作者：John Haldon約翰·哈爾頓

出版商：Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

自翻：流瀲紫琳

Background to war：The political world of Byzantium

戰(zhàn)爭背景：拜占庭的政治世界

????????? The Christian Roman state was structured as a hierarchy of administrative levels: at the top was the emperor, understood to be God's representative, surrounded by a palace and household apparatus, the centre of imperial government and administration. Civil and fiscal government was delegated from the emperor to the praetorian prefects, whose prefectures were the largest territorial circumscriptions in the state; each prefecture was further divided into dioecesae or dioceses, which had a predominantly fiscal aspect; and each diocese was divided into proviuciae or provinces, territorial units of fiscal and judicial administration. These were further divided into self-governing poleis or civitates, the cities, each with its territorium or hinterland (which might be more or less extensive, according to geographical, demographic and other factors).

（基督教羅馬國家是由行政層級構(gòu)成的:在最高的是皇帝，被認為是上帝的代表，周圍是宮殿和皇家器具，是帝國政府和行政管理的中心。民事與財政管理由皇帝委托給行政長官，他們的州府是全國最大的行政疆域;每個行政區(qū)又進一步分為教區(qū)或教區(qū)，主要涉及財政方面；每個教區(qū)又分為省或省，財政和司法行政的領(lǐng)土單位。這些城市被進一步劃分為自治的城邦或城市，每個城市都有自己的領(lǐng)土或腹地(根據(jù)地理、人口和其他因素，這些地區(qū)或多或少可能是廣泛的)。）

????????? Rural production dominated the economy, but the cities were the homes of a literate elite of landowners. Social status was largely determined by one's relationship to the system of imperial titles and precedence, whether one had held an active post in the imperial bureaucracy, and at what level, and so forth, although regional variations were marked. The Church and the theological system it represented (from the late 4th century the official religion of the Roman state) played a central role in the economy of the Roman world - it was a major landowner - as well as in imperial politics, in influencing the moral and ethical system of the Roman world, and in directing imperial religious policy. The prevailing view was that the emperor was chosen by God, that he had to be Orthodox, and that his role was to defend the interests of Orthodoxy and the Roman i.e. Christian oikoumene (the inhabited, civilised - Roman - world). The political implications were such that heresy was construed as treason, and opposition to the (Orthodox) emperor could effectively be treated as heresy. The late Roman state was thus a complex bureaucracy, rooted in and imposed upon a series of overlapping social formations structured by local variations on essentially the same social relations of production across the whole central and east Mediterranean and Balkan world. Social and political tensions were exacerbated by religious divisions, local economic conditions, imperial politics, and the burden placed upon the tax-paying population as a result of the state's needs in respect of its administrative apparatus and, in particular, its armies.

（農(nóng)村生產(chǎn)主導(dǎo)了經(jīng)濟，但城市是有文化的地主精英的家園。社會地位很大程度上取決于一個人與帝國頭銜和優(yōu)先權(quán)系統(tǒng)的關(guān)系，一個人是否在帝國官僚機構(gòu)中擔(dān)任過活躍的職位，在什么級別，等等，盡管地區(qū)差異很明顯。教會及其所代表的神學(xué)體系（從 4 世紀(jì)后期開始成為羅馬國家的官方宗教）在羅馬世界的經(jīng)濟中發(fā)揮了核心作用——它是一個主要的地主——以及在帝國政治中，影響了羅馬帝國羅馬世界的道德和倫理體系，并指導(dǎo)帝國的宗教政策。普遍的觀點是，皇帝是由上帝選擇的，他必須是東正教，他的角色是捍衛(wèi)東正教和羅馬人的利益，即基督教 oikoumene（有人居住的文明 - 羅馬 - 世界）。政治含義是異端邪說被解釋為叛國罪，反對（正統(tǒng)）皇帝可以有效地被視為異端邪說。因此，晚期羅馬國家是一個復(fù)雜的官僚機構(gòu)，植根于并強加于一系列重疊的社會形態(tài)，這些社會形態(tài)由整個地中海中部和東部以及巴爾干世界的基本相同的社會生產(chǎn)關(guān)系的地方變化構(gòu)成。宗教分歧、當(dāng)?shù)亟?jīng)濟條件、帝國政治以及國家對行政機構(gòu)，特別是軍隊的需求導(dǎo)致納稅人口的負擔(dān)從而加劇了社會和政治緊張局勢。）

