Byzantium in the Eleventh Century

The various studies of Byzantium’s social history in the eleventh century presented in this volume, each with its specific topic (regional, thematic, archaeological), are placed in a wider context. A head-on challenge is made to the long-standing view, promulgated by George Ostrogorsky, that Byzantium’s rapid descent from its apogee in the middle of the eleventh century had two prime causes, a deliberate run-down of the military by the ascendant civil party in the administration, and the absorption of the peasantry into large, aristocratic estates with a consequent weakening of a fiscal and military system founded in the peasant village. Different aspects of eleventh-century history are covered: (1) the accelerating cultural revival, sponsored by emperors, and an attendant growth in numbers and importance of the intelligentsia; (2) evidence, primarily numismatic and archaeological, for demographic and economic growth, and its beneficent effect on town life; (3) a re-examination of the documentary and other evidence for the decline of the independent peasantry, which concludes that predatory landowners encountered serious resistance from tight-knit village communities and the justice system and that the process of social change in the countryside had not advanced as far as Kostis Smyrlis suggests; (4) finally, it is accepted that attitudes changed, that the interior provinces were demilitarized, but not that there was a deliberate attempt to reduce spending on the army, now confined to the imperial periphery—the defeats and losses suffered are attributed primarily to the strengths of Byzantium’s chief adversaries, Turks and Turkmen in the east, Normans in southern Italy.