did not enjoy a great reputation in this
climate, which was often ideologically hostile to the outcomes of medieval civiliza-
tions.
Nevertheless, with the Enlightenment’s fading, followed by the development of
Romantic thought and the consequent emergence of historicism, Byzantine history
studies, as well as other branches of history, regained a prominent position in the
cultural debate. In the nineteenth century, in fact, the first systematic projects of
the edition of historical, 49 legal 50 and medieval Greek documentary 51 sources were
conducted, since the seventeenth-century Louvre Corpus. 52 Also in the nineteenth
century, the cataloguing of coins 53 and seals began with the fundamental work of
Schlumberger 54 and a history of Byzantine literature was conceived independently
from the ancient Greek one, culminating with the monumental Geschichte der byz-
antinischen Litteratur by Karl Krumbacher. 55 With the a priori hostile attitudes of the
previous century well away in the distance, when, in the nineteenth century, the
already consolidated philhellenism of intellectuals and significant sectors of West-
ern European élites, was added to the development of nationalistic feelings, the re-
searches on Byzantium went off into new directions. While the investigations into
Romean civilization were taking a hold outside the traditional boundaries of France,
Germany and Britain, the studies on the basileia were reconfiguring themselves in
relation to the developments of modern Hellenism, expanding their scope from the
traditional comparison with the decline of Rome. At the end of the century, over two
hundred years after du Cange’s Historia Byzantina, one could say that Byzantine stud-
ies had completed their transformation from a subject of mere erudition to a modern

47
Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu, Considerazioni sulle cause della gran-
dezza e decadenza dei Romani, It. trans. Gigliola Pasquinelli (Torino : Boringhieri, 1960), 180-181.
48
Just think of the famous invective against Byzantium in Gibbon’s opening words of the fifth volume of
his history, in Gibbon, History, V, 17 ff.
49
Like the monumental Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 50 vols., ed. by Barthold Georg Niebuhr
and Immanuel Bekker (Bonnae : Impensis E. Weberi, 1828-1897).
50
For example, Zachariae von Ligenthal, Jus.
51
The famous Franz Miklosich, Joseph Müller, Acta et diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi sacra et profana, 6 vols.
52
(Vindobonae : Carolus Gerold, 1860-1890). For the so-called Corpus Louvre see footnote 44.
53
Pierre Justin Sabatier, Description générale des monnaies byzantines, 2 vols. (Paris : Rollin et Feudarent,
1862) ; Gustave-Léon Schlumberger and Michael Pavlos Lampros, Numismatique de l’Orient Latin (Paris :
Ernest Leroux, 1878-1882).
54
Gustave-Léon Schlumberger, Sigillographie de l’Empire Byzantin (Paris : Ernest Leroux, 1884) ; followed
by Gustave-Léon Schlumberger, Sceaux et bulles des Empereurs Latins de Constantinople (Caen : Henri De-
lesques, 1890).
55
Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur von Justinian bis zum Ende des Oströmischen
Reiches (527-1453), 2 vols. (Münich : Oskar Beck, 1891-1897).
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 27
historical discipline in its own right. Furthermore, in the same period, the French,
German and English national schools had consolidated, and next to them the Greek
and Russian-Slavic ones, to name the most active, were beginning to take shape. Be-
tween the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries the latter had established their own
organs, such as magazines and academies, and in those years, began to focus on spe-
cific areas of research. 56
In those early years, steeped with pan-Slav ideology which dominated the official
culture of the Empire of the Tsars starting from the second half of the nineteenth
century, it was the Russian school that started off the contemporary consideration
of Byzantine aristocracy. The interests of historians like Vasilevsky, Fëdor Uspenskij,
followed by Vasilev, Pančenko, Bezobrazov and Konstantin Uspenskij, besides the
study of the interactions between Byzantium and the Slavic world, imposed by the
cultural climate of the years in which they worked, were, in fact, mainly directed
to the agrarian history of the Empire. Coming across many of the issues concern-
ing aristocracy, which based on land a considerable part of its political and econom-
ic fortunes, was a necessary consequence. Vasilevsky, 57 recovering the thoughts of
Zachariae von Ligenthal on the Nomos georgikos, a group of laws probably compiled
in the early eighth century, believed that land ownership in the cwriva was collective,
and that the massive penetration in the imperial territories of Slavic tribes and their
proto-legal culture, foreign to the Roman law, had had a decisive influence over it.
The formation and the subsequent rise of the aristocracy, which contributed to the
gradual disintegration of rural communities and the success of the new ownership
structure, typical of the last phase of the history of the Empire, were nothing more
than a revised restoration of the ius Romanum and of the Late Antiquity colonatus.
The Vasilevsky argumentation about the alleged collectivism of agricultural prop-
erty in the cwrivon, recollected and expanded by Fëdor Uspenskij 58 found a sharp ele-
ment of contrast in the opinions of Pančenko. 59 He denied the existence of a com-
munitarian collective patrimony, opposing it with the idea that land was ultimately
owned by the State. In this vision, as highlighted by Konstantin Uspenskij, the Slavic
influence could have no place in the Byzantine agricultural law, which was nothing
more than an evolution of the Roman one of Justinian imprint ; hence the affirma-
tion of the aristocracy and the latifundium was not a revival of the late-Roman legal
schemes, but the simple acquisition of power by a new social group. 60 Pančenko’s
idea, although controversial and debated since its postulation (1905), had great suc-

56
On these issues, and in general for a compendium on the history of ‘old’ Byzantine studies, we refer
to Ostrogorsky, Storia cit., 3-13 ; also, very good is the reconstruction by Silvia Ronchey, “Profilo di storia
della storiografia su Bisanzio da Tillemont alle Annales”, Europa medievale e mondo bizantino. Contatti effettivi
e possibilità di studi comparati, ed. by Guglielmo Cavallo (Roma : Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo,
1997, Nuovi Studi Storici, 40), 283-304, specifically 283-298, but which, however, appears to be somewhat
lacking for the discipline’s latest developments ; and to Gallina, Potere, 327-341.
57
In Vasily Grigorevič Vasilevsky, “Материалы к внутренней истории византийского государства”,
Журнал Министерства Народного Просвещения, 202 (1879) : 160-232, 368-438, 210 (1880) : 98-170, 335-440.
58
In Fëdor Ivanovič Uspenskij, История Византийской империи, 3 vols. (Санкт-Петербург, Ленинград,
Москва : Брокгаузъ Ефронъ, 1913-1948).
59
In Boris Alexandrovič Pančenko, “Крестьянская собственность в Византии”, Известия Русского
археологического института в Константинополе, 9 (1904) : 1-234.
60
For an overview on the evolution of the Russian Byzantine studies generally see even Ronchey, Pro-
filo, 297-301.
28 marco fasolio
cess in the Russian Byzantine history studies ; so much so that Alexander Kazhdan, in
1974 and in a 1993 article, 61 and again in the Italian edition of L’aristocrazia bizantina in
1997, considered it necessary to justify and use it as a premise to the investigation on
the élites of Byzantium. 62 The last follower of the pre-revolutionary Russian school
was Bezobrazov, who stated in his Essays of Byzantine Culture that in the Eastern Em-
pire a true bloodline aristocracy had never formed ; perhaps too bold a thesis, that
picked up any following in the later doctrine. 63
After the 1917 revolution in Russia, Byzantine studies, as well as numerous hu-
manities, suffered a rapid decline, the causes of which can be identified both in the
imposition of a rigid Marxist doctrine in historical research, and in the general dis-
credit amongst the Soviet oligarchy of Byzantium, of whose role the Tsars had al-
ways been considered the moral and political successors. Only starting from the
Fourties, and with greater vigour after World War II, was there a recovery of the
investigations on the Romean civilization, testified by the emergence of scholars of
the calibre of Sjuzjumov, Litavrin and Kazhdan, to whom we will reserve, however,
a space further on. While favouring a social and economic approach, not too dis-
similar in the facts from the Vasilevsky inception, the Soviet Byzantine studies had
strayed from their originality, that characterised the scholars of the late Nineteenth
and early Twentieth centuries, whose specificity had gone lost in the darkest years
of the Stalinist regime. 64 This is blatantly proven by the fact that the considerations
on Romean aristocracy by Sjuzjumov, a more than orthodox Marxist and still con-
sidered a sort of ‘intellectual of the regime’, were largely similar to those that would
be reached several years later by his colleagues behind the Iron Curtain. In 1948, the
Soviet scholar, in an article devoted to the period between the Eighth and eleventh
centuries, said that in the provinces of the Empire there was a landed aristocracy
which tended to assume para-feudal characters, while in Constantinople there domi-
nated an urban aristocracy that drew huge profits from commercial activities and
usury. 65 The Romean aristocracy was, for Sjuzjumov, a composite ruling class in
which one had to distinguish two subgroups, the élite of the capital, which was quite
open, enriched by commercial traffic, and mainly engaged in the civil administration,
and the magnates of the province, prone to create stable lineages, landowners and
with a military vocation.
