This Round Table invites us to rethink the role of the Byzantine State in shaping ideology, society and economy, from the 9th to the 15th century. Grand questions regarding the development of the Byzantine economy, the social structures and the rhetoric of power were the object of intense research and debate by leading Byzantinists in the second half of the 20th century. They have vastly improved our understanding of these matters but have left many fundamental questions unanswered. Much of this scholarship tended to relegate the Byzantine State to a secondary, often defensive role, while stressing aristocratic agency and the impact of political developments as cardinal factors in the Empire’s evolution. We propose to move beyond this research paradigm. Our scholarship in different aspects of the Byzantine State reveals that it was the principal actor in defining the ideology and in determining the social and economic realities. We propose to examine some of the main ways in which the State impacted the development of Byzantine society via rhetoric, law and its fiscal and administrative mechanism.
This paper explores how the dynamics between private and public power—a defining feature of sociopolitical life—shaped the development of the Byzantine state between the 6th and 10th centuries, a period characterized by profound geopolitical transformations and the reconfiguration of the Empire. Rather than treating the private and public spheres as fixed or opposing categories, this…
The government of the Romans was involved in religious ritual on behalf of the Roman polity since Romulus took auspices, offered sacrifices, and expiated his followers’ guilt on the day he founded the city (D.H. Ant. Rom.1.87). Both the ancient Romans and those they conquered attributed their success to the Romans’ particular skill at maintaining…
Legislation was one of the ways in which the Byzantine state shaped and regulated the social and economic lives of its citizens. This paper will examine the conceptualizations of citizenship expressed in imperial legislation. What distinctions among legal subjects are made based on religious affiliation, ethnic origin, social status, and gender? What is the delineation…
Incredibly, historians of Byzantium have not taken seriously the impact of the state in shaping society, especially during the period under consideration. Over the past eighty years, most studies of Byzantine society, economy, and ideology have either ignored the state or given it only a secondary, defensive role. This is partly because administrative and legal…