Pronoia Under The Palaeologan Dynasty
After the Crusaders captured Constantinople in 1204, the pronoia system continued in the Empire of Nicaea, where the emperors ruled in exile. John III Ducas Vatatzes also gave pronoiai to the church and noblewomen, which had not been done before. When Constantinople was recaptured by Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1261, he allowed pronoiai to be inherited, which made the empire more like the feudal states in Europe. He also audited the pronoiai to make their values more realistic according to contemporary conditions, as the empire had lost much of its land and revenue since the 11th century. Under the Palaeologans, pronoiars could more easily be organized into military units if the emperor required their service. The emperor could also confiscate the revenues for whatever reason. Andronicus II Palaeologus, for example, used the money raised by the pronoiars to finance military expeditions against the Bulgarians, but he did not require them to provide military service themselves. During this time pronoiars could also attract followers by giving them pronoia grants of their own.
Recruiting pronoiars to form an army helped unite the remnants of the empire after 1261. However, there were by this time only a few thousand pronoiars, and although they paid for their own expenses, the emperors could not afford a full army or navy to strengthen the empire's defenses. The impoverished empire had very little tax revenue, and pronoiars began to extract rents from the paroikoi, turning back to the old Thema system.
The empire continued to lose land to the Ottoman Empire, and Constantinople was finally lost in 1453, but the Ottomans continued to use their own version of the pronoia system, called the timar system, which they had borrowed from the Byzantines during their conquests.
Read more about this topic: Pronoia