Since the wreckage of the pre-Soviet Russian Byzantine studies not all, however,
went lost. Georg Alexandrovič Ostrogorsky, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1902,
but fled with his family after the revolution, achieved a doctorate in Heidelberg in
1926, to then be appointed Chair of Byzantine civilization at Belgrade University in
1933. Thanks to his knowledge of Russian and his training at a Western University,
he was able to near his fellow historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century with an approach that was less ideologically conditioned compared to his
61
Alexander Petrovič Kazhdan, “State, Feudal and Private Economy in Byzantium”, Dumbarton Oaks
Papers, 47 (1993) : 83-100.
62
Kazhdan, The Aristocracy, 177-185.
63
In Pavel Vladimirovič Bezobrazov, Очерки византийской культуры (Санкт-Петербург : Огни, 1919), 12.
64
For a synthesis of the conditions in which the Soviet Byzantine studies found themselves in those
years, Ronchey, Profilo, 300 f.
65
In Michail Jakovlevič Sjuzjumov, “Проблемы иконоборчества в Византии”, Ученые Записки Свердло-
ского Педагогического Института, 4 (1948) : 48-110, see 67 ff.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 29
contemporary Russian scholars. In Ostrogorsky’s work, there not only was the con-
fluence of the researches of the pre-Soviets on agrarian history and the legal institu-
tions of the Eastern Empire, but also a prolific stream of Slavic studies that boasted an
already well-established tradition, by virtue of the happy position of his University in
the Balkans. 66 The thoughts and investigations of intellectuals like Vasilevsky, Fëdor
and Konstantin Uspensky or Pančenko had remained virtually unknown, outside of
the Czar’s Empire before and outside the Soviet Union later, because of the lack of
a translation into Western languages. However, when in 1954 two previous Ostro-
gorsky articles were translated by Henri Grégoire and reissued in Pour l’histoire de
la féodalité byzantine, 67 that world, that had up to then been inaccessible, opened up
to the curiosity of European Byzantine scholars, albeit revisited and updated. The
title of the book allows us to understand Georg Alexandrovič’s approach to issues
concerning the evolution of rural ownership and the social structures of Byzantium.
This approach, while refreshing the dormant interest in the agrarian history of the
basileia, offered an overall interpretation that was in part new because of the greater
availability of edited sources, of the greater chronological span considered and of the
comparison with the institutions of the Western Middle Ages. Ostrogorsky believed
that, starting from the ninth century, some sort of ‘feudalisation’ was taking place in
the Empire, which involved the gradual transformation of free peasants, owners of
the cwriva and stratiotai, into employed and semi-free pavroikoi, and the slow decay
of the public power’s capacity to intervene on magnate and ecclesiastical properties.
The State contributed to this transformation through two distinct channels, corre-
sponding to different stages of the process. On the one hand, from the ninth century
until the mid-eleventh, it acquired the so-called ‘clasmatic’ lands, i.e. those properties
abandoned by farmers to escape their tax obligations and unclaimed for thirty years
by any member of their family, and there it established its own pavroikoi. On the oth-
er hand, it yielded under full, temporary or lifetime possession ownership of part of
these lands – no longer weighed down by debts to the treasury as they themselves de-
pended on it – to monasteries, to the Church and to the potentes. Imperial donations
to church institutions, though they had increased from the ninth century onwards,
were not new in the panorama of Byzantine history, unlike those toward the aris-
tocracy, whose onset can be traced back to the second half of the eleventh century,
and more precisely to the advent of Alexios I Komnenos. The relatives of the basileus
benefited from huge appanages, at times corresponding to whole tax districts, while
homines novi were recruited through the pronoia system, becoming themselves aris-
tocrats, and thus a kind of Romean gentry. The aristocracy contributed to an even
greater extent to the erosion of the cwriva system, because through social prestige,
economic power and connivance of the judges – who themselves were powerful and
against the anti-magnate novellae – it was able to acquire the peasants’ lands at afford-
able prices, as they willingly gave up their independence in order not to be obliged to

66
On the Yugoslav tradition of Byzantine studies in matters related to those treated by Ostrogorsky see
Bartusis, Land and Privilege, 2-7.
67
Georg Ostrogorsky, Pour l’histoire de la féodalité byzantine, ed. by Paul Lemerle, Fr. trans. Henri Gré-
goire (Bruxelles : Édition de l’Institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves, 1954), contains Пронија.
Прилог историји феудализма у Византији и у јужнословенским земљама (Београд : Научна књига, 1951), and
“Византийские писцовые книги”, Byzantinoslavica, IX (1948) : 203-306.
30 marco fasolio
respond to the treasury. As well as enjoying the use of state property lands exempt
from taxation, the Church also benefited from the pious and often vast land legacies
of great landowners, which were still burdened by tax obligations. Despite public
and private donations were clearly distinct, quite frequently hegumes and bishops,
already named dunatoi; in the new laws of Romanos I Lekapenos, managed to con-
fuse the two aspects of the estates to the central administration’s eye. Only during
the land registry revisions were the treasury agents able to once again tell the differ-
ence between the Church’s two typologies of fiscal ownerships, by which time they
were forced to endorse the encroachments, because they had reached their statute
limitation, or to condone the exemption illegality in exchange for a flat fee. The com-
bination of these factors contributed to the development of the post-Late Antiquity
state structure, designed organically by Heraclius – according to Ostrogorsky – into
a feudal or quasi-feudal system which slowly eroded peasant freedom and took away
increasingly large shares of imperial territory from effective central government con-
trol. The ‘feudal lords’ were : the State, or rather the imperial treasury, which owned
the clasmatic lands and their pavroikoi ; the Church, which could transform their land
assets in immune islands where Constantinople’s agents could not in fact intervene ;
and the aristocrats, real subversives of the cwrivon system, further enriched by the
public appanages, by the charisticariates and the involvement in the army through
the pronoia. 68
Ostrogorsky ideas, although preceded in 1933 by the not too dissimilar insights of
Vasilev, 69 another Russian exile, had a huge resonance in a time when scholars were
beginning to renew their interest in Romean élites. As expected, the Yugoslav Byzan-
tine studies were permanently marked by the Ostrogorskian teachings, to the point
that even when the theories of their master could seem out of fashion, Ferjančič and
Maksimovic, his successors to the Belgrade chair, continued to show the greatest
deference towards them. 70 The considerations on the pronoia, in fact partly recov-
ered from those developed in 1883 by Fëdor Uspenskij, 71 were remarkably outstand-
ing and destined to influence the entire course of the subsequent historiography on
the institutions and the society of Byzantium. Ostrogorsky, underlining the eminent
military function, stated that the institution, which appeared – in his views – over
the last two quarters of the eleventh century, and was perfected during the regime
of the Komnenians and continued under the Laskarids and Palaiologoi, was nothing
more than the Byzantine version of a feud. A feud where the owner had no author-
ity over his pavroikoi, which remained under imperial jurisdiction, but that did not
differ much from contemporary Latin-Germanic traditions, because it was a land
benefit in exchange for services in battle. The ideas on the pronoia and, in general, the
whole Ostrogorsky’s thought system, which were reaffirmed and expanded in the

68
Ostrogorsky, Pour l’histoire, 1 ff., 259 ff.
69
Aalexander Aalexandrovič Vasilev, “On the Question of Byzantine Feudalism”, Byzantion, VIII (1933) :
584-604.
70
The most significant works to recognize this loyalty to the teachings of Ostrogorsky can be
Maksimović, The Byzantine provincial administration, and Bozhidar Ferjančić, Поседи византијских провин-
цијских манастира у градовима (Београд : Византолошки Институт, 1980).
