Pronoia
Pronoia (from ancient Greek πρόνοια prónoia "provision", plural πρόνοιαι Pronoiai ) (also οἰκονομία oikonomía or posotes , income) was in the late Byzantine Empire the allocation of the yield or the tax (posotes) of a piece of land to an individual or a group of people as consideration for military obligations. These could be the duties and labor obligations (ἀγγαρήιαι angaréiai, usually 12–24 days a year) of dependent farmers (πάροικοι paroikoi), but also the taxes on fish ponds, mines, mills or docks . Since the award was made by the emperor himself, the recipients were probably no ordinary officials or soldiers, but must be added to the upper class or even the nobility .
The farms affected were called στρατευούμενοι strateuoúmenoi , the corresponding soldiers στατιῶται stratiõtai . The service obligation could apparently also be fulfilled by strangers. The Pronoiar had to pay for his food himself during a campaign.
The early Pronoia system
By the 11th century, the Byzantine nobility had lost all of their power and instead clung to honorary degrees given to its members because of their kinship with the emperor. These titles were often used to gain power within the government, which could grow so large that it was equal to the throne itself. During the reign of Emperor Constantine IX. (1042-1055) the nobles then began to claim supremacy in different parts of the empire by collecting taxes for themselves and planning revolts against the emperor.
In the late 11th century, Alexios I attempted a nobility reform in which he distributed imperial land without heredity among those affected, a compensatory measure with which he also removed the nobility from Constantinople , and thus made it more difficult for them to directly control the emperor's power to challenge. Nevertheless, most pronoiai were made for their own families, the Komnenes . With this measure Alexios legitimized the land ownership of the aristocrats and at the same time kept it under central control.
Pronoia in the 12th century
Alexios grandson Manuel I (reigned 1143 to 1180) continued the allocation of land to the aristocrats and extended the system to the aristocratic officers in the army , whom he paid instead of paying them a regular salary. Pronoiai evolved into a license to collect taxes from citizens who lived within the boundaries of the area, the Paroikoi . Pronoiaren (those who were given a pronoia ) sometimes became tax collectors who were allowed to keep part of the income for themselves.
In older research, the attempt was sometimes made to view the thematic constitution as a preliminary form of Pronoia : Since the middle of the 7th century, the empire had been divided into military districts ( themes ). Since their soldiers were also granted land as a substitute for missing pay payments from the middle of the 8th century , it was believed that these soldiers' goods (στατιώτικα κτήματα stratiṓtika ktḗmata) had a similar function to the pronoun system in later times. However, modern research has largely revised this thesis, as there is no evidence for the introduction of the pronoun system before the 12th century. Rather, in the 8th century the families of the soldiers' estates were by no means obliged to support family members who were soldiers. It was probably not until the 10th century that the state made it legally binding for owners of such goods to be military. However, in the second half of the 10th century this system deteriorated. In research, a clear distinction is made between the stratiotes of the subject constitution and the later owners of pronoiai.
In any case, the Paroikoi of the Pronoia system were not serfs like the peasants in feudal Western Europe. They owed no service or loyalty to the strategos or pronoiars , and in both cases the emperor continued to own the land. The Pronoiar most likely did not even come from the territory it had been given.
The size and value of the Pronoia, the number of Paroikoi, and the duties they owed were recorded in internships . A Pronoiar could probably take income from trade and part of the grain harvest, hold hunting and traffic rights. An internship also included the duties that the Pronoiar owed the emperor. If necessary, the emperor could demand military service, although the Pronoiar could not force his taxpayers to join him. Pronoiare often did this military service reluctantly when they were prosperous on their estates, and they were also in a sense autonomous if they chose not to obey the invitation. If they won the support of their taxpayers, they could lead revolts against the empire, but these were not as dangerous as revolts in the capital itself, which Alexios successfully avoided with his system. Neither Alexios, nor Manuel, nor the other 12th century emperors seem to have worried about these provincial rebellions, as they apparently assumed that a gift of Pronoia would eventually pacify the rebellious noble. Even during the Fourth Crusade , Emperor Alexios IV thought so when he gave Crete to Boniface de Montferrat on the assumption that the Crusaders would leave as soon as their leaders got some land.
Pronoia among the paleologists
After the Crusaders conquered Constantinople in 1204, the Pronoia system continued in the Nikaia Empire . John III Dukas Batatzes (ruled 1222–1254) also gave Pronoia to the church and noble women, which had not existed before. When Michael VIII Palaiologos (ruled 1259–1282) recaptured Constantinople in 1261, Pronoia became hereditary, which made the empire more of a feudal state than in Europe. He also had the Pronoia audited in order to realistically determine its value under the current conditions, especially since the empire had lost much of its land and income since the 11th century. Under the paleologists , the pronoars could more easily be brought into military units if the emperor desired their service. The emperor could also confiscate the income for any reason. Andronikos III. (ruled 1328–1341), for example, used the money raised by the Pronoiaren to finance his campaigns against the Bulgarians , but did not request the Pronoiaren themselves to do military service. During this time, Pronoiai were able to gather followers by awarding Pronoiai themselves.
Recruiting pronoiare to raise an army was helpful in uniting the remnants of the empire after 1261. However, at that time there were only a few thousand pronoiare with which the emperor, although paying their own expense, could not man a full army or fleet to carry out the defensive duties. The impoverished Empire had very little tax revenue, and Pronoiare began to take the Paroikoi lease, reverting to the old system of subjects.
The Empire continued to lose land to the Ottomans , and Constantinople was finally lost in 1453 - the Ottomans, on the other hand, basically continued the Pronoia system in their own version in the areas they had conquered, having taken it over from the Byzantines region by region during their conquests had. In the Serbia of the Nemanjids the Pronoia system was adopted as Pronija , the Pronijari were mostly soldier farmers who received land for their military service and from whose income they had to finance their war equipment.
interpretation
For the famous Russian Byzantinist Georg Ostrogorsky , the pronoia were signs of a feudalization of late Byzantine society. Bartusius, on the other hand, sees the Pronoia more as a benefice.
literature
- Mark Bartusis: The late Byzantine Army, arms and society 1204-1453. Philadelphia 1992.
- John Haldon: Military Service, Military Lands and the Status of Soldiers. In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers 47, 1993, pp. 1-67.
- H. Kuhn: The Byzantine Army in the 10th and 11th centuries. Vienna 1991.
- Georg Ostrogorsky: Pour une histoire de la féodalité byzantine. Brussels 1954.
- Warren T. Treadgold: A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1997, ISBN 0-8047-2630-2 .
- Frederick Lauritzen, Leichoudes' pronoia of the Mangana, Zbornik Radova Vizantinoloskog Instituta 55 (2018) 81-96
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ Mark Bartusis, p. 255
- ↑ Frederick Lauritzen: Leichoudes' pronoia of the Mangana , Zbornik Radova Vizantinoloskog Instituta 55 (2018) 81-96
- ↑ See Haldon, Military Service, pp. 20ff.
- ↑ See also Lj. Makismovic: Stratiot. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 8, Col. 229f.