The Economic History of Byzantium - Dumbarton Oaks

The Role of the Byzantine State in the Economy 977
The fifth text is the summary treatise on public finance contained in Greek codex
173 (12th century) in the library of San Marco. 7 This is the most systematic text we possess.
It begins with texts concerning weights and measures and continues with definitions
of land and the “regime” under which it may be held, of tax relief and its abolition,
of the techniques of composing fiscal documents, and on the calculation of the
land tax—more specifically, of the methods of epibole and hikanosis, discussed below. The
text seems to have been compiled by a civil servant who had access to the fiscal archives.
The treatise in the San Marco codex has been dated to the tenth century (G. Ostrogorsky)
and to between 912 and 1139 (F. Dölger). Since this text, too, appears to be aware
of the changes in the manner of collection of the synetheia and the elatikon, Ibelieve
that it ought to be dated after 1095 and before the date at which the San Marco manuscript
was copied, that is, the first half of the twelfth century.
The sixth text is the treatise on public finance in codex 121 of the monastery of St.
Nikanor at Zaborda (a miscellaneous codex of the 13th century). 8 The text has survived
in truncated form and seems to have been written as an aid to the teaching of taxation
practice, which explains why it is in question-and-answer form. It consists primarily of
definitions concerning the exploitation of land and its taxation. It seems to me that
the leavesonwhich this text is written clearly date from after the eleventh century (the
period proposed by its editor). I would place them in the twelfth century, or perhaps
even inthe early thirteenth century. As for the text itself, we can see that it is familiar
with the changes in the collection of secondary taxes that came about after 1095; that
it seems to be describing a situation subsequent to the reforms of Alexios Komnenos
(1109/10); and that it refers to the pronoiatika, indicating familiarity with the institution
of pronoia, which was introduced in the twelfth century. Given also the date of the
manuscript, we can conclude that the text must date from the twelfth century.
Finally, the seventh text, known as Apokope psomion, has survived in codex Vaticanus
palatinus 367 (14th century, together with texts about Cyprus). It was published by F.
Uspenskii and S. Lambros, 9 and there are commentaries by F. Dölger 10 and N. Svoronos.
11 According to Svoronos, this brief text—which is of no metrological interest but
states only the extent to which land should be taxed according to its quality (tà dhmósia
th'" gh'" uJpárcwsin ou”tw")—should be dated to 1232.
How reliable are these texts? In my opinion, they are highly, if not completely, trustworthy.
In the few surviving texts that deal with land that did not receive special treat-
7 Forarecent edition, see F. Dölger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Finanzverwaltung besonders
des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1927), 113–23.
8 Published in J. Karagiannopoulos, “Fragmente aus dem Vademecum eines byzantinischen Finanzbeamten,”
in Polychronion: Festschrift Franz Dölger zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. P. Wirth (Heidelberg, 1966),
318–34.
9 F. I. Uspenskii, “Vizantiiskie Zemlemery,” in Trudy VI arkheologicheskogo s”ezda v Odesse, 1884
(Odessa, 1888), 306; Sp. Lambros, in Néo" JEll. 15 (1921): 345–47.
10 Dölger, Finanzverwaltung, 56.
11 Svoronos, Cadastre, 125. Cf. A. E. Laiou, “The Agrarian Economy, Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries,”
EHB 329–32.