Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

The internal activities of the emperors of the Isaurian dynasty 

Page 6

The Rural Code has also attracted the attention of scholars because it contains no reference to the colonate or serfdom which predominated in the later Roman Empire, It does contain, however, indications of various new phenomena: personal peasant property, communal landownership, the abolition of compulsory service, and the introduction of freedom of movement. These are usually connected by scholars with the extensive Slavonic settlements in the Empire, which presumably imported conditions peculiar to their own life, chiefly the commune. The proposition argued in Pancenko's book that the Rural Code does not refer to the commune is rightly denied in modern literature. Th. I. Uspensky, however, overestimated the importance of this law when he assigned to it the significance of a general measure for the whole Empire and claimed even that it must serve as a point of departure in the history of the economic development of the East with regard to the free peasant class and the class of small landowners. This opinion might create the impression that serfdom was generally abolished in the seventh or eighth centuries, which was not really the case. Diehl, who in his History of the Byzantine Empire considered the Rural Code the achievement of Leo III and his son, also went rather too far in stating that it aimed to restrain the disquieting development of the great domains, to arrest the disappearance of the small free estates, and to insure to the peasants better living conditions.

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