Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Empire of Nicaea (1204-1261)

Byzantine feudalism 

Page 11

A convinced enemy of large landownership by the laity, Justinian at the same time tended to preserve and augment church and monastery property. Justinian's epoch is the most important step in the process of the formation in the Empire of the large church and monastery landownership which in connection with exkuseias-immunities created as it were feudal centers, monastery-principalities, or monastery-fiefs, which according to an historian, took in Byzantium the place of the duchies and counties of western Europe. But the distinctive trait of a western European feudal state is first of all the instability, weakness, and sometimes disintegration of the central power. The large landowning Byzantine monasteries, from the feudal standpoint, were created and managed by antifeudal elements, because the abbots (igumens) who headed the monasteries possessed full power and were practically monarchs and autocrats in their own possessions. Perhaps this is one of the distinguishing peculiarities of Byzantine feudalism.

In the development of church and monastery landownership in Byzantium, the seventh century is of very great importance. After the conquest by the Arabs of Palestine and Egypt where monasticism was particularly flourishing, a considerable number of monks fled for refuge to the inland provinces of the Empire; old monasteries swarmed with refugees, and new monasteries were built. Therefore the second half of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth can be justly regarded as the period when monastery landownership reached its climax. Because of many privileges, it undermined the finances of the state and as a great many robust young men entered monasteries and became therefore exempt from military service, it sapped the military power of the Empire. The state could not submit to such a situation. According to Vasilievsky without much danger of error, it may be inferred that before the beginning of iconoclasm the Eastern Church was in no way inferior in size of land property to the Western Church. The Frankish kings had early begun to complain that their treasury was depleted and their riches had passed to the bishops and clergy; towards the end of the seventh century a whole third of the land in the Frankish state belonged to the Church. We believe that something similar was also the case in Byzantium at the same time.

It may be supposed that the Isaurian emperors who are chiefly famous for their iconoclastic policy waged their struggle not only against icons but also against monastery landownership or monastery feudalism. In the iconoclastic epoch monastery lands were mercilessly confiscated, and the monks themselves, as well as those attached to the monasteries often not from a religious motive but for exemption from various state obligations, were reduced to lay estate, and thus forced to discharge their state duties. But with the end of iconoclasm and the accession to the throne of the Macedonian dynasty circumstances changed. The number of monasteries increased again, and the amount of land which passed into monastery possession augmented still more rapidly. Feudalizing processes in the church and monastery domain which had been temporarily stopped by the iconoclastic emperors began to develop again in a direction undesirable and at times dangerous to the central power. The French scholar Charles Diehl wrote on this epoch: Usurpations continued; the might of the large land aristocracy always grew; feudalism always developed. In the ninth century the crisis took a character of particular acuteness.

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