Was there a “pre-feudal” crisis? On Ljubomir Maksimović’s inaugural lecture before the Academy of Athens

Abstract

In the period of long wars on several fronts (7th-9th centuries) a free village commune emerges as a basic source for state taxes and necessary military units; the social differentiation within the village commune should be marked as a background for all political struggles and upheavals, which have guided byzantine society after its “aristocratization” in the 9th century (as Každan argued). The strategoi of themata, who represented village communes in 717 and who „nationalized” church estates under the Isaurians, are being reconciled with the church again after 787 and form, together with it, the core of the new ruling class.

Keywords

• peasants
• agrarian community
• aristocracy
• κοινώσεις
• themes