????????? These structures were radically transformed between the later 6th and early 9th centuries, and as the result of a number of factors, the single most important being the Islamic conquests. By 642 all of Egypt and the middle-eastern provinces had been lost, Arab forces had penetrated deep into Asia Minor and Libya, and imperial forces had been withdrawn into Asia Minor, to be settled across the provinces of the region as the only available means of supporting them. Within a period of some 12 years, therefore, the empire lost something over half its area and three-quarters of its resources - a drastic loss for an imperial state which still had to maintain and equip a considerable army and an effective administrative bureaucracy if it was to survive at all. While many of the developments which led to this transformation were in train long before the 7th-century crisis, it was this conjuncture that served to bring things to a head and promote the structural responses that followed.

（這些結(jié)構(gòu)在 6 世紀(jì)后期和 9 世紀(jì)早期之間發(fā)生了根本性的轉(zhuǎn)變，由于多種因素，其中最重要的是伊斯蘭的征服。到642年埃及和中東各省都已失守，阿拉伯軍隊深入小亞細亞和利比亞，帝國軍隊已撤回小亞細亞，在該地區(qū)各省定居是唯一可用的手段支持他們。因此，在大約 12 年的時間里，帝國失去了一半以上的領(lǐng)土和四分之三的資源——對于一個仍然需要維持和裝備一支龐大軍隊和有效行政官僚機構(gòu)的帝國來說，這是一個巨大的損失。其根本就是為了生存。雖然導(dǎo)致這種轉(zhuǎn)變的許多發(fā)展早在 7 世紀(jì)危機之前就已經(jīng)開始，但正是這種結(jié)合使事情變得更加重要并促進了隨后的結(jié)構(gòu)性反應(yīng)。）

????????? The changes that accompanied the developments of the 7th century affected all areas of social, cultural and economic life. There occurred a 'ruralisation' of society, a result of the devastation, abandonment, shrinkage or displacement of many cities in Asia Minor as a result of invasions and raids. The defensive properties of ‘urban’ sites, their direct relevance to military, administrative or ecclesiastical needs, and so on, played the key role in whether a city survived or not. Constantinople became the pre-eminent city of the empire.

（伴隨 7 世紀(jì)發(fā)展而來的變化影響了社會、文化和經(jīng)濟生活的所有領(lǐng)域。由于入侵和襲擊，小亞細亞許多城市遭到破壞、遺棄、縮小或流離失所，社會發(fā)生了“農(nóng)村化”?！俺鞘小边z址的防御屬性，它們與軍事、行政或教會需求等的直接關(guān)系，在一個城市能否幸存的過程中發(fā)揮了關(guān)鍵作用。君士坦丁堡成為帝國的杰出城市。）

????????? The social elite was transformed as 'new men' selected by the emperors on a more obviously meritocratic basis increased in number, and who were initially heavily dependent on the emperor and on imperially sponsored positions. Yet as a result of its increasing grip on state positions and the lands it accrued through the rewards attached to such service, this elite soon turned into an aristocracy, during the 8th and 9th centuries still very dependent on the state, during the 10th and especially the 11th increasingly independent. The state had to compete directly with a social group whose enormous landed wealth and entrenched position in the apparatuses of the state meant that it posed a real threat to central control of fiscal resources.

（社會精英被轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)橛苫实厶暨x的“新人”數(shù)量明顯增加了精英統(tǒng)治的基礎(chǔ)，這些人最初嚴(yán)重依賴皇帝和帝國資助的職位。然而由于其增加對國家立場和控制土地應(yīng)計通過獎勵等附加到服務(wù),這個精英群體很快變成了新貴族,在第八和第九世紀(jì)仍然非常依賴于狀態(tài),但在第十世紀(jì),特別是十一世紀(jì)越來越獨立。國家必須與一個社會群體直接競爭，這個群體擁有巨大的土地財富，在國家機構(gòu)中占據(jù)著根深蒂固的地位，這意味著它對中央財政資源的控制構(gòu)成了真正的威脅。）