71
Fëdor Ivanovič Uspenskij, “Значение византийской и южнославянский проний”, Сборникъ статей по
славяноведению, составленный и изданный учениканы В. И. Ламанского (Санкт-Петербург : Типография Им-
ператорской Академии Наукъ, 1901), 1-32.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 31
72
problèmes d’histoire de la paysannerie byzantine (1956), unleashed what was perhaps
the most famous and bitter controversy of modern Byzantine studies, the one with
Paul Lemerle.
Having curiously collaborated in the edition of the ostrogorskian féodalité, he re-
plied rather controversially to his colleague with a series of articles between 1958 and
1959, 73 which were then combined and reviewed in The agrarian history of Byzantium
in 1979 in the English translation by Gearóid Mac Niocaill. In the reconstruction of
the agrarian history of Byzantium from Late Antiquity to the Komnenians, Lemerle
denied that the Empire had evolved into forms that could be easily assimilated to the
feudal ones, claiming, on the contrary, that, at least until the advent of Alexios I and
largely during the reign of the latter and his successors, there was a certain continu-
ity in the structures of land ownership. The large estates, although affected by the
violent invasions of the Seventh and Eighth centuries, had not disappeared and had
exercised their influence on rural life well before the Basilid emperors had realised
it. At the same time, the farmers-owners and the stratiotai 74 did not disappear during
the eleventh century, following the reforms promoted by Romanos III Argyros and
his successors, but they continued to make up a substantial part, if not the majority,
of the rural population of Byzantium, even in the Komnenian age when it was also
clear that the old economic structures and power were in a transformation phase.
Lemerle never tired of emphasizing the fact that the Eastern Empire never experi-
enced the upheaval that the West had gone through between the Fourth and Sev-
enth centuries and that, therefore, its institutions and its society did not suffer any
revolution, but were subject to a constant, and very slow change. The French his-
torian not only presented his reinterpretation of the rural events of the basileia, but
criticized Ostrogorsky’s ideas, at times subtly, at times directly, sometimes giving the
impression he was making fun of him. Both the destruction of the cwrivon system and
the alleged opposition of the theme judges in applying the anti-magnate legislation
lack evidence in their sources. To apply the concept of ‘feudalism’ in the Byzantine
context was risible, all the more so with respect to a phenomenon such as the recov-
ery of clasmatic lands, which represented a reverse procedure with respect to the
feudal one. The Church could not be considered a feudal lord, because well before
the ninth and tenth centuries the State and wealthy citizens had begun providing it
with ample land estates through donations and bequests : so, in this regard, nothing
significant had changed in its condition. The tax exemptions, be they total or partial,
were certainly not a sufficient element to turn it into a feudal power. The granting of
appanages to members of the imperial clan, as well as the pronoia, were simple mea-
sures that the basileis employed to remunerate members of the military and senior
officials in an imperial alternative to traditional money wages, converting the many
rural estates which had become clasmatic. The exempt lands or the tax revenues
that benefited the pronoiarios and emperor’s family members not only continued to

72
Georg Ostrogorsky, Quelques problèmes d’histoire de la paysannerie byzantine (Bruxelles : Éditions de
Byzantion, 1956).
73
Paul Lemerle, “Esquisse pour une histoire agraire de Byzance : les sources et les problems”, Revue
Historique, 219 (1958) : 33-74, 254-284, 220 (1958) : 43-94, and Paul Lemerle, “Recherches sur le régime agraire à
Byzance : la terre militaire à l’époque des Comnènes”, Cahiers de la Civilisation Médiévale, II/3 (1959) : 265-281.
74
That is, the holders of the estates burdened by the stravteia service.
32 marco fasolio
remain in public ownership, just like the administration of justice, but they returned
into the full availability of the treasury, once the life or the service of the beneficiary
ended or if the latter were to be dispossessed by sovereign will. 75
Lemerle’s approach was dictated not only by a rigorous exegesis of the sources
and deep personal beliefs, but also by the choice of a chronological period (fourth-
twelfth century) that allowed only a glimpse of the full unfolding of the transforma-
tion following the establishment of the Komnenians on Constantine’s throne, thus
favouring a continuist interpretation. The same aversion to the concept of a Byzan-
tine feudalism can be explained by a different interpretation of the term ‘feud’, less
general than the one provided by Ostrogorsky and instead hinged on the character-
istics of mature European feudalism, which included the inheritance of the benefit,
the low authority of the lord over his subjects and the almost total inalienability of
the concession by the sovereign. In this sense neither the pronoia nor, a fortiori, the
appanages of the great aristocracy, the clasmatic estates nor the church properties
were feuds.
In a partial explanation of his position, Ostrogorsky intervened in a symposium
held at Dumbarton Oaks in 1969, the results of which can be read in a 1971 article
entitled Observations on the Aristocracy of Byzantium published on the prestigious US
institute’s journal. On that occasion, Georg Alexandrovič expanded the investigation
on the evolution of Byzantine aristocracy, identifying some sort of internal penetra-
tion of the Western models, starting from the Komnenian period and then indicat-
ing the nobility of birth and the connection with the ruling dynasty as its distinctive
characteristics. He clarified, moreover, the way in which the term ‘feudal’ could be
applied to the East Roman civilization and its élites. Feudalism was not so much the
institution with the more or less defined legal characteristics typical of the West, but
rather a tendency toward a fragmentation and decentralization of power, combined
with the progressive subjugation of peasantry. This trend was already partly visible
in the second half of the eleventh century : nevertheless, it was not right to literally
apply the definition of ‘feudal political entity’ to Byzantium before the fourteenth
century, when the transformations that had occurred since the end of the Basilid
lineage could be considered complete. 76 The weakest point of Ostrogorsky’s demon-
stration, which had already been previously challenged by David Jacoby, 77 is perhaps
the attempt to backdate the assimilation of the pronoia to the feud to the thirteenth
century, claiming as a pretext the use of the term by the anonymous author of the
Greek version of the Chronicle of Morea. 78 Although it is true that, in some passages,
the word pronoia is to be understood as the translation of feudum in Greek – by all
means not a systematic operation throughout the chronicle – this does not necessar-
ily mean that there was a similarity between the two terms for the Romeans. The
pronoia was simply the closest thing to a feud there was in Byzantine law according
75
Lemerle, The Agrarian History, 27 ff.
76
Georg Ostrogorsky, “Observations on the Aristocracy in Byzantium”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 25
(1971) : 3-32.
77
David Jacoby, “Les archontes grecs et la féodalité en Morée franque”, Travaux et mémoires, 2 (1967) :
421-481.
78
The Jacoby and Ostrogorsky references are found in The Chronicle of Morea : a history in political verse,
relating the establishment of feudalism in Greece by the Franks in the thirteenth century, ed. by John Schmitt
(Groningen : Boumas Boekhuis, 1967, facs. repr. of the ed., London : Methuen & Co., 1904).
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 33
to the author : a Hellenised Frankish knight, definitely not a typical member of medi-
eval Hellenism and thus unfit to express its mentality.
Lemerle and Ostrogorsky disagreed on the admissibility of the application of the
term feud to the basileia and on the alternative between rupture and continuity in the
Byzantine economic and social system from the eighth century onwards, but they
shared their approach on the issues that they considered crucial for the history of the
Empire. An approach which involved the analysis of the agrarian structures of the
Byzantine province to reach general considerations about Romean society and poli-
tics. However, except for the difference of perspective from which they made their
analyses, they both reached overlapping conclusions. In all Ostrogorsky’s works, 79
as well as in Lemerle’s Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantine (1977) 80 it is clear that both
consider the deep reforms, introduced in the Empire between the second quarter of
the eleventh century and the last quarter of the twelfth, a substantial corruption of
the essence of Byzantium, which would lead to an inescapable and extremely long
decline.
These were largely dissimilar opinions than those Armin Hohlweg had expressed
a few years earlier (1965) in Contributions to the Administrative History of the Eastern Ro-
man Empire under the Komnenoi, 81 his début in the academic community. The inves-
tigation on the evolution of the administration and the assignment of titles during
the Komnenian age had led the German scholar to positively judge the innovations,
introduced by Alexios I and later completed by his successors. Hohlweg believed, in
fact, that the system based on the political role of the imperial kinship, and consoli-
dated over a century, thanks to the actions of the Komnenian rulers, had definitely
contributed to stabilize the social and administrative order of the Empire, saving the
body of the State from the struggles for supremacy between rival aristocrat clans.
