3 - The Dēmosia, the Emperor and the Common Good: Byzantine Ideas on Taxation and Public Wealth, Eleventh–Twelfth Century

Summary

How the Byzantines conceived of taxation, confiscation and the administration of public resources reflects the way they imagined the constitution of their polity and, in particular, the positions of the emperor and the people within it. In less abstract terms, these ideas also help explain imperial choices that shaped the society and the economy. The question of the emperor's relation to public wealth has usually been treated in the context of examining the ruler's position within the polity, notably by Hans-Georg Beck, Paul Magdalino and Anthony Kaldellis. This scholarship and the present chapter show that there existed among the Byzantines, including the emperor and his panegyrists, a consensus that the public resources, ta dēmosia or ta koina, while under the ruler's control, were not his property but, as their name indicated, that of all the people. The emperor was expected to administrate this wealth in the interests of the commonwealth (to koinon). Numerous texts can be invoked in support of this schema. One of the clearest statements is provided by a definition of the term basileia in the tenth-century Souda lexicon:

The empire (basileia) belongs to the things held in common (ta koina) but the fiscal resources (ta dēmosia) are not the possession of the emperor (basileia). Therefore, the forcible and violent collection of taxes should be hated as tyrannical immorality while the reasoned and benevolent tax demands should be honoured as guardianship.

Although this definition reproduces notions from earlier periods, its inclusion in the Souda lexicon demonstrates that an interest in these ideas existed in the Middle Ages and suggests they were widely accepted. These shared concepts authorised all people to have an opinion regarding the management of the dēmosia and to criticise the emperor's fiscal policies. Indeed, there are a great number of statements regarding these matters in texts from the centuries discussed here, in particular historical works, speeches for the emperor, laws and official documents, and private letters. Using this material, this chapter attempts to identify the principal Byzantine ideas concerning taxation, confiscation and the use of public resources, topics that, overall, remain little studied.