Peasant Categories in the Tenth and eleventh centuries

Abstract

The need for the state to protect its fiscal revenues is presented in the tenth-century legislation as a significant factor underlying the efforts made by the imperial administration to check the growing power of its provincial magnates and to make it more difficult for them to extend their properties at the expense of weaker peasants. In practice the most effective way for the state to maintain its revenues was to ensure through the regular activities of its fiscal officials that peasants who owed tax-payments to the state were not brought under the control of powerful lay and ecclesiastical landowners.