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This is an extract from:
The Economic History of Byzantium:
From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century
 Angeliki E. Laiou, Editor-in-Chief 
Scholarly Committee 
Charalambos BourasCécile MorrissonNicolas Oikonomides
†
Constantine PitsakisPublished by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and CollectionWashington,D.C.
in three volumes as number 39 in the seriesDumbarton Oaks Studies
© 2002 Dumbarton OaksTrustees for Harvard UniversityWashington,D.C.Printed in the United States of America
www.doaks.org/etexts.html
 
The Role of the Byzantine State in the Economy
Nicolas Oikonomides
The adherence of Byzantium to tradition was a feature of every aspect of state life,profoundly affecting relations between the state and the economy and determiningthe extent to which the former intervened in the latter. However, although the state’stheoretical principles were, of course, founded on tradition, when the time came toput them into practice a realistic approach prevailed: theory survived and continuedto have its effect, though without substantially altering the true situation. Those inpower intervened frequently in economic life and at many points of it, working on the basis of the old theory that the purpose of action of any kind was to foster the smoothoperation of the state machine, of the empire “by the grace of God.” In reality, however,the changes that came about were profound, and they came about without disturbingthe theoretical surface of the omnipotence of the state, and of the emperor in par-ticular.It has been said that Byzantium had a “directed” economy, since the intervention of the state was manifest even in relation to activities, such as trade, that would normally be beyond such controls. This description has now been abandoned, and the economyof Byzantium is now seen as “restrained” by the state; in other words, it was an econ-omy that functioned on the basis of the freedom of transactions but in which the stateintervened to prevent the excessive accumulation of wealth, the suppression of theweakest, and the exploitation of the citizens/consumers. Where this intervention is con-cerned, the Byzantine state was substantively different from the medieval states of west-ern Europe, which functioned under a system of effective decentralization.One of the unchanging characteristics of the Byzantine administration was its cen-tralization: everything passed through the center, everything was controlled from thecenter. Here there was a fundamental contradiction between theory and reality, sincein actuality phenomena of decentralization are often to be observed. However, thecontradiction was blunted by the adaptability of the Byzantine state, which was able,when necessary, to confine its control to the bare essentials. In the last centuries of Byzantium, a degree of decentralization is evident, but even then the state kept control
This chapter was translated by John Solman.
 
of many parts of the decentralized economy, determining the tax obligations of eventhose peasants who lived on land from which it collected nothing.
1
Sources
The fact that the Byzantines were so attached to tradition causes problems when oneis assessing the reliability of the source material, especially since very few archives havesurvived, and consequently it would be futile to hope to assemble a long series of infor-mation of an economic nature. No more than a few thousand Byzantine documents of the seventh to the fifteenth century have survived to the present day, and of coursethey cover the entire spectrum of life. Furthermore, the majority of these documentscome from monastic archives in specific areas (such as Mount Athos, Patmos, western Asia Minor, Chios, Pontos, and Thessaly), and the information they contain concernseconomic activities of a specific kind, principally the cultivation, on the sharecroppingsystem, of land that was (or might become) privileged since it belonged to monasteries.Needless to say, the existence or otherwise of privileges is of decisive importance indetermining the role of the state in the agricultural economy.It is true, of course, that the monastic archives also contain documents concerningprivate property, usually land belonging to lay people that subsequently came into thepossession of the monastery by purchase, by donation, or by the owner becoming amonk in the foundation. There are not many of these documents, however, and thelaymen to whom they refer were often privileged.Where the role of the state in other forms of economic life—trade, manufacturing,the exploitation of raw materials—is concerned, there is in effect no archival materialat all. The comparatively few documents that have survived are mostly in Italian ar-chives and deal only in passing with the Byzantine state.It follows that the primary sources upon which we might have expected to be ableto draw for information about the role of the state in the economic life of the countryare very scanty, almost nonexistent. Technical texts that preserve details and informa-tion of incontrovertible accuracy about the public economy—such as the detailed listsof expenditure on the campaigns against Crete in 911 and 949, discussed later (p.1015)—are rare. Most of our information comes from sources of a narrative or regula-tory nature.The narrative sources sometimes relate what was said about this or that measurethat the emperor had taken, frequently distorting it in accordance with the author’ssympathies. Although this information often reflects the reaction of public opinion (ora part of it) to fiscal policy, it is littered with traps because it also expresses a givenpolitical position. We have descriptions of the measures taken by the Isaurian emper-ors written by monks who were sworn enemies of those rulers for reasons that werenot primarily economic, but were bound up with the fundamentally theological and
974 NICOLAS OIKONOMIDES
1
In the text that follows, and especially in discussing the agricultural economy and taxation to thetime of the Komnenian reforms, I have made extensive use of N. Oikonomides,
Fiscalite´et exemption fiscale a`Byzance, IXe–XIe s.
(Athens, 1996).
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