The Social Status of Late Byzantine Soldiers

Scholarship on the late Byzantine army has long centred on the pronoia system, treating the pronoiarioi as the primary embodiment of military landholding and service. The emphasis on the pronoiarioi has obscured the presence, and likely numerical and functional predominance, of two other groups: mercenaries and smallholding soldiers. Mercenaries were numerous and often formed the backbone of Byzantine expeditionary forces, while pronoiarioi typically served within their regions. Far from being peripheral auxiliaries, mercenaries constituted a flexible and professional stratum upon which late Byzantine rulers increasingly relied. Smallholding soldiers, by contrast, were tax-exempt farmers whose modest estates supported local defense and naval service. Their persistence illustrates the adaptation of the older farmer-soldier model to late Byzantine realities. Recognising the scale and importance of these two categories invites a reappraisal of the social and military fabric of the late Byzantine state, shifting the focus from the privileged pronoiarioi to the more numerous men whose service sustained the empire's survival.