The shift of the centre of analysis from the dialectic between the weak and power-
ful to the social and political structures of the government overturned a concept
that, starting from Le Beau, 82 had permeated the studies of Byzantium. The legal
sources, from which had drawn most of those who until then had studied Byzantine
rural society, Lemerle and Ostrogorsky included, gave back a partly distorted im-
age of reality, where, against the backdrop of the rising provincial magnates, central
power had become an accomplice of the dunatoi;, corroborating the gradual erosion
of peasant property freedom, after having tried in vain to keep the traditional tenure
arrangements. In this view, the advent of the Komnenian dynasty represented the
final victory of the powerful over the weak and the substitution of the order that
had governed the fate of the basileia until the first quarter of the eleventh century
with a less dynamic system, centred on the role of large estates and enslaved labour
in the economy, and dominated by nepotism in politics. While Hohlweg’s interest
was primarily focused on the operating mechanisms of power and administration,

79
Including Ostrogorsky, History, 294 ff.
80
In particular, in the essay Paul Lemerle, “Byzance au tournment de son destin (1025-1118)”, Paul Le-
merle, Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantin (Paris : Edition du Centre national de la recherche scientifique,
1977), 251-312.
81
Armin Hohlweg, Beiträge zur Verwaltungsgeschichte des Oströmischen Reiches unter den Komnenen
(Münich : Institut für Byzantinistik un neugriechische Philologie, 1965).
82
Le Beau, Histoire, XVII, 469, XVIII-XIX.
34 marco fasolio
and others after him would engage in rethinking the agrarian history of the Empire,
his remarks about the efficacy of the Komnenian regime were nevertheless a nov-
elty in Byzantine studies after World War II and they did not go unnoticed. 83 Recall-
ing Dölger’s lesson, 84 the criticisms he had moved in Zur Frage der Pronoia Byzanz in
1967 against Ostrogorsky’s description of the pronoia had had a great resonance : he
rebuked the latter’s improper exegesis of the sources, which had caused him to er-
roneously backdate the institution’s appearance to the period before the advent of
Komnenians, and to misunderstand its nature. Hohlweg believed, in fact, that the
pronoia was nothing more than a simple annuity granted by the basileus to remuner-
ate whatever kind of service and that it did not contain per se any of the seeds of feu-
dalism that the colleague ascribed to it.
Although with a few years of delay compared to what had already happened in
the Soviet Union, even Western Byzantine studies had begun to wonder about the
nature and the internal structures of the Romean ruling classes. The results did not
differ greatly from those reached by Sjuzjumov at the end of the Fourties. While
Charles Brand highlighted the courtly nature of the capital’s élite and the military
vocation of the provincial one, 85 Heléne Glykatzi-Ahrweiler saw the backbone of
state administrative managers in the former and clarified the mainly Anatolian and
Eastern position of the latter 86 and Hans-Georg Beck made a distinction between
the more ‘open’ character of Constantinople’s administrative class and the more dis-
tinctly dynastic one of the rural lineages. 87 As a complement to these considerations
on the general and, in some cases, diachronic characteristics of Romean aristocracy,
other scholars began to search for insights on specific aspects relating to the later
period of its evolution. In 1951 Peter Charanis, in an article devoted to the ruling
class of the thirteenth century, had found that in the period after the fourth Cru-
sade – the most difficult one for the survival of Byzantine civilization – the old élites
had managed to retain power by maintaining the structure already designed under
the Komnenians. 88 More than two decades later Angeliki Laiou, in his magisterial
study on the Palaiologan aristocracy, did not differ too much from Charanis’s opin-
ions, despite dealing with a context such as the last years of the basileia’s life, where

83
Armin Hohlweg, “Zur Frage der Pronoia in Byzanz”, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 60 (1967) : 288-308. A
similar conclusion was reached at the time, however making more leverage on the semantic analysis of
the term pronoia rather than the concession mechanisms and its practical implications, even Kazhdan, in
Alexander Petrovič Kazhdan, Аграрные отношения в Византии XIII-XIV вв. (Москва : Издательство Акаде-
мии наук СССР, 1952), 202-223, also available in a condensed version in German and in Alexander Petrovič
Kazhdan, “Formen des bedingten Eigentums in Byzanz während des X.-XII. Jahrhunderts”, Byzantinish-
neugriechishe Jahrbücher, 19 (1966) : 217-224.
84
Franz Dölger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Finanzverwaltung besonders des 10. und 11. Jahr-
hunderts (Leipzig, Berlin : Teubner, 1927, Byzantinisches Archiv, 9), 66 ; and Franz Dölger, “Der Feudalis-
85
mus in Byzanz”, Vorträge und Forschungen, 5 (1960) : 185-193. Brand, Byzantium, 1 ff.
86
Hélène Ahrweiler, “L’empire byzantin, formation, évolution, decadence”, Les grandes empires (Brux-
elles : Éditions de la Librairie encyclopédique, 1973, Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour l’histoire com-
parative des institutions, 31), 181-198.
87
Hans-Georg Beck, “Konstantinopel. Zur Sozialgeschichte einer Frühmittelalterlichen Haupstadt”,
Byzantinische Zeitshrift, LVII (1965) : 11-43.
88
Peter Charanis, “The Aristocracy of Byzantium in the XIIIth Century”, Studies in Roman Economic and
Social History in honor of Allan Chester, ed. by Paul Robinson Coleman-Norton (Princeton : Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1951), 336-355.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 35
even the Empire’s ruling class had taken up connotations that were partly different
compared to the past centuries. 89 More recently, it was Michael Angold, in an in-
troductory intervention at a famous conference on Byzantine aristocracy between
the ninth and Twelfth centuries, who reiterated this approach and once more high-
lighted the decisive role of the Komnenians in carrying out the final affirmation of
the military class over the civil one, albeit in a context that had changed compared
to the central decades of the eleventh century, where the competition between rival
clans had given way to the power system, introduced by Alexios I, based on imperial
kinship. 90 A concept that even Ostrogorsky, for that matter, had approached in his
time in his classic History of the Byzantine State. 91 To the many voices that have been
expressed over the years on issues related to the genesis and nature of the aristocracy,
in substantial agreement on the interpretation of the main aspects of the question,
we will add the one out of the choir, be the Armenian-Georgian prince Toumanoff.
He believed that amongst the Romeans there was no blood nobility and, therefore,
the development of the Anatolian para-feudal families between the ninth and tenth
centuries was due to a massive infiltration of Armenian and Georgian aristocracy,
which could boast a long tradition of dynastic élites. 92 An original intuition, surely
dictated by the prince’s experience of genealogical research on medieval Armenian
and Georgian dynasties, but that had little following in subsequent studies.
Parallel to the gradual consolidation of the orientations regarding the nature and
the internal structures of the élite by doctrine, which nevertheless has not ceased to
question these issues, and in particular because of the slow fading of the dialectic
between Lemerle’s and Ostrogorsky’s theories, 93 historians have begun to take new
paths in the investigations on Romean aristocracy. We are aware that the inherent
complexity of most of the studies does not allow to encapsulate them in a specific
category of interest. However, to achieve a greater effectiveness in the presentation,
it seemed right to us to identify three strong core themes, in the research on the
Empire’s ruling classes, over which Byzantine scholars have debated with greater
continuity, from the mid-Seventies onwards. In the first one we place prosopographi-
cal and quantitative research, no longer aimed at identifying what the aristocracy’s
‘qualities’ were, but rather to measure its ‘quantity’ and composition. In the second
group, fall the analyses that focus on the local societies and on the provincial admin-
istration of the basileia, taking into account the lower layer of the élite, formed by
the archons and pronoiarioi and its relationships with the capital and the court rul-
ing class. The third core theme, instead, contains those studies that could be defined
89
Angeliki Eleni Laiou, “The Byzantine Aristocracy in the Palaeologan Period : a History of Arrested
Development”, Viator, IV (1973) : 131-151.
90
Michael Angold, “Introduction”, The Byzantine Aristocracy, IX to XIII Centuries, ed. by Michael Angold
(Oxford : BAR, 1984), 1-9, and also in Angold, The Byzantine Empire, 92 ff.
91
Ostrogorsky, Storia, 326 ff.
92
Cyril Toumanoff, “Caucasia and Byzantium”, Traditio, 27 (1971) : 111-158.
