The Economic History of Byzantium - Dumbarton Oaks

984 NICOLAS OIKONOMIDES
of a cessation of trade, merely of a reduction in its frequency and importance. 26 In any
case, as we shall see, the state and its representatives continued without respite to demand
their share of the trade economy, however much it may have diminished.
The state controlled commercial transactions through the kommerkiarioi, agents
whose field of activity was trade. 27 In the sixth century, kommerkiarioi was the name
given to the imperial employees who, at the Syrian border, bought on behalf of the
Byzantine state the silk imported from the East. 28 Around 630, the term kommerkiarios
was translated into the scholarly language as oJ th'" shrikh'" a“rcwn ejsqh'to" (“lord of the
silk cloth”). 29 The number of kommerkiarioi subsequently increased significantly, and
they acquired a special type of lead seal showing the emperor, an indication that the
seals were placed on commodities of particular value, such as silk. On the reverse of
some of these seals is the imprint of the burlap from the sack containing the merchandise.
Very few other officials used seals depicting the emperor at this time, only those
who were responsible for the movement of particularly valuable goods (gold coins,
purple dye, etc.). Constantinople, in particular, was the headquarters of the lords of
the blattion (purple), of whom we have testimony until 785/86 and who were often
also general kommerkiarioi and overseers of workshops. In this capacity, of course, they
supervised the imperial workshops where purple cloth and leather were made. These
state workshops seem to have been reorganized after a disastrous fire in 792.
The fact that kommerkiarioi were to be found throughout the empire may be connected
with the efforts made to encourage the production of silk and is certainly bound
up with sales and purchases of silk. On the other hand, it is clear that the kommerkiarioi
dealt in goods other than silk; it is impossible to imagine that while sericulture was developing
in Byzantium, at a time when the economy was only partly monetized, there
could be entrepreneurs who dealt exclusively in silk. 30 And of course they would use a
different seal of the common type for all their transactions and correspondence when
valuable items were not involved.
26 Forexchange, see A. E. Laiou, “Exchange and Trade, Seventh–Twelfth Centuries,” EHB 697–708.
27 H. Antoniadis-Bibicou, Recherches sur les douanes à Byzance: L’“octava,” le “kommerkion” et les commerciaires
(Paris, 1963), has been supplemented by the publication of many more seals of kommerkiarioi
by G. Zacos and A. Veglery, Byzantine Lead Seals (Basel, 1972). A debate ensued, in connection with
which Icite the main publications and which I have taken into consideration in the discussion that
follows. N. Oikonomides, “Silk Trade and Production in Byzantium from the Sixth to the Ninth
Century: The Seals of Kommerkiarioi,” DOP 40 (1986): 33–53; A. Dunn, “The Kommerkiarios, the
Apotheke, the Dromos, the Vardarios and the West,” BMGS 17 (1993): 3–24; see also Laiou, “Exchange
and Trade,” 706, and note 31 below.
28 As can clearly be seen in the novels concerning silk of the 6th century: Imp. Iustiniani PP. a.,
Novellae . . . , ed. C. E. Zachariae von Lingenthal (Leipzig, 1881), 2:293.
29 B. Flusin, Saint Anastase le Perse et l’histoire de la Palestine au début du VIIe siècle (Paris, 1992), 1:72
n. 108.
30 I find it hard to believe that the kommerkiarioi supplied weapons to Byzantine soldiers, as proposed
by M. F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300–1453 (Cambridge, 1985), 624,
626–34, 654–62, followed by J. F. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a
Culture (Cambridge, 1990). There is no support in the sources for such a hypothesis. See Mercati e
mercanti nell’alto medioevo: L’area euroasiatica e l’area mediterranea (Spoleto, 1993), 640 n. 13.