After 1204 the successor states attempted to salvage the remains of the structures of the twelfth century with which they were familiar. Most successful in this respect appears to have been the Empire of Trebizond which maintained an effective separate existence until 1461. But the emperors at Nicaea likewise reconstructed an effective imperial administration based on the Komnenian arrangements, although in a somewhat simplified and reduced form, consistent with its reduced territorial extent and administrative complexity. The most significant change was the increasingly personal, household nature of imperial administration, a result of several factors. First, the sack of 1204 appears to have destroyed the bulk of the central records in the palace archives and government departments, so that while provincial copies in all probability survived, the emperors were heavily dependent upon the know-how and knowledge of the system of their closest advisers. Second, the emphasis under the Komnenos dynasty had already been tending towards government through senior officials connected directly, through marriage or other relationships, with the imperial family. This was then given new emphasis by the central role of the small group of senior officials and the mesazon under the new circumstances, which meant that expertise was available, but in a greatly concentrated form, through which new methods of administration and central records had to be created. Government thus became even more than before a matter within the imperial household, more akin to the governments
Of some of the western powers such as Angevin England than the formerly impersonal and bureaucratic eastern Roman tradition.
When the Nicaean emperor Theodore I Laskaris thus came to organise his regime, he was heavily dependent upon this small group of senior household officials, developing the remaining elements of an imperial administrative apparatus piece by piece thereafter. The key figure was the mesazon who acted as co-ordinator of government operations and had a much more formal position in the system than under the Komnenoi. Financial affairs were centred on the imperial wardrobe, the vestiarion, and the rest of the imperial administration was managed through the different departments of the household and chancery. One result of this slimming down was that the older bureaucracy, with the different departments or sekreta, did not reappear, and government was in effect reduced to the imperial household and its secretarial staff.
After the restoration of the empire with the recovery of Constantinople in 1261 this became the pattern of imperial administration until 1453. But it was constantly evolving. There was no formally-constituted superior court under the Laskarids, for example, justice being administered on an ad hoc basis through the imperial court. Michael VIII Palaiologos established a special judicial tribunal known simply as the imperial sekreton to fulfil this function. By the same token the imperial chancery officials such as the epi tou kanikleiou or the mystikos appear to have served in a purely personal capacity until well into the reign of Theodore I, when a more formal organisation of an imperial chancery appears to develop, largely modelled on the Komnenian structure but with duties and functions more suited to the new conditions. But it is not known to what extent Michael reintroduced the arrangements which had been current before 1204 and to what extent they survived under the Laskarids of Nicaea. The imperial household dominated government and military administration. There were a number of senior officials endowed with particular responsibilities at court but to whom the emperor regularly entrusted provincial military commands, command of the field army, or some other special duty, including that of provincial governor. All the leading household officials - the protovestiarios (associated in fact with court ceremonial rather than with the wardrobe, which was a treasury), the parakoimomenos (chamberlain), the palace butler (pinkernes), the protostrator (chief military official) or protasekretis might be thus seconded away from the court for particular tasks.
There was always a considerable overlap in actual duties as the emperor entrusted particular individuals with tasks for which he felt them especially suited. The military organisation of the Nicaean empire was based on that of the preceding arrangements, but with substantial changes which were in turn carried over into that of the post-E261 period. The imperial retinue, consisting of the Varangian and Vardariot regiments, was commanded by a Grand Archon. The Grand Domestic (megas domestikos, commander-in-chief of all the armed forces of the empire below the emperor) and his deputy, the protostrator, was generally given overall command of campaigns, although other officers suited to a particular expedition might be appointed. Below the senior officers came the commanders of particular divisions or units such as the allagatores (commanders of allagia, regiments) or tzaousioi.
World History
