The expansion of the empire, which reached its peak in the first half of the eleventh century, and the resultant economic development caused a steep rise in the number of civil servants. The increased number of themes resulting from the division of earlier, larger districts and the vast territories conquered by military emperors entailed the multiphcation of administrators, even if all the themes, especially the smaller Armenian’ ones, did not have complete administrative structures. The emperors thus had more posts available for distribution, as well as more tax revenues with which to pay salaries and satisfy the ambitions of those appointed to them.
The reign of Basil II marked a real turning point in the transformation of the Byzantine administrative system and ruling classes, for it confirmed earher developments and served as an obUgatory point of reference for his successors. He sanctioned in a definitive manner the changeover to the professional army of the tagmatUy thus ensuring the eventual disappearance of the thematic armies and the formation of a new hierarchy within the themes. Already, in the decades before
His reign, military officials complained that judges and revenue officials interfered in the themes, even oppressing the soldiers who spilled their blood for the safety of all. This preponderance of civil officials became accentuated, and by the eleventh century the strategos had given way to the judge (krites) as the head of the thematic administration.
BasU II, though he nearly lost his throne as a result of the great revolts of the aristocracy of Asia Minor, did not pursue a hostile policy towards this group. True, he took measures against the Phokai and Maleinoi who had led a war against him personally, but he favoured the emergence of other families, some of them already illustrious such as the Argyroi, others still hardly known, such as the Dalassenoi, the Kontostephanoi and, above all, the Komnenoi. It was in Basil’s reign that the factions which struggled over the throne in the eleventh century began to take form, in particular the one which progressively built up around the Komnenoi. The conquest of Bulgaria restored the balance in the empire in favour of its European part and provoked the formation of a powerful group of military families around Andrianople, one of the main bases of operations against the Bulgars. With the exception of this group, the military aristocracy progressively lost contact with its place of origin, for it was obliged to take up residence in the capital in order to insure imperial favour and maintain social status. There the military families met those of the old civil aristocracy and frequently concluded alliances of marriage with them (Cheynet 1990).
Here we observe the first reshuffling of cards within the ruling class. Basil had sought to modify the composition of the aristocracy in Cappadocia with an admixture of Bulgarian and Georgian nobles, but time was too short for this effort to bear fruit before the Turkic invasion (Howard-Johnston 1995). After Basil’s death, his successors, unsure of their thrones, attempted to win over the then flourishing economic ehte of the capital by involving them in affairs of state. They distributed offices which gave the holders access to the Senate at a time when this body was invoked to assure successions to the throne. Provincials, the best example being Michael Attaleiates, benefited from social mobility based on talent at a time of the development of the schools of Constantinople. The emperor Constantine Monomachos even foimded a School of Law intended for the formation of civil servants belonging to what we would today call the ‘middle classes’. As a result of this enlarged recruitment new family names made their appearance as recorded in the earliest preserved archival documents and on seals. Nevertheless, those who had long occupied posts in the central government no doubt managed to profit the most from the new possibilities. This explains the privileged position of the Chrysobergai, Kataphloroi, Radenoi, Rhomaioi, and others. Finally, several families of the military aristocracy, once established in the capital, turned to the lucrative positions of judge and, above all, administrator (episkeptites) of public property, now quite abimdant since, under Basil, the state decided to take over the exploitation of numerous hereditary estates in conquered lands as well as those confiscated
During the civil wars. This reconversion was by no means, at this point, a sign of decline (Kazhdan and Ronchey 1997; Cheynet 2000).
World History