93
Although it had never completely died down ; just think of the discussions at the round table entitled
Byzantine Feudalism Reconsidered, during the XIX Congress of Byzantine Studies held in Copenhagen in the
summer of 1996, when scholars were still divided on the definition of the more or less rigid concept of
feudalism and its subsequent application to the Byzantine world, much like Ostrogorsky and Lemerle had
already done in their day. This is reported by Nicolas Oikonomides, “Liens de vassalité dans un apanage
byzantin du XIIe siècle”, Aeto~. Studies in Honour of Cyril Mango presented to him on April 14, 1998, ed. by Ihor
Sevcenko and Irmgard Hutter (Stuttgart, Leipzig : Teubner, 1998), 257-263.
36 marco fasolio
‘on the channels of the aristocracy’s formation’, which regard the processes and the
social repercussions of the appointment with honorary titles or benefits to members
of the élite and the relationships between them and the rural province settings in a
thorough review – of which the Russians had been the precursors – of the economic
and agrarian history over the turn of the Eighth and ninth centuries.
The best-known and influential representative of the first current, although not the
first to follow it, was Alexander Kazhdan, who, in the quoted The Byzantine Aristoc-
racy – an expansion updated and edited by Silvia Ronchey of a 1974 Moscow paper 94
– performed an initial investigation on the major Byzantine lineages of the eleventh
and Twelfth centuries. The Russian Byzantine scholar, exiled in the United States be-
cause of the ostracism of Soviet academic and political environment, drew up a kind
of ‘nobility ranking’ of the leading lineages, assigning to each one an increasing score
based on the number of appointments and honorary roles covered and on the dura-
tion of their permanence in power. 95 It was a certainly questionable operation in the
method, as the author himself admitted in the introduction to the second part of the
1997 edition, 96 but it had the undoubted merit of showing the consistency of many of
the prominent features of aristocracy that had been identified in the previous histori-
ography. As already noted in the preface to the Italian edition by Silvia Ronchey, 97 Ka-
zhdan harboured feelings that were radically different from those shown by Ostrogor-
sky or Lemerle concerning the magnates’ consolidation of power and those feelings
were probably influenced by his personal aversion to Soviet bureaucracy. In a sort of
Moscow-Constantinople transfert, the bureaucrat class of his time was compared to
the one that had dominated Byzantine politics until the third quarter of the eleventh
century, prone to the sovereign’s will and unable to stop the debacle towards which
the Empire was heading. Only the rise of the large para-feudal Anatolian houses, with
a strong enough class consciousness to oppose the autocracy of the basileis and the
seizure of power by one of these, could halt the decline induced by a bureaucracy that
was obtuse and blind to the failure of its government methods.
In fact, Kazhdan was endorsing and leading to extreme consequences the theories
previously formulated by Hohlweg in his Contributions to the Administrative History.
Theories which the great Russian historian had reached, perhaps in an even more
clear-cut form, through his analysis of the agrarian economy in the aforementioned
article, appeared in 1993 in the Dumbarton Oaks Papers. 98 On that occasion, he had
shown how the spread of the estate starting from the ninth/tenth century had actu-
ally led to the development of ‘quasi-feudal’ traits in the social and economic context
of the rural institutions, and amongst which the pronoia could only be included with
difficulty. 99 The supreme direction of economic flows, however, had remained in
the hands of the basileus, dominus eminens of all land subject to its political power, on

94
Alexander Petrovič Kazhdan, Социальный состав господствующего класса Византии XI-XII вв.
(Москва : Наука 1974).
95 96
Kazhdan, L’aristocrazia, 153 ff. Kazhdan, L’aristocrazia, 163-166.
97
Silvia Ronchey, “Každan, l’oligarchia sovietica e l’aristocrazia bizantina”, Kazhdan, L’aristocrazia, 11-26.
98
Kazhdan, “State, Feudal and Private Economy”, 83-100.
99
Regarding the pronoia, Kazhdan, while mentioning Ostrogorsky’s opinion, used as a basis the con-
clusions reached by Hohlweg, Zur Frage der Pronoia, 288-308, and, albeit not quoting them, the analyses he
had made years before in Kazhdan, Аграрные отношения, 202-223, and Kazhdan, “Formen des bedingten
Eigentums”, 217-224.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 37
which the subjects could only exert a form of dominium utile, in some ways compa-
rable to that experienced in the English monarchy domains. Despite even the advent
of the Komnenians and the reforms they introduced had slowed down the dissolu-
tion process of the basileia, the failure to develop fully feudal institutions from the
legal, political and administrative point of view during the twelfth century – which
might allow the aristocracy to become a real counterweight to imperial power – had
led Byzantium to an inescapable decline. The analysis on the economic structures
of the basileia, however, assumed the ideas expressed in the synthesis Continuity and
Discontinuity in Byzantine History published in 1982 in collaboration with the art his-
torian Anthony Cutler. Kazhdan had clarified, then, how the evolution of the urban
system, the emergence of a new dominant social class and the disappearance of the
old structures in land ownership demonstrated – contrary to what Lemerle had re-
peatedly asserted – the existence of a substantial gap between the Late Antique peri-
od (Fourth-sixth sec.) and ninth century. 100 These considerations were the prelude to
the description of the new system which had emerged from the period of transition
of the Seventh-Eighth centuries and they were presented, therefore, as theoretical
premises to the 1993 article, which was its natural complement.
The originality of the problems treated in The Byzantine Aristocracy, written in a
time when the doctrine was already receptive to the reconstructions of the lineages
and individual careers of the Romean ruling class, has catalysed even more the atten-
tion of Byzantine scholars on prosopographical research. Indeed, despite the objec-
tive difficulties that Donald Nicol correctly reported in 1984, 101 Byzantine prosopog-
raphy has had a remarkable development over the last forty years. In this direction,
an enormous help came from the many sphragistics cataloguing projects launched in
the second half of the twentieth century, in the wake of Schlumberger’s monumental
late nineteenth century work, like those of father Laurent in the 1950s and 1960s, 102
and the subsequent ones by Nicolas Oikonomides, 103 of the Byzantine Institute of
Dumbarton Oaks, 104 and by Jean-Claude Cheynet, 105 just to mention some of the
most renowned. Although, to this day, there still is not a finalised general prosopo-
graphical lexicon covering the entire chronological period of Byzantine history, as
pointed out with regret by Charlotte Roueché in 2010, 106 some work is already avail-
able to scholars. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire 107 covers the years 260-
100
Alexander Petrovič Kazhdan and Anthony Cutler, “Continuity and Discontinuity in Byzantine His-
tory”, Byzantion, 52 (1982) : 429-478 ; specifically, on 476-478.
101
Donald MacGillivray Nicol, “The prosopography of the Byzantine Aristocracy”, The Byzantine Aris-
tocracy, 79-91.
102
Culminating in Vitalien Laurent, Le corpus des sceaux de l’empire byzantin, 4 vols. (Paris : Éditions du
Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1963-1981).
103
Nicolas Oikonomides, A Collection of Byzantine Dated Seals (Washington D. C. : Dumbarton Oaks,
1986).
104
John Nesbitt, N. Oikonomides, Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and Fogg Museum, 6
vols. (Washington D. C. : Dumbarton Oaks, 1991-2009).
105
The larger study which is known in this field is Jean-Claude Cheynet, La société byzantine. L’apport des
sceux, 2 vols. (Paris : Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2008).
106
Charlotte Roueché, “Introduction. Defining Identities and Allegiances in the Eastern Mediterranean
after 1204”, Identities and Allegiances in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204, ed. by Judith Herrin and Guil-
laume Saint-Guillain (Farnham, Burlington : Ashgate, 2010), 1-5.
107
The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, 3 vols., ed. by Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, John R. Mar-
tindale and Jan Morris (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1971-1992).
38 marco fasolio
641, the Prosopographisches Lexicon der Palaiologenzeit 108 concerns the Palaiologan age,
the Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit 109 in two sections (641-867 and 867-1025)
concerns the mid-Byzantine period to the death of Basil II, while the Prosopography of
the Byzantine World, which covers the years 1025-1150, is available on-line ; 110 however
there still isn’t a tool for much of the reign of Manuel Komnenos and his successors
until the fourth Crusade, as well as for the period of the Diaspora (1204-1261).
