Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Empire of Nicaea (1204-1261)

Byzantine feudalism 

Page 15

After the Fourth Crusade, the Assises of Jerusalem were introduced in Morea, which had been conquered by the crusaders, and in other Latin possessions established at that time on Byzantine territory as well as in the island of Cyprus; for the latter island the Assises were translated into Greek. The Assises of Antioch, which give a good idea of the laws of this Latin principality in the East, may serve as an excellent supplement to the Assises of Jerusalem. The original text of the Assises of Antioch has been lost; but their Armenian translation has survived, and in the nineteenth century this was translated into modern French. Thus these Franco-Eastern codes are of great importance for the history both of western European feudalism and of the Latin and Greco-Byzantine Orient, and even for certain sections of the Ottoman law.

The study of feudalism in Byzantium has just begun. In 1879 a Russian historian, V. Vasilievsky, in connection with his discussion on pronoia, dropped the remark that only in the epoch of the Comneni and Angeli may one notice in Byzantium a real embryo of a feudal order, although not the developed system. It is true that Vasilievsky never made any special study of Byzantine feudalism. He could not even imagine that any feudal processes might have existed in Byzantium before the close of the eleventh century, when the Comneni ascended the throne. Of course the well-organized feudal hierarchy which in the feudal society of the West created long lines of suzerains, vassals, and subvassals, was never formed in Byzantium. But, as Charles Diehl justly remarked, in the Byzantine Empire the existence of this powerful provincial aristocracy had the same consequences as in the states of the western Middle Ages; especially whenever the central power became weakened, it was a terrible source of troubles and dissolution. The so-called feudalizing processes in the social, political, and economic aspects may be observed in the Byzantine Empire through the whole course of its history

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