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Ιnternal affairs under the Comneni and Angeli
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Page 13
To the time of Manuel belongs a very interesting chrysobull which prohibited the transference to any but officials of senatorial or military rank of the immovable property granted by the Emperor; if, none the less, a transference had taken place contrary to this regulation, the immovable property was to go to the treasury. This prohibition of Manuel, depriving the lower classes of the chance of possessing imperial land grants, made the aristocracy master of immense territories. This chrysobull was abrogated in December, 1182, by Alexius II Comnenus. The abrogation was signed by the latter; but, without doubt, it was drawn up under the pressure of the all-powerful regent, Andronicus. From 1182 on the imperial grants in immovable properties might be transmitted to anyone regardless of his social rank.
The chrysobull of 1182 must be interpreted in connection with the new policy of Andronicus towards the Byzantine aristocracy and large landowners, against whom he had to open a stubborn struggle. Alexius II Comnenus, who signed the law, was the mere mouthpiece of Andronicus will. Therefore doubt is cast upon the opinion of some scholars who think that as Manuel's prohibition had clearly been aimed at the Franks and should have hindered the land purchases of those foreign traders, so the abrogation of the prohibition was an act friendly to the Franks and entirely corresponded with the policy of Alexius II Comnenus. True, the government of Alexius II, who was a child, and of his mother, had sought for the support of the hated Latin elements, but after Andronicus had entered Constantinople and been proclaimed regent, circumstances changed; the government fell into his hands, and towards the end of 1182 his policy was already openly hostile to the Latins.
Defense and commerce. Because of almost permanent hostilities in the epoch of the Comneni, the army cost the state enormous sums of money, and the Comneni took care of the restoration and strengthening of their army. The army consisted of a great number of mercenaries of the most various nationalities besides the local elements supplied by the themes. Under the Comneni there was a new national element in the army the Anglo-Saxon.
The cause of the appearance of the Anglo-Saxons in Byzantium was the conquest of England by the Normans under William the Conqueror in 1066, when the catastrophe which had burst upon England after the battle of Senlac, a few miles north of Hastings, delivered the country into the hands of the severe conqueror. Attempts at insurrection on the part of the Anglo-Saxons against the new ruler were severely quelled by executions and extinguished in streams of blood. Many Anglo-Saxons, in despair, abandoned their fatherland. In the eighties of the eleventh century, at the beginning of the rule of Alexius Comnenus, as the English historian Freeman emphasized in his very well-known work on the conquest of England by the Normans, some convincing indications of the Anglo-Saxon emigration into the Greek Empire were already evident. A western chronicler of the first half of the twelfth century wrote: After having lost their liberty the Anglians were deeply afflicted. Some of them shining with the blossom of beautiful youth went to distant countries and boldly offered themselves for the military service of the Constantinopolitan Emperor Alexius. This was the beginning of the Varangian-English bodyguard which, in the history of Byzantium of the twelfth century, played an important part, such as the Varangian-Russian Druzhina (Company) had played in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Apparently, there never was such a great number of mercenary foreign troops in Byzantium as during the latinophile rule of Manuel.
A History of the Byzantine Empire - Table of Contents
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/internal-affairs-angeli.asp?pg=13