The cornerstone for the development of the research on provincial administra-
tion and on local notables, preceded in 1971 by the valuable collection of the contri-
butions of Heléne Glykatzi-Ahrweiler 111 on related issues, was the article by Judith
Herrin for the administration of the themes of Hellas and the Peloponnese, released
on the Dumbarton Oaks Papers in 1975. The British Byzantine scholar, as well as draw-
ing an accurate picture of the civil administration of Byzantium in the late Komne-
nian age, clarified in an exemplary manner the dynamics of the relationships be-
tween the capital, local government leaders and the archons. The process described
by Judith Herrin, illuminated by the epistolary testimonies of Michael Choniates, 112
saw a progressive disconnection between the interests of the local élites and those
of the capital, whose officials, uninterested in the institution they had to adminis-
ter, always showed to be most rapacious in the face of a significant reduction of the
services provided to the basileia, first among which the administration of justice and
the defence of the territory. The disaffection of the population and the lack of fun-
damental support of the archon class, which became unrecoverable following the
failure of Andronikos Komnenos’s policies, had led to the ungovernability of the
provinces and the proliferation of local aristocracy rebellions until the collapse of
the imperial institutions, because of deadly blow dealt by the fourth Crusade to the
heart of the basileia. 113
Following the 1975 article, there have been increasing studies on the individual
territories subject to the power of Constantinople, none of which could fall short
of following the guidelines indicated by Judith Herrin, whilst adapting them to the
circumstances examined each time. 114 Anthony Bryer has been the most knowledge-

108
Erich Trapp, Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, 15 vols. (Wien : Verlag der Österreichisch-
en Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1976-1995).
109
Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit, 2 secs., I (641-867), 6 vols., ed. by Ralph-Johannes Lilie, et
al. (Berlin, New York : de Gruyter, 1998-2002), II (867-1025), 8 vols., ed. by Ralph-Johannes Lilie et al. (Berlin,
New York : de Gruyter, 2009-2013). There is a complementary version of the first English-language sec-
tion on CD-ROM, Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire I (641-867), ed. by John R. Martindale (Aldershot,
Burlington : Ashgate, 2001), also available at the url http ://www.pbw.kcl.ac.uk (consulted on 02.20.2015).
110
Prosopography of the Byzantine World, ed. by Michael Jeffreys et al., 2011, available at the url http ://
blog.pbw.cch.kcl.ac.uk (consulted on 20.02.2015).
111
Hélène Ahrweiler, Études sur les structures administratives et sociales de Byzance (London : Variorum
Reprints, 1971).
112
References are in Michael Choniates, Ta; Swzovmena, 2 vols., ed. by Spyridon Lampros (∆Aqhvnai~ : ejk tou`
tupografeivou Parnavssou, 1879-1880) ; the letters are of Michael Choniates are now published in Michael
Choniates, Epistulae, ed. by Foteini Kolovou (Berolini, Novi Eboraci : de Gruyter, 2001, Corpus Fontium
Historiae Byzantinae, XLI, Series Berolinensis).
113
Judith Herrin, “Realities of byzantine provincial government, Hellas and Peloponnese (1180-1205)”,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 29 (1975) : 253-284.
114
Again in Leonora Neville, Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100 (Cambridge : Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 5 ff, the investigation fundamentals are, in fact, the fundamental insights of Judith
Herrin, although referring to a more dated period.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 39
115
able scholar on territorial and prosopographical issues of the Pontos, Günter Prinz-
ing 116 and Donald Nicol 117 assiduously studied Epirus, while Vera von Falkenhausen
investigated the microcosm of the Byzantines in Italy 118 and Jean-Claude Cheynet,
with the support of his solid knowledge of sphragistics, is the Byzantine scholar who,
more than any other, has made an effort to rebuild the profiles of the local élites of
Byzantium and their relations with the capital. His Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance
(963-1210) 119 carries out a census of all the rebellions against central power that came
in successions to Byzantium, between the ascent to the throne of Nikephoros II Pho-
kas and the years immediately following the fourth Crusade, investigating in depth
the general and particular motivations, thus giving shape to an indispensable guide
for the scholar and a classic of contemporary Byzantine studies. Cheynet has dealt
with the issues concerning the aristocracy, with multiple perspectives, intervening
on various occasions also on the more ‘general’ aspects of the matter such as the
internal structures, the nature or the role of the ruling class in administration and in
the army, 120 all of which had also been the subject of a wide debate in the previous
decades. Nevertheless, his most original contribution to the doctrine, leaving out the
research in sigillography, has been the deepening of issues concerning the power and
influence of the archon class in local society and its relations with Constantinople
and the court élite, to which, in addition to Pouvoir et contestations, he devoted a major
proportion of his works. 121
Although the theories of Byzantine studies that concern a large number of is-
sues regarding aristocracy may have set themselves apart considerably, all have
still maintained a cardinal principle. The ruling class that emerged during the ninth
century and survived until the middle of the fifteenth, through a long evolutionary
and adaptation process, was the result of a combination of two distinct and interre-
lated factors, an economic one and a political one. Which of the two was predomi-
nant, to what extent they were coordinated or whether they acted separately, has

115
See the essential collection of contributions in Anthony Applemore Mornington Bryer, The Empire of
Trebizond and the Pontos (London : Variorum Reprints, 1980).
116
As an example, we cite the valuable intervention in Günter Prinzing, “Epiros 1204-1261, Historical
Outline, Sources, Prosopography”, Identities: 81-99.
117
Donald MacGillivray Nicol, The Despotate of Epiros (Oxford : Blackwell, 1957), and Donald MacGil-
livray Nicol, The Despotate of Epiros, 1267-1479, a Contribution to the History of Greece in the Middle Ages (Cam-
bridge : Cambridge University Press, 1984), are certainly his best-known works.
118
See, for example Vera von Falkenhausen, La dominazione bizantina nell’Italia meridionale dal IX all’XI
secolo (Bari : Ecumenica, 1978).
119
Jean-Claude Cheynet, Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance (963-1210) (Paris : Publications de la Sorbonne,
1990, Byzantina Sorboniensia, 9).
120
A substantial number of interventions on the subject is now collected according to the types of
Ashgate in Jean-Claude Cheynet, The Byzantine Aristocracy and its Military Function (Aldershot, Burlington :
Ashgate, 2006).
121
As in Jean-Claude Cheynet, “Toparques et topotèrètès a la fin du XIe siècle”, Revue des études byzan-
tines, 42 (1984) : 215-224 ; Jean-Claude Cheynet, “Philadelphie, un quart de siècle de dissidence, 1182-1206”,
Jean-Claude Cheynet, The Byzantine Aristocracy (orig. ed., Philadelphie et autres études (Paris : Publications
de la Sorbonne, 1984, Byzantina Sorboniensia, 4)), 39-54 ; Jean-Claude Cheynet, “Thatoul, archonte des
archontes”, Revue des études byzantines, 48 (1990) : 233-242 ; Jean-Claude Cheynet, “Le rôle de l’aristocratie lo-
cale dans l’état (Xe-XIIe siècle)”, Byzantinische Forshungen, 19 (1993) : 105-112 ; Jean-Claude Cheynet, “Official
power and non-official power”, Fifty Years of Prosopography. The Later Roman Empire, Byzantium and Beyond,
ed. by Averil Cameron (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003), 137-151.
40 marco fasolio
been and is still a matter of debate : however, none, with the partial exception of
Toumanoff, has denied the decisive influence of both in shaping the profile of the
Romean élites. It is the historians who are interested in the topics that we grouped
in the third core theme, i.e. ‘on the channels of the aristocracy’s formation’, that
have investigated the nature and operation of its political and economic processes
which helped form the new social class, thus contributing to clarify the insights
of those who had worked out their own reconstructions at the outcome of those
same processes.
