While these records provide some evidence of family size over several generations, estimating the rural population and its growth is extremely difficult. Indirect indices, such as church building and the expansion in bishoprics, suggest that from the mid-ninth century onwards demographic expansion and an increase in surplus funds resulted in investment in fine stone buildings. The impressive church at Skripou, for instance, records the contribution made by a local general for the building, erected in 873/4. Almost at the same time, a church dedicated to St John in Athens bears the name of its founder, Constantine, his wife Anastaso and son John, otherwise unknown. Similarly, in Cappadocia, residences and churches were dug out of the volcanic tufa (plate 12). Not much is known of the people who lived in these cave dwellings and excavated the churches, yet the wall paintings reflect a wealthy and discriminating local society, who commemorated John I Tzimiskes (969–76) in fresco. After many centuries of Arab raiding and warfare, central Asia Minor was experiencing economic growth and an increase in wealth.
Within Byzantine rural communities of the ninth and tenth centuries, sales of land were regulated to maintain the fiscal unity of the village. Inequalities within the village meant that wealthier members gradually became dominant and acquired property outside the community. Outsiders were not permitted to buy village land but the existence of private landed estates, granted to individuals by imperial largesse, formed a novel force in the rural environment. The establishment of these big landowners threatened to destroy the social structure of the countryside through the buying up property in village communities. By acquiring plots of village land, the powerful (dynatoi) increased their own resources and made inroads into the peasant community. The impoverished peasants who had previously owned the plots generally passed into the control of the new landlord and thus became tied to the land in the manner of medieval serfs.
From the reign of Romanos I Lekapenos onwards (920–44), emperors tried to restrict the powers of these individuals by protecting the rights of villagers and forbidding the foundation of new monasteries while older ones fell into ruin. This double effort to sustain traditional arrangements probably had an economic origin: it was designed to preserve the tax base of the empire. It aimed to protect free villagers, who paid their taxes, rather than permit their land to pass into the hands of powerful landowners, who could often resist tax officials or claim exemption from tax. Tenth-century emperors issued a series of laws designed to support the collective village identity and hold their powerful neighbours in check. But the fact that Basil II felt obliged to repeat the law in 996, in order to close a loophole by which the poor had been legally deprived of their land after forty years, suggests that the powerful could not be restrained. Nonetheless, the growth of larger landed estates also encouraged the cultivation of previously fallow land, and investment in improved technology, such as water-mills, and in crops such as olives that take years to mature. Confidence in long-term agriculture is usually a sign of economic expansion. It also coincided with the aims of the Byzantine elite to expand their ownership of land, farms and manpower.
But the laws failed to prevent individuals devoting their wealth to building new churches and their own monasteries, even when others were falling into ruin. When Basil I became emperor in 867 he found a large number of ecclesiastical foundations in the capital in serious need of repair. Yet shortly afterwards a retired admiral, Constantine Lips, founded his own monastery in Constantinople, and the church which survives displays elegant tile and sculpted decoration. Some officials built themselves such tall, grand villas in Constantinople that the city eparch published regulations to prevent them from taking all the light from smaller buildings.
Rather than invest in economic activity, the Byzantine elite preferred to buy land and invested in administrative positions, from which they made extra money on the side. They also purchased honorific court titles, which carried a state pension. Nicolas Oikonomides calculated that the return on this type of investment, around 2.5–3% per annum, was much lower than the 6% official rate of interest, although it could rise to 8.3% on the highest titles such as protospatharios (literally, first sword-bearer). But since these titles were not inheritable and the original sum invested in the purchase was never repaid, honour and status appear to have been the motivation. Use of a grand title and the appropriate costume to be worn at court appearances was more significant than any economic benefit. A bearded protospatharios, for example, wore a gold collar with precious stones and a red cloak edged in gold; a non-bearded (eunuch) protospatharios wore white garments and a white cloak with gold decoration. Despite the traditional disdain for people who made money from trade, emperors would admit them to the elite circle of titleholders – at a price.
This mechanism also served to draw all high-ranking officials, civilian and military, as well as foreigners, into the court at the heart of the capital. The process integrated them more closely into the imperial system of government and had the additional benefit of strengthening the hierarchy of the court and the central bureaucracy. In 950, Liut-prand of Cremona, an Italian envoy to the court of Constantinople, witnessed the annual payment of court officials, and his description confirms the importance of state employment in Byzantium. The event began on Palm Sunday and lasted three days:
A table was brought in… which had parcels of money tied up in bags, according to each man’s due, the amount being written on the outside of the bag… the first to be summoned was the marshal of the palace, who carried off his money, not in his hands but on his shoulders, together with four cloaks of honour. After him came the commander in chief of the army and the lord high admiral of the fleet…
After they had laboriously removed their bags of gold, the distribution continued down the order of patricians and the minor dignitaries. When Constantine VII (945–59) enquired whether he enjoyed the ceremony, Liutprand cleverly compared himself to Dives in hell, tormented by the sight of Lazarus at rest (a reference to the parable of the rich and poor man), and the emperor sent him a pound of gold and a large cloak.