????????? The events of the 7th century also produced a reassertion of central state power over late Roman tendencies to decentralisation. The state was both limited, and in its turn partly defined, by the nature of key economic relationships. This is exemplified in the issue and circulation of coin, the basic mechanism through which the state converted agricultural produce into transferable fiscal resources. Coin was issued chiefly to oil the wheels of the state machinery, and wealth was appropriated and consumed through a redistributive fiscal mechanism: the state issued gold in the form of salaries and largesse to its bureaucracy and armies, who exchanged a substantial portion thereof for goods and services in maintaining themselves. The state could thus collect much of the coin it put into circulation through tax, the more so since fiscal policy generally demanded tax in gold and offered change in bronze. There were periods when this system was constrained by circumstances, resulting in the ad hoc arrangements for supplying soldiers and raising tax in kind, for example (as in the 7th century), and it also varied by region. But in a society in which social status and advancement (including the self-identity of the aristocracy) were connected with the state, these arrangements considerably hindered economic activity not directly connected with the state's activities. For the continued power and attraction of the imperial establishment at Constantinople, with its court and hierarchical system of precedence, as well as the highly centralised fiscal administrative structure, consumed the whole attention of the Byzantine elite, hindering the evolution of a more localised aristocracy which might otherwise have invested in the economy and society of its own localities and towns, rather than in the imperial system.

（7世紀(jì)的事件也使中央國家權(quán)力重新確立，而不是羅馬晚期的權(quán)力下放傾向。國家既受到關(guān)鍵經(jīng)濟關(guān)系的性質(zhì)的限制，又受到部分限制。這體現(xiàn)在硬幣的發(fā)行和流通中，這是國家將農(nóng)產(chǎn)品轉(zhuǎn)化為可轉(zhuǎn)移的財政資源的基本機制。發(fā)行硬幣主要是為了給國家機器的車輪加油，財富通過再分配的財政機制被挪用和消耗：國家以工資和贈款的形式向官僚和軍隊發(fā)行黃金，他們用黃金換取商品的很大一部分和維護自己的服務(wù)。因此，國家可以通過稅收來收集大部分投入流通的硬幣，更重要的是因為財政政策通常要求對黃金征稅并提供零錢。曾有一段時間，該制度受環(huán)境限制，導(dǎo)致臨時安排供應(yīng)士兵和提高實物稅，例如（如在7世紀(jì)），并且也因地區(qū)而異。但在一個社會地位和進步（包括貴族的自我認同）與國家相關(guān)的社會中，這些安排大大阻礙了與國家活動沒有直接聯(lián)系的經(jīng)濟活動。因為君士坦丁堡的帝國建立的持續(xù)權(quán)力和吸引力，其宮廷和等級優(yōu)先制度，以及高度集中的財政行政結(jié)構(gòu)，消耗了拜占庭精英的全部注意力，阻礙了更加本土化的貴族的發(fā)展。否則，他們可能會投資于自己的地方和城鎮(zhèn)的經(jīng)濟和社會，而不是投資于帝制。）

????????? The growth in the power of the elite was stimulated by two developments. In the first place, there took place an increasing subordination of the peasantry to both private landlords and to holders of grants of state revenue. In the second place the state conceded from the later 11th century the right to receive the revenues from certain public (i.e. fiscal, or taxed) districts or of certain imperial estates with their tenants, encouraging a process of very gradual alienation of the state’s fiscal and juridical rights. By exploiting the award by the emperors of fiscal exemptions of varying sorts, landlords — both secular and monastic — were able to keep a larger proportion of the revenues extracted from their peasant producers for themselves, as rent, while the government's hold on the remaining fiscal land of the empire was constantly challenged by the provincial elite. This had important consequences, for it meant that the overall burden placed on the peasant producers grew considerably. Tenants of landlords with access to imperial patronage attempted to free themselves from many of these impositions through obtaining grants of exemption of one sort or another, although the needs and demands of the local military meant that privileges were often entirely ignored. The amount of resources Lost to the state through grants of exemption twin additional taxes cannot have been negligible, while the burden of landlords' demands on peasant tenants is hinted at by an 11th-century writer who notes that cancelling fiscal privileges treed the rural communities from the burdens which they owed in rents and services.

