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pattern of land ownership; status of peasants 337
The largest accumulations of land must have been in the hands of rulers,
both in east and west; but better documented are the growing estates of the
church, for which we have a fair smattering of information from most parts
of the Roman and former Roman world. Except in Egypt, where the documentation
is uniquely rich, it is the prinicipal churches and monasteries
that happen to dominate the sources, rather than smaller landholding institutions.
41 The Great Church at Constantinople, unsurprisingly, held land
throughout the east, and had separate departments in its estate-office for
its different regional holdings. The church of Rome, lavishly and widely
endowed already by Constantine after his capture of the city in 312, must
have lost some of its outlying holdings during the troubles of the fifth
century; but at the end of the sixth century it held land, administered by
locally based rectors, not only in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, but also
in Africa, Gaul and distant Dalmatia. 42 Some idea of the scale of this landholding
can be deduced from the annual figure of 25,200 solidi, which the
emperor Leo III directed into his own treasury from the papal estates in
Calabria and Sicily when in dispute with the papacy in the 730s. 43 For comparison,
the huge and sumptuous church of S. Vitale at Ravenna cost
26,000 solidi to complete in the sixth century.
A bishop of one of the greatest sees might have very large sums of
money under his control, much, though not all of it, derived from rural
estates: the Life of John the Almsgiver, bishop of Alexandria at the beginning
of the seventh century, tells us that at his accession John found a vast
quantity of gold in the bishop’s house, which he proceeded to spend on
pious causes. 44 Lesser sees commanded lesser, but still substantial,
incomes and estates: Sidonius Apollinaris tells how bishop Patiens of
Lyons, during a famine in the second half of the fifth century, filled the
roads and rivers with his transports bringing grain into the city; and
Gregory of Tours records that one of his predecessors, in the mid sixth
century, gave to the poor 20,000 solidi left by the previous bishop. 45 The
desire and need to provide landed endowments for bishoprics could, on
occasion, lead to dubious practices. Bishop Paul of Mérida, in the later
sixth century, promised a massive legacy to his own church, but only if his
nephew succeeded him as bishop. 46
41 Egypt: Wipszycka (1972).
42 Jones, LRE 781–2; Kaplan (1992) 143–4 (for the church of Constantinople).
43 Theophanes, Chron. a.m. 6224 (trans. C. Mango 1996). The passage is not crystal clear: although
this is not stated, it seems reasonable to suppose that the sum mentioned was an annual payment; but
it is less clear whether it was of rent or tax. For our purposes, either shows that the estates were massive.
44 Life of John the Almsgiver 45 (trans. Dawes and Baynes (1948) 256). The exact figure mentioned is
implausibly high: 8,000 pounds of gold, well over half a million solidi (enough to build more than twenty
S. Vitales).
45 Lyons: Sid. Ap. Ep. 6.12. Tours: Greg. Tur. Hist. ix.41 (the money was either saved from church
income, or derived from the personal estate of the previous bishop).
46 Vita Sanctorum Patrum Emeretensium iv.ii.14–18; iv.iv.4; iv.v.2–3.
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