The Queen of Cities – the ruling city of Constantine – attracted numerous foreigners who came to buy and sell in its markets, which stimulated the empire’s medieval commercial revival. Its golden and silken products attracted more merchants, its schools attracted more students, its churches, relics and icons attracted more pilgrims, its imperial administration generated more jobs, and its mixed society created more opportunities than any other in the Mediterranean. In the Islamic world there were larger cities, like Baghdad, and bigger markets. But Constantinople had no Christian rivals. For the Syrian, Russian and Venetian merchants who often stayed for months in Constantinople, it remained the secure hub around which economic growth revolved. Each group was quartered in a particular district, where they worshipped in their own monuments: Arab traders in their mosques, Jewish traders in their own synagogues and western merchants in their own churches. They were all subject to the supervision of the city eparch, who also maintained law and order.
In 992, Basil II granted the Venetians a reduction in the basic tax on ships entering the Dardanelles, from 30 to 17 gold solidi each, thus giving them more favourable terms than local traders or other foreigners. The reason for this advantage was that Venice would also assist the empire militarily against its enemies by transporting Byzantine troops across the Adriatic to campaign in southern Italy. While this privileged access to the capital has often been interpreted as a blow to local merchants, who were still obliged to pay the full tax, it may have been considered a method of ensuring that western merchants continued to use Constantinople as their major market. What emperors granted could also be rescinded, and in the twelfth-century Venetian privileges were withdrawn on political grounds. Although Byzantine merchants were less able to compete in the international transport of goods, they appear to have fallen back on a less profitable carrying trade from port to port around the Aegean. And some became wealthy enough to purchase offices and titles, which str
engthened the centralized focus on the court and the established sense of order and hierarchy.
Venice developed a different attitude towards commerce as a source of power and prosperity. For the small city-state, trade was a necessity imposed by the circumstances of its foundation as a refugee colony. Its citizens were obliged to trade by sea in order to survive, and made the construction of boats for fishing and commercial exchange a central feature of their lives. The Senate of Venice protected its mercantile navy with armed vessels so that trade in slaves, salt and wood to all parts of the Muslim world as well as Byzantium could flourish. In contrast, imperial insistence on service and investment in land as the sure way to make a fortune distracted the Byzantines from commercial activity. Merchants were hampered by restrictions and controls, which limited their initiatives. The empire neglected local fishing fleets and forced them to provide captains, sailors and equipment for military expeditions. In the late twelfth century, even the monks of Mount Athos were restricted in the capacity of boats used to transport grain from their estates to Constantinople.
Imperial attitudes to trade prevented the development of more flexible economic institutions and failed to respond to initiatives developed by Italian and Muslim merchants. Yet for centuries, Byzantium managed to retain its economic position in the medieval world through the issue of reliable gold currency and the presence at its heart of dynamic markets. Even after the devaluation of the eleventh century, a stable gold coinage was re-established and Byzantium maintained its traditional luxury industries, generating great wealth which deeply impressed western crusading knights. Few foreign coins minted before 1204 have been excavated in Constantinople, reflecting the high prestige and sufficiency of the Byzantine gold solidus – the symbol of an imperial, rather than a commercial, economy.
15
Eunuchs
His face was that of a rose, the skin of his body white as snow, he was well-shaped, fair-haired, possessing an unusual softness and smelling of musk from afar.
Life of St Andrew the Fool, probably tenth century
The use of eunuchs to guard and serve grand rulers goes back to ancient Egypt and China. In common with the great medieval empire of Japan and the Muslim Caliphate, Byzantium also employed eunuchs, whose high-pitched, unbroken voices, childishly soft skin, hairless bodies and elongated limbs added to the exotic elements of court life. These castrated men – a third sex, neither male nor female – who could not produce their own families, were trusted to attend to the Byzantine emperor and empress, to protect the women of the ruling dynasty and to run court ceremonial. In Muslim countries, they frequently guarded the sacred shrines of Islam. And in imperial China, right up to the twentieth century, poor men continued to offer themselves for castration in order to obtain a court position. The phenomenon of court eunuchs has a global history and Byzantine practice was not unusual among hierarchical, imperial governments.
Byzantine eunuchs were, however, exceptionally well integrated into society at large. In addition to exercising control over the activities of the imperial court, they attained prominent positions in the Church, the administration, the army and in the houses of great families throughout the empire. Western crusaders arriving in Byzantium were amazed, and sometimes horrified, at the ubiquity of eunuchs. During King Louis VII’s visit to Constantinople in 1147, Manuel I sent a choir to celebrate the feast of St Denis with the Franks:
These clergy made a favourable impression because of their sweet chanting; for the mingling of the voices, the heavier with the light, the eunuch’s, namely, with the manly voice… softened the hearts of the Franks. Also, they gave the onlookers pleasure by their graceful bearing and gentle clapping of hands and genuflexions.
