Pronoia - The Institution

The Institution

A pronoia was a grant that temporarily transferred imperial fiscal rights to an individual or institution. These rights were most commonly taxes or incomes from cultivated lands, but they could also be other income streams such as water and fishing rights, customs collection, etc. and the various rights to a specific piece of geography could be granted to separate individuals. Grants were for a set period, usually lifetime, and revokable at will by the Emperor. When institutions, usually monasteries, received grants they were effectively in perpetuity since the institutions were ongoing. Grants were not transferable or (except for certain excepts late in the institution) hereditary; a pronoia gave the grantee possession, not ownership, which remained Imperial.

The limits and specifics of a pronoia was recorded in an Imperial document called praktika ("records"); holders of pronoia (the grantees, in other words) were called pronoiarios, and those working the income stream in question (for instance, farmers on the land) were called paroikoi in the documents. The word pronoia could refer to the grant itself (land, for instance), its monetary value, or the income it produced.

Although pronoia were often used to reward military service or other loyalties, they carried no specific military obligation (in contrast to feudal fiefs), although the threat of revocation provided coercive power or the state.