Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

The internal activities of the emperors of the Isaurian dynasty 

Page 7

The English scholar W. Ashburner edited, translated, and thoroughly investigated the Rural Code, although he knew no Russian and was therefore unacquainted with the results of the Russian investigations. Ashburner was inclined to agree with Zacharia von Lingenthal that the Farmers Law, as it stands, forms part of the legislation of the iconoclasts and that it is to a great extent a compilation of existing customs. But at the same time Ashburner differed from Zacharia von Lingenthal in three important particulars: (1) the origin of the law; (2) the legal position of the agricultural class under the law; and (3) the economic character of the two forms of tenancy to which it refers. The relationship of the Rural Code to the Ecloga, he maintained, is not as close as Zacharia von Lingenthal would make it, and he believed that in the state of society described by the Rural Code the farmer could migrate freely from place to place. He agreed with the German scholar, however, that the style of command of this law suggests that it was not a product of private hands but a work of legislative authority. The theory of the exceptional influence of the Slavs upon the internal customs of the Byzantine Empire, given weight by the authority of Zacharia von Lingenthal and supported by outstanding Russian scholars in the field of Byzantine history, has come to occupy a firm place in historical literature. In addition to the general accounts of Slavonic settlements in the Empire, these scholars used as the main basis for their theory the fact that the conception of small free peasantry and the commune were foreign to Roman law; hence they must have been introduced into Byzantine life by some new element, in this case the Slavonic. V. N. Zlatarsky recently supported the theory of Slavonic influence on the Rural Code, which he referred to Leo III, and explained it by Leo's Bulgarian policy. Leo saw that the Slavs under his power were very much tempted to pass over to the Bulgarians and conclude with them a Bulgaro-Slavonic alliance. Therefore he introduced into his law Slavonic manners and customs, hoping thereby to render conditions more attractive to the Slavs. But a closer study of the codes of Theodosius and Justinian, of the Novels of the latter, and, in recent times, of the data of papyrology and the lives of saints, distinctly proves that there existed in the Roman Empire villages populated by free landholders, and that communal landownership was in existence in very early times. No general conclusion, therefore, can be made on the basis of the Rural Code; it may serve only as another evidence of the fact that in the Byzantine Empire the small free peasantry and the free rural commune existed parallel with serfdom. The theory of Slavonic influence must be discarded and attention should be turned to the study of the problem of small free peasantry and the village commune in the period of the early and later Roman Empire on the basis of both new and old materials which have not been sufficiently utilized.

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