Since the writer, Odo of Deuil, is generally hostile to Byzantium, his appreciation of the sound of eunuch castrati performing with male singers is surprising.
Eunuchs had specific roles in ancient Persia and Rome, which were reinforced when Diocletian adopted Persian attributes, such as a crown, globe, throne and golden robes, to symbolize imperial domination. In Byzantium, the restriction of intimate duties connected with the imperial family to castrated men was based on an assumption of their loyalty to the ruling dynasty, although this was not always borne out by the ambitious schemes of leading eunuch courtiers. Those who had been castrated before puberty were known as ‘beardless men’ those castrated as grown men of course retained the physical signs of masculinity. Byzantine eunuchs often accumulated considerable wealth, became generous patrons of the arts and enhanced the imperial court. All too often they also shared the whims and cruelties of uncastrated men and women.
Despite the assumption of their softness, eunuchs were appointed to lead armies. The general Narses (an Armenian), who completed the conquest of Italy in the reign of Justinian, finds a parallel in the Chinese admiral Zheng, who is said to have discovered America ninety years before Christopher Columbus, or the medieval Japanese naval commander who certainly sailed as far as the East Indies. References to eunuch military commanders occur throughout Byzantine history, though with less frequency in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Some clearly were slaves who had been castrated before they entered Byzantine service, for instance Peter Phokas, who took his master’s surname and excelled in personal combat with the Russians. He headed the imperial guard under Nikephoros II (963–9) and was appointed commander on the eastern front in the 960s. In the late tenth century, Basil II appointed a patrician eunuch named Nikolaos to lead the successful attack on Aleppo in 995.
Following the definitions of eunuchs given by St Matthew (19:12):
there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,
some Christians tried to curb their sexual urges by self-castration. But the First Oecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 issued a firm canon against self-castration: Christians who wished to adopt a religious career were ordered to resist the temptations of the flesh and control their lust by ascetic discipline. The Byzantine Church, however, accepted castrated men into the ranks of the clergy and as monks. Eunuchs became patriarchs of Constantinople and saints, indicating that castrated males were not denied the highest post in the ecclesiastical hierarchy or the possibility of attaining great holiness. Eunuch priests and monks often found an important role in female religious communities, where they performed the consecration of the Eucharist on Sundays. Indeed, some foundation charters stipulated that all clergy who had any role within nunneries must be eunuchs. Conversely, some male monasteries denied eunuchs access because they posed a sexual temptation to monks (see below).
Castration had always been considered a humiliating procedure, repugnant to free Roman citizens. So eunuchs were created among non-Roman peoples, usually those captured and enslaved in warfare. This was reinforced in the sixth century when the Code of Justinian made the operation illegal within the empire. Foreign prisoners of war were often castrated at the borders and then brought to Byzantium to supply the demand for ‘safe’ servants. Procopius notes that the region of Abasgia (Abkhasia, in the Caucasus) was a source of eunuchs, such as the courtier Euphratas who served as a diplomat; later, ‘Scythian’, Arab and Balkan prisoners were castrated and sold in the slave market to wealthy Byzantines. Eunuch servants were found in most large households, where they served the mistress, educated the children and acted as intermediaries. Saints Irene of Chrysobalanton and Euphrosyne the Younger also used their eunuch servants to communicate with their relatives and the imperial court.
The expansion of Islam, however, greatly increased the demand for slaves and eunuchs to work in the caliphate and new sources had to be found to meet it. Stray references to slave markets in Rome and Venice indicate a thriving trade in the West, while a growing number of eunuchs from Paphlagonia on the Black Sea coast of central Asia Minor reflect a novel development within Byzantium that flouted t
he law. Niketas the Paphlagonian, who served at the court of Empress Irene in the eighth century, was one of the first in a long line of young men from the area who were castrated by their own families. Unlike previous non-Roman eunuchs, these locally produced eunuchs were free and Greek-speaking; their families sought employment for them in the Great Palace or in the Byzantine Church.
In the tenth century, Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona, explained how the western trade worked. The operation to create ‘eunuchs who have had both their testicles and their penis removed… is performed by traders at Verdun, who take the boys into Spain and make a huge profit’. Despite physical difficulties, those that survived often lived to an old age and were recognized by their longer than usual limbs. The market at Verdun in northern France had developed to provide slave labour in Islamic countries, such as the Umayyad Caliphate of Spain, where eunuchs were greatly appreciated. Despite repeated papal decrees against the trade, Christian merchants refused to give up the lucrative business of enslaving, castrating and selling young men, who were often Christian. Women were also in demand in the harems of Islamic courts. The exciting adventures of individuals captured by pirates and sold into captivity is a familiar theme of medieval epic and romance, both eastern and western.
In 949 when Berengar, king of North Italy, sent Liutprand on his first diplomatic mission to Constantinople, he failed to provide suitable gifts. So Liutprand, whose father and stepfather had previously served as ambassadors to Byzantium, remembered their advice and purchased some eunuchs. When the new ambassador was admitted to the imperial presence,
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire Page 20