Early Pronoia System
By the 11th century, Byzantine aristocrats had ceased to hold any significant power. Honorific titles and power were granted by the emperor and competition was fierce; the most desired grants were those that involved governance and tax collecting in various pieces of the Empire. By the reign of Constantine IX in the middle part of the century they had also begun to assert sovereignty over various parts of the empire, collecting taxes for themselves and often plotting rebellions against the emperor.
In the late 11th century Alexius I attempted to reform the aristocracy, taking the pacifying measure of distributing Byzantine territory amongst its members. Doing so had the added benefit of removing them from Constantinople, making it harder for them to directly challenge the emperor's authority. Most pronoiai granted by Alexius, however, were to members of his own (Comnenus) family. Alexius simply legitimized the holding of land by aristocrats, and brought it under centralized state control.
Read more about this topic: Pronoia
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or system:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)