Just as Cheynet did for the study on local societies, Nicolas Oikonomides backed
the sigillography with broader researches, many of which relevant to the evolution
of the honorary titles, of taxation and of the imperial administrative practices. By
the end of the eighteenth century Gibbon had shown a certain fascination with the
intricate Byzantine system of government and honorary titling 122 and, more recent-
ly, many scholars have ventured to draw a comprehensive outline of the Empire’s
administrative framework. 123 Nevertheless, it is to the Greek scholar that we owe a
large part of modern knowledge of the meaning and attribution mechanisms of hon-
orary titles, of administrative and government appointments, and of public revenue
and tax exemptions. Elements that, for the most part, helped to define whether an
individual was included or not within aristocracy. In the doctoral thesis entitled Les
listes de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècles, 124 written under the guidance of Paul
Lemerle, to whose teachings the author owed the scruple in the careful exegesis of
the sources, Oikonomides attempted to put order in the complex apparatus of the
titles that were conferred by the Emperor. Among the beneficiaries of the latter he
identified two classes : those who had been conferred the insigna dia; brabeivou, i.e.
the holders of purely honorific titles, which however granted an annual pension,
and those whose position had been attributed dia; lovgou, chosen from the previous
group, and to whom a specific role was appointed within the administration. The
precedence lists were the model demonstration of the centralized and strictly hier-
archical nature of the imperial system of government, where there was no authority
that did not derive directly from the basileus and, the nearer to the monarch was the
task held on his behalf, the higher the social class of the dignitaries. Whoever was
part of one of the titled categories was, in fact, a member of the aristocracy, since the
proximity to the imperial figure ensured, in addition to power and prestige, access
to the main redistribution channel of public riches, the only ones that allowed to ac-
cumulate fortunes enough to ensure the creation of a large estate.
122
Gibbon, History, V, 464 ff.
123
An interest, for the Byzantine general administrative functioning, that has its pioneer in John Bagnell
Bury, The Imperial Administrative System in the ninth Century, with a Revised Text of Kletorologion of Philotheos
(London : Oxford University Press, 1911), but developed fully starting from the Sixties. Take for example H.
Ahrweiler, “Recherches sur l’administration de l’empire byzantin aux IXe-XIe siècles”, Bullettin de correspon-
dence hellénique, LXXXIV/1 (1960) : 1-111 ; or the previously mentioned Hohlweg, Beiträge zur Verwaltungsge-
schichte ; or the works by Guilland, now collected in Rodolphe Guilland, Titres et fonctions de l’empire byz-
antin (London : Variorum Reprints, 1976), and the monography Rodolphe Guilland, Manfred Nauenburg,
Recherches sur les institutions byzantines, 2 vols. (Berlin : Akademie-Verlag, 1967) ; or Léon-Pierre Raybaud,
Le gouvernement et l’administration centrale de l’Empire byzantin sous les premiers Paléologues (1258-1354) (Paris :
Sirey, 1968). More recent is Maksimović, The Byzantine Provincial Administration, on the Palaiologan age.
124
Nicolas Oikonomides, Les listes de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècles (Paris : Editions du Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972).
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 41
Surely innovative was the contribution of the Greek historian on the subject of pro-
noia which appeared in 1964 in the Revue des études byzantines, 125 both because it shift-
ed the focus from the problem of its intrinsic nature to investigate the assignment
procedure, and because he had used a source, such as the notary forms published by
Ferrari Dalle Spade, 126 which had until then remained on the margins of research on
the institution. Confirming the exegetic meticulousness which he had displayed in
the study of the precedence lists, Oikonomides later tried his hand at the reconstruc-
tion, which until then had never been attempted in a systematic way, of the meaning
of the term doulopavroiko~, in which he had recognized a parallel with the so-called
servi casati of the contemporary Latin-Germanic world. 127 The ideal conclusion of a
course of studies that could be called ‘lexicon of the creation process of the aristo-
crat’ appeared in the 1996 Fiscalité et exemption fiscale à Byzance (IXe-XIe siécle). 128 A first
synthesis of its kind after the 1927 Dölger’s one, 129 the work went far beyond a mere
taxation apparatus reconnaissance and was invaluable for the fundamental insights
on the nature of the benefits from which the powerful could benefit in terms of estate
taxes. Oikonomides, unlike Ostrogorsky, who had insisted on the collusion between
the landowners and the theme judges whose duty was to monitor its functioning,
identified the distinction between the properties within the cwrivon and those outside
as the node which originated the privileges of the potentes. While each owner, with
the partial exception of some privileged monasteries, was required to pay the basic
property tax, proportional to the size of the estate, whoever was by right a member
of the village community was requested several additional taxes, which to some ex-
tent could be avoided by those who were outside. So, it was not the status of power
or being a member of the imperial administration to determine the partial or com-
plete exemption from accessory taxes, but rather the legal status to which the land
was subject. If it happened not to be included in the cwrivon, the same fiscal require-
ments typical of the lots belonging to the village communities did not burden it, so
it could enjoy one or more ejxkousseivai. 130 If members of the élite were only owners
of estates drawn from public property and granted by the basileus, or, in any case,
purchased in the cwrivon, but extrapolated from its legal and fiscal setting, they were
necessarily in a position of advantage against the tax collection process.
Regarding the evolution of the macroeconomic phenomena more closely linked to
the fate of the Romean ruling class, the views expressed by Ostrogorsky in Problèmes
d’histoire de la paysannerie and by Lemerle in Agrarian History continued to dominate
the academic scene at least until the Eighties. However, between the late Sixties and
mid-Eighties, after the numismatist Michael Hendy had in many circumstances 131

125
Nicolas Oikonomides, “Contribution à l’étude de la pronoia au XIIIe siècle. Une formule d’attribution
de parèques à un pronoïaire”, Revue des études byzantines, 22 (1964) : 158-175.
126
Giannino Ferrari Dalle Spade, Formulari notarili inediti dell’età bizantina (Roma : Tipografia del Sena-
to, 1912, extr. from Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano, 33 (1913) : 41-128), 10.
127
Nicolas Oikonomides, “Oi Buzantinoiv doulopavroikoi”, Suvmmeikta, 5 (1983) : 295-302.
128
Nicolas Oikonomides, Fiscalité et exemption fiscale à Byzance (IXe-XIe siécle) (Aqhvna : Eqnikov VIdruma
129
Ereunwvn, Institouvto Buzantinwvn Ereunwvn, 1996). Dölger, Beiträge.
130
A term derived from the Latin excusatio, with which, in most cases, are indicated tax exemptions in
the Eastern Empire.
131
Michael Frank Hendy, “Byzantium, 1081-1204 : An Economic Reappraisal”, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, XXI/5 (1971) : 31-52, which has been preceded by Michael Frank Hendy, Coinage and Money
in the Byzantine Empire : 1081-1204 (Washington D. C. : Dumbarton Oaks, 1969). The theories on economic
42 marco fasolio
demonstrated that from the middle of the eleventh to the early thirteenth century
Byzantium was going through a period of economic expansion and not decline, in
contrast to what had been believed until then, a new course was opened in Byzan-
tine economic history. A renewal, induced by the British scholar’s research, that had
significant repercussions on the investigations into the élite and helped to stimulate a
wide-ranging debate in Byzantine studies, which culminated at the beginning of the
new millennium with the Economic History of Byzantium, 132 published by the institute
of Byzantine studies of Dumbarton Oaks, curated by Angeliki Laiou.
Among the first to take the path outlined by Hendy was Alan Harvey, who, in his
Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire. 900-1200, 133 right from the title made clear
his adherence to the new course undertaken by the historical and economic doctrines.
Particular interest aroused the considerations related to the evolution in a feudal sense
of the Byzantine macroeconomic structures between the tenth and the twelfth centu-
ry, because of the progressive concentration of the production means in the hands of
the nascent aristocratic class. This was a consequence due to the large accumulation
of resources by the ruling classes in the middle of the ninth and the end of the tenth
centuries and their progressive and increasingly massive reinvestment in estate own-
ership, particularly following the defeat of the restrictive policies adopted by the Basi-
lid house. No significant novelty compared to what Ostrogorsky had asserted over
thirty years before, the only difference being that while the Russian-Yugoslav Byzan-
tine scholar judged the whole process a form of decline of the agrarian organization
capable of throwing into a crisis the foundations of the Empire’s traditional fiscal pro-
curement, Harvey believed it had started a period of intense economic growth similar
in dimensions and forms to the contemporary Latin-Germanic one in the West. 134
As an eminent scholar of regional tax systems, local rural societies 135 and monas-
tic properties, thanks to the intense visitations of the Mount Athos archives, 136 also
Jacques Lefort, stood in the wake of the Economic Expansion. In an article published
on the Dumbarton Oaks Papers in 1993 137 the late French historian analysed owner-
ship structures and forms of management of agricultural production in a context of
crucial transformations in the imperial economic systems like the Middle age (ninth-
Thirteenth cent.). Although Lefort concurred with Ostrogorsky about the milestones
of the cwrivon dissolution process, by integrating traditional legal sources with a wide
range of documentation of monastic origin, had managed to renew a narrative that

growth then converged in the general work Michael Frank Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Econo-
my, c. 300-1450 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1985), 35 ff.