（精英權(quán)力的增長受到兩個發(fā)展的刺激。首先，農(nóng)民越來越從屬于私人地主和國家財政撥款的持有者。其次，從11世紀(jì)后期開始，國家承認有權(quán)從某些公共（即財政或稅收）地區(qū)或某些帝國地產(chǎn)及其租戶那里獲得收入，這鼓勵了國家財政和稅收逐漸異化的過程。法律權(quán)利。通過利用皇帝授予的各種財政豁免，地主——無論是世俗的還是寺院的——能夠?qū)⑥r(nóng)民生產(chǎn)者的收入中的更大比例作為租金保留給自己，而政府則保留剩余的財政收入。帝國的土地不斷受到省級精英的挑戰(zhàn)。 這產(chǎn)生了重要的后果，因為這意味著農(nóng)民生產(chǎn)者的總體負擔(dān)大大增加。 有權(quán)獲得帝國贊助的地主的租戶試圖通過獲得一種或另一種豁免的授權(quán)來擺脫許多這些強加，盡管當(dāng)?shù)剀婈牭男枰鸵笠馕吨貦?quán)往往被完全忽視。通過免除雙重附加稅而損失給國家的資源數(shù)量不容忽視，而地主對農(nóng)民租戶的要求負擔(dān)由一位11世紀(jì)的作家暗示他們在租金和服務(wù)方面的負擔(dān)。）

????????? The split between the interests of the landed and office-holding elite on the one hand and the government which is evident during the later 10th and 1.1th centuries was papered over front the time of Alexios and until the end of the 12th century by yin-Lie of the transformation of the empire under the Komnenos dynasty into what was, in effect, a gigantic family estate, ruled through a network of magnates, relatives and patronage that expanded rapidly during the 12th century and that, in uniting the vested interests of the dominant social-economic elite with those of a ruling family, reunited also the interests of the former with those of a centralised empire. The factional politics that resulted from these developments, in particular over who would control Constantinople and sit on the throne, become apparent in the squabbles and civil wars which followed the defeat of Romanos IV by the Seljuks in 1071, a situation resolved only by the seizure of power by Alexios 1 in 1081. By the end of the 12th century, if not already a century earlier, the vast majority of peasant producers in the empire had become tenants, in one form or another, of a landlord. The elite had meanwhile crystallised into a multifactional aristocracy, led by a few very powerful families, with a number of dependent subordinate and collateral clans, Under the Komnenoi, the imperial family and its immediate associates monopolised military and higher civil offices, while the older families who had been its former rivals dominated the bureaucratic machinery of the state. In the provinces local elites tended to dominate. It was these social relations that facilitated the internecine strife and factionalism that marks the 14th and 15th centuries in particular.

（在10世紀(jì)后期和11世紀(jì)很明顯，一方面是土地和公職精英與政府之間的利益分裂，在亞歷克西斯時代一直被掩蓋，直到12世紀(jì)末才被科穆寧王朝統(tǒng)治下的帝國展現(xiàn)，實際上變成了一個巨大的家族莊園，通過12世紀(jì)迅速擴張的權(quán)貴、親屬和贊助網(wǎng)絡(luò)進行統(tǒng)治，并且為了統(tǒng)一既得利益，居統(tǒng)治地位的社會經(jīng)濟精英與統(tǒng)治家族的精英，也將前者的利益與集權(quán)帝國的利益重新統(tǒng)一起來。由這些事態(tài)發(fā)展導(dǎo)致的派系政治，特別是關(guān)于誰將控制君士坦丁堡和登上王位的問題，在1071 年塞爾柱人擊敗羅曼諾斯四世之后的爭吵和內(nèi)戰(zhàn)中變得明顯，這種情況只能通過奪取來解決1081年由阿萊克修斯一世掌權(quán)。到12世紀(jì)末，如果不是早一個世紀(jì)的話，帝國中的絕大多數(shù)農(nóng)民生產(chǎn)者已經(jīng)以一種或另一種形式成為地主的佃戶。與此同時，精英階層形成了一個多派系的貴族，由幾個非常有權(quán)勢的家族領(lǐng)導(dǎo)，有一些附屬的下屬和附屬部族。曾經(jīng)是它的前競爭對手的人主宰了國家的官僚機構(gòu)。 在各省，地方精英往往占主導(dǎo)地位。正是這些社會關(guān)系促成了14和15世紀(jì)的內(nèi)訌和派系斗爭。）

未完待續(xù)