Mixobarbaroi, ‘half-caste’ nomads who took service with the emperor and prospered, such as Monastras and Ouzas, also enjoyed Alexios’ confidence. So did westerners like Constantine Humbertopoulos, nephew of the emperor’s nemesis Robert Guiscard, and Peter Aliphas, who became a trusted lieutenant in spite of his role in the Norman attack of 1081–3, during which he nearly killed Alexios in combat.14 In addition, the emperor personally oversaw the baptism of Turkish allies and their admission to the senate.15
It was not just the imperial family, therefore, who were beneficiaries of Komnenian government. There was a never-ending stream of supplicants, seeking preferential treatment, exemptions, rewards or favours from Alexios – men like Manuel Straboromanos who presented flowery eulogies to the emperor, extolling his virtues in detail, in an attempt to have lands which had been confiscated restored to him.16 Not all petitioners were well received, however, and from time to time the pious emperor lost patience even with the monks who appeared in Constantinople to plead their cases: ‘I want to slit their nostrils’, he wrote to the patriarch Nicholas III, ‘and then to send them home so that the rest of the monks will understand what the imperial view of things is.’17
What shaped Byzantium under Alexios was not the concentration of power into the hands of the Komnenoi and their supporters, but rather the iron grip which the emperor himself established over the apparatus of the state from the start of his reign. It was Alexios personally who took decisions, made appointments, gave promotions and rewards – or cast enemies into the wilderness. Such close control over every aspect of military, civilian and even ecclesiastical affairs was in sharp contrast to the rule of many of his predecessors. It was a strategy that allowed Alexios to shape Byzantium in his own image.
The promotion of those that the emperor was comfortable with – whether members of his family or outsiders – came at the expense of Byzantine aristocrats who found themselves excluded from positions of influence. The problems this caused were more acute than lost status. The bedrock of imperial society was the distribution of annual salaries to those with positions in Constantinople and the provinces. Funds were channelled from the centre to a wide group of officials in the civilian and military administra tions, and changes to this system were a cause not just of resentment but of financial loss. In fact, it had been Alexios’ pre decessor, Nikephoros III Botaneiates, who first reduced the salaries paid out by the central government in an attempt to cut costs. Yet Alexios took things further, reducing and in many cases suspending payments altogether to reduce expenditure and bolster the precarious economy. These steps were bound to prove unpopular, as were the confiscations of property belonging to highranking officials accused of plotting against Alexios, which was used to boost the sparse imperial coffers. The emperor’s policy of using debased coinage to pay for government expenditure while insisting on higher-value coins when it came to collecting tax, further aggravated the situation.18
Alexios took these steps because of the substantial costs of funding military operations against Byzantium’s neighbours. Maintaining the army in the field almost continuously for more than a decade after 1081 was expensive in terms of salaries, equipment and provisioning. It was costly in indirect terms too, with the diversion of manpower from agricultural production resulting in lower yields, falling tax rev enues and rising prices. The payment of tribute to the Pechenegs and to the sultan in the 1080s also required funding, as did other efforts to improve the empire’s situation. An alliance with Henry IV of
Germany against the Normans came at great expense: the Byzantines agreed to pay the enormous sum of 360,000 gold coins – with the stipulation that this was to be paid not in newly minted (and heavily debased) currency, but in coins of substantially higher quality.19
Desperate efforts were made to boost the state’s income. In 1082, Alexios swore on oath that he would never again take treasures from the church, having expropriated high-value objects to fund his campaign against the Normans after they attacked Dyrrakhion. But three years later he again resorted to seizing precious ecclesiastical objects. The emperor was furiously criticised for breaking his promise, with attacks on his character led by the bishop of Chalcedon, a highly vocal and effective agitator, even if Anna Komnene dismissed him as ‘incapable of expressing his ideas accurately and without ambiguity, because he was utterly devoid of any training in logic’.20 Although Alexios managed to weather the controversy, his efforts to extract funds from the church for a third time at the start of the 1090s earned him a stinging rebuke from the patriarch of Antioch.21
Heavy increases in taxation were introduced to cover the mismatch between revenue and expenditure. According to one Byzantine commentator, officials were appointed to gather taxes by inventing debts that needed to be paid off. Failure to meet these phantom obligations was used as a pretext to confiscate property and to provide yet another shot in the arm for the imperial treasury.22 These tax rises had devastating consequences. The increased obligations resulted in death, famine, depopulation and homelessness. In some cases, according to the patriarch of Antioch, it had caused people to join ‘the barbarians who murder Christians, judging that servitude and life with them was more palatable than with us’.23
Even the monks on Mount Athos attracted the attention of an emperor desperate for funds. Athos was home to several monastic communities, and the monks had accumulated an impressive range of land and property and proved adept at gaining exemptions from taxes. The lands they owned were concentrated in one of the few regions of the empire that had not come under pressure from the Normans, Pechenegs or Turks. These territories were also amongst the few places where productivity had not declined in the late eleventh century, and in 1089 Alexios turned to them to raise money. Three charters record the introduction of a new charge, the epibole, which made fresh demands on landowners. Those who could not or would not pay immediately were penalised, amongst them the monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos, which had lands of almost 20,000 acres confiscated by the emperor.24
By the time the situation in Asia Minor started to deteriorate at the start of the 1090s, Alexios had run out of options. Debasement of the coinage had reached a nadir, while central government had been stripped to the barest bones to save money. To make matters worse, around the start of 1091, Crete and Cyprus, the two largest and most important islands in the eastern Mediterranean, rose up in revolt against the emperor and declared effective independence from Constantinople. This rebellion was the result of heavy overtaxation.25 Raids on the north-western frontier likewise put yet more pressure on the embattled emperor – as well as stretching Byzantium’s resources further still.26
At the start of 1092, Alexios reached a decision that was to have a major impact on the history of the eastern Mediterranean. During the Norman attacks of the 1080s, the emperor had worked closely with Venice, with Venetian ships patrolling the Adriatic to prevent Norman supplies crossing over from southern Italy to provision the invaders, in exchange for an upfront payment.27 Alexios issued a series of grants to ensure further co-operation during the Norman assaults of 1081–5, which included the award of titles to the doge as well as an extension of Venetian authority in the Adriatic to include Dalmatia.28
Desperate to stimulate the empire’s financial system, Alexios concluded that this could only be achieved with a major injection of foreign capital. In the spring of 1092, therefore, the emperor issued a grant giving a sweeping set of privileges and concessions to Venice.29 The ruler of Venice had used the title of doge of Venice and Dalmatia and imperial protosebastos in the 1080s; after 1092, however, he was also granted jurisdiction over Croatia in a further enlargement of Venetian authority – an important concession from Constantinople. This was further reinforced by the doge being given the right to pass these new honours on to his successors.30 In addition, the churches of Venice were to receive funds, with St Mark’s singled out for particularly generous treatment to help pay for the major restoration works undertaken at the start of the 1090s in advance of its imminent reconsecration. Part of the quayside in Constantinople, stretching from the Gate of the Hebrews to the Vigla tower, was to be set aside for the exclusive use of Venetian traders, with provision for similar arrangements in a range of other ports in the empire, including Antioch, Laodikeia, Tarsos, Mamistra, Attaleia, Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Thessaloniki and Dyrrakhion.31 This gave Venice a significant competitive edge over other Italian city-states in the eastern Mediterranean.