132
The Economic History of Byzantium : from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, 3 vols., ed. by A. E.
Laiou (Washington D. C. : Dumbarton Oaks, 2002, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 39).
133
Alan Harvey, Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire. 900-1200 (Cambridge : Cambridge University
134
Press, 1989). Harvey, Economic Expansion, 120 ff.
135
Now, many of his contributions were re-edited in Jacques Lefort, Société rurale et histoire du paysage
à Byzance (Paris : Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2006, Bilans de re-
cherche, 1).
136
See the curatorships in Actes d’Esphigmenou, 2 vols., ed. by Jacques Lefort (Paris : Lethielleux, 1973,
Archives de l’Athos, 6) ; Actes d’Iviron, 4 vols., ed. by Jacques Lefort, Nicolas Oikonomides and Denise Pa-
pachryssanthou (Paris : Lethielleux, 1985-1995, Archives de l’Athos, 14, 16, 18-19) ; Actes de Vatopedi, 4 vols.,
ed. by Jacques Bompaire, Jacques Lefort, Vassiliki Kravari, Christophe Giros and Konstantinos Smyrlis
(Paris : Lethielleux, 2001-2006, Archives de l’Athos, 21-22).
137
Jacques Lefort, “Rural Economy and Social Relations in the Countryside”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers,
47 (1993) : 101-113.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 43
was now clearly showing signs of ageing. The aggressive policy of purchases by the
powerful had gradually reduced the number of farmers-owners, turning them into
pavroikoi, who continued to reside in the village, but ceased to be part of it from a
legal point of view. This development, which intensified in the second quarter of
the eleventh century, had led to a flattening of the material conditions of the rural
population, which had become indistinguishable to the eyes of the contemporaries,
who tended to include it entirely in the category of the pavroikoi. Part of the village
institutions continued to exist, but the management of local life, especially after the
advent of Komnenians and the multiplication of land concessions from the emperor,
passed into the hands of the lord’s administrators, who became the new domini of
rural Byzantium. The new shape of the rural society, with the sole figure of the ad-
ministrator appointed to drive it on behalf of the lord, led to a clear rationalization
of the production process, becoming the driving force of economic growth, which
involved the Romean world. The move towards a para-feudal model, or rather, an
agrarian lord economy, far from being a factor of decline and immobility, proved
to be a highly dynamic element, which not only had increased the circulation of
wealth, but had favoured a strong geographical mobility of the population in the
wake of the large landowners’ labour needs. Lefort, who was then called to reaffirm
and broaden his conclusions in the Economic History of Dumbarton, 138 definitely sur-
passed the ‘pessimistic’ theories about the influence of the large estates on the social,
political and economic structures of basileia which had been followed until then, and,
consequently, reformulated the conceptual categories related to genetic processes,
the nature and the functioning of aristocratic property, within which the Byzantine
scholars would be moving from then onwards.
Although it is mostly contemporary with that of the historians so far mentioned,
Paul Magdalino’s work lies outside the core themes that we have previously identi-
fied, because he reviews the aristocracy issue globally, rather than examine one spe-
cific aspect. With a richness and depth of wealth of studies accumulated after World
War II and, thanks to a strong sensitivity toward cultural phenomena and court dy-
namics, the British scholar has reached a refined reformulation of the social, political
and economic Romean ruling class. In his history of Manuel Komnenos’s Empire
we find the Hohlweg insights regarding the regime designed by Alexius I, enriched
by a thorough investigation on the Manuelian age society and economy, where Ka-
zhdan’s thought echoes on the evolution of the basileia in a feudal direction. In fact,
Manuel’s reign was fine investigation laboratory for Magdalino, who could observe
the full swing of those transformation processes that had involved Byzantium from
the ninth century and were abruptly interrupted in 1204. Although the British histo-
rian believed that many aspects of the Byzantine economy in the middle decades of
the twelfth century could be called feudal, as already reported by Harvey and Lefort
a few years earlier, it was still a ‘centralized feudalism’, controlled by the basileus,
who had inherited and perfected a form of power management centred on the impe-
rial gens, able to ensure social stability and state policy. 139
138
Jacques Lefort, “The Rural Economy, Seventh-twelfth Centuries”, The Economic History of Byzantium,
231-310.
139
Paul Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143-1180 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,
1993), specifically 180 ff.
44 marco fasolio
The reflections of 1983 concerning the development of a proto-constitutional sen-
timent in the works of Niketas Choniates and John Zonaras had clarified how radi-
cal the measures taken by Alexios I were, and how clear the dividing line now was
between the new administration figures, i.e. the members of the para-feudal clans
related to the ruling family, and the old ‘bureaucratic’ élites of the capital, slipped
into second place in the hierarchy of power. Élites who perceived the reforms of the
Komnenians as an attack on the foundations of the State framework and who felt ex-
propriated of the powers which they had until then enjoyed, to the point of judging
the emperor’s activities as illegitimate, without, however, being able to oppose any
more than a sterile Kaiserkritik. 140 Albeit in a limited environment such as the literary
one, we are standing before empirical evidence ante litteram of what Kazhdan had
stated in 1993, regarding the lack of evolution of the Romean ruling class into an au-
thentic social and institutional counterweight to imperial autocracy.
The exquisite essay on court aristocracy – appeared in 2009 in the collection of
contributions on the social history of Byzantium curated by John Haldon – had a des-
tiny similar to the 1983 article. On that occasion, Magdalino, thanks to a careful read-
ing of Oikonomides’s Listes, had identified in the change of the source of their wealth
the root node of the renewal of the Byzantine élite, between Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages. While the senatorial class drew its substances mainly from considerable
estates and was almost completely independent from the emperor from an economic
point of view, the new ruling class had come to social prominence due to its proxim-
ity to the latter. This condition had produced a court aristocracy dedicated to serving
the sovereign, and on whom it depended entirely for prestige and substance, be it in
the form of pensions, estate grants or compensation for the tasks performed. It was
the palace ceremonies themselves to legally consecrate the new role of the élites, clas-
sifying them on the basis of proximity to the basileus of the functions that they were
called to fulfil. 141 The picture that Kazhdan had drawn in the synthesis of 1982, there-
fore, remained intact in the review made by the colleague across the Channel, who
saw in the movement of the aristocratic power base from large estates to court ser-
vices the distinction between the élites of Roman tradition, and the Byzantine ones.
As a conclusion of this critical survey of the views expressed on the Romean ar-
istocracy in Byzantine literature we cannot forget to mention the Moyen Âge grec by
Évelyne Patlagean. The work by the French Byzantine scholar condenses over a cen-
tury of thoughts and research on Byzantine aristocracy. With the Moyen Âge, indeed,
it may be said that the dispute between Ostrogorsky and Lemerle is finally overcome
in a new perspective that subsumes the conclusions of both and transcends the futile
dialectics on the alleged decline or resurgence of Byzantium because of the seizure
of power by the Anatolian magnates. Évelyne Patlagean believed that the Byzantine
aristocracy had been the engine of the medieval transformation of the basileia, fully
taking on medieval traits itself, such as the availability of very large estates and pub-
lic appanages, the importance given to ejugeneiva and the detention of the virtually
complete monopoly of the most conspicuous political offices. The evolution of this
social group had obvious parallels with the contemporary developments of the great
140
Magdalino, Aspects, 326-346.
141
Paul Magdalino, Court, Society and Aristocracy, in A Social History of Byzantium, ed. by John Haldon
(Malden : Blackwell, 2009), 212-232.
 byzantine aristocracy. profile of a historiographical debate 45
Latin-German nobility and was configured as a typically medieval dynamic, albeit of
Byzantine culture. 142 The great intuitions of Ostrogorsky on the development of the
Romean élite relived in the Moyen Âge grec pages, purified of the inappropriate use of
feudal terminology, thanks to the fundamental records of Lemerle, and masterfully
redesigned in light of a careful exegesis of the historiographical material gathered af-
ter a half century from the publication of the féodalité.
Università del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”
142
Patlagean, Un Medioevo, 67 ff.
 comp osto in car attere s e r r a dan t e da l la
fabr izio serr a editor e, p i s a · roma .
stampato e rilegato n e l la
t ip o g r afia di agnan o, agnan o p i s a n o ( p i s a ) .

*
Novembre 2017
(c z 2 · f g1 3 )

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