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Byzantine feudalism
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Page 7
The Roman patronage (patrocinium) or the western European commendatio-mundium was also well known in Byzantium. The codes of Theodosius and Justinian contain a considerable number of decrees, beginning with the fourth century, where patronage (in the codes called patrocinium) was very severely punished because poor men who placed themselves under the protection (patronage) of their wealthy and powerful neighbors wished thereby to escape various state obligations, especially burdensome taxation, and this the state could not admit. In the novels of Justinian and later emperors there is a Greek term corresponding to the Latin patrocinium; this is prostasia, i.e. acting in behalf of someone, patronage, protection, which in any form whatever was forbidden. But in spite of the prohibitive measures of the central government the large landowners (the powerful men) continued their very profitable practice of patronage or prostasia, forming a sort of intermediary between the state and the taxable population, and the imperial power was unable to overcome this evil. The novel issued by Romanus Lecapenus in 922 which forbade the powerful to acquire any property whatever from the poor, mentions among other means of the richs oppressing the poor, prostasia, i.e. patronage.
The institution of immunity (immunitas) was also known in Byzantium as exkuseia or exkusseia (ἐξκουσσεία), which with the derivative verb (ἐξκουσσεύειν, ἐξκουσσεύεσθαι) is merely the Greek form of the Latin word excusatio (verb, excusare), with an analogous meaning. Scholars particularly interested in exkuseia found the earliest imperial charter (chrysobull) granting an exkuseia was issued only in the middle of the eleventh century (1045); they accordingly failed to see in this institution, which according to the charter was so far away from Roman times, a survival of the former immunity and therefore they tried to explain its origin by other causes. One scholar, N. Suvorov, traced the origin of the Byzantine immunity-exkuseia back to a Western custom which passed to Byzantium in German shape. In his opinion, it is impossible to establish any historical link between these later Byzantine immunities and the immunities of the Roman Law. Even if we suppose that German immunity has Roman roots, it was already in Frankish form when it passed in Byzantium. Another scholar who made a special study of the problem of exkuseia, P. Yakovenko, disagreed with this opinion; he believed that this institution originated and developed in Byzantium independently and he refused to acknowledge any connection between exkuseia and the Roman immunity, because there is a strong difference between these two conceptions. The origin of exkuseia is to be sought in the political disorder which broke out in Byzantium because of the degeneration of the Roman state institutions. Along with this, the confusion of the principles of Public Law with those of Private Law also exerted its influence. From these causes the kernel of exkuseia originated; the state officials were forbidden to enter granted possessions, and the recipient of the grant of immunity was also granted the right of collecting state revenues.
A History of the Byzantine Empire - Table of Contents
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/feudalism.asp?pg=7
