Serbian Pronoia and Pronoia in Serbia: The Diffusion of An Institution

Zbornik radova Vizantolo{kog instituta HßçÇÇÇ, 2011
Recueil des travaux de l’Institut d’etudes byzantines XßVIII, 2011
UDC: 347.236.1(497.11:495.02) )"12/14"

DOI:10.2298/ZRVI1148177B
MARK C. BARTUSIS
(Aberdeen, South Dakota, USA)
SERBIAN PRONOIA AND PRONOIA IN SERBIA:

THE DIFFUSION OF AN INSTITUTION
Of all of Byzantium’s neighbors who appropriated the fiscal and agrarian in-
stitution of pronoia, it was the Serbs whose adaptation of the institution most closely
resembled the Byzantine model. The article re-examines the institution of pronoia in
Serbia from its earliest manifestation during the reign of Stefan Uro{ II Milutin
through the time of the Brankovi}i in the mid-fifteenth century. In the course of
analyzing the character of Serbian pronoia, particularly during the reign of Stefan
Du{an, the administration of conquered Byzantine pronoiai is distinguished from the
creation of pronoiai in native Serbian territory.
Key words: pronoia, Serbia, property, agrarian, land, Zakonik, Du{an
It has been sixty years since George Ostrogorsky published his landmark
work on the institution of pronoia. With the passage of time new sources have
come to light and new ways of looking at the material have arisen, and thus the
natural process in historical studies to re-evaluate a subject is ripe for application
here. While I will be presenting a major re-evaluation of the Byzantine institution
of pronoia elsewhere, in these pages I would like to focus on pronoia as it ap-
peared in medieval Serbia.1
By the fifteenth century the fiscal term pronoia appears here and there in
most areas of the Balkans south of the Danube. What it means is another matter. It
appears a couple of times in the Chronicle of the Tocco which deals with the situa-
tion in Epiros in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Further north, a
contract from Kerkyra (Corfu) from 1472 mentions a “sir Stephen Phiomachos
1 G. Ostrogorsky, Pronija, prilog istoriji feudalizma u Vizantiji i u ju`noslovenskim zemljama,

Belgrade 1951, and translated in G. Ostrogorsky, Pour l’histoire de la feodalite byzantine, trans. H.
Gregoire, with P. Lemerle, Brussels 1954, 1–257. M. Bartusis, Land and Privilege in Byzantium: The
Institution of Pronoia, Cambridge 2012.
178 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
pronoiarios” (ser Stefanh Fiomacon proniarion) as one of the parties. While

George Ostrogorsky saw the survival of the Byzantine institution of pronoia, Mi-
chael Lascaris thought that the term pronoiarios was employed to designate the
holder of one of the baronies instituted since the occupation of Kerkyra by the
Angevins of Naples in 1272, and that the reference is actually to a fief that re-
mained in the hands of the Fiomaco family up through the seventeenth century.2
The term pronoia is found as well in fifteenth-century Venetian documents
dealing with their possessions in the Aegean, specifically on Tinos and Mykonos.
For example, in 1442 the rector of Tinos granted a man named Michael Aspergi a
pronoia and other properties that had belonged to the widow Paraschi who was
childless. In return Aspergi and his descendants were required to do homage to the
rector and serve as crossbowmen aboard ship. David Jacoby points out that in
these cases the grants did not involve fiscal revenues, but agricultural land and
even houses exploited directly by the recipients for which they paid taxes. The
men seem to be of a relatively modest social level, and the only difference be-
tween these men and the rest of the population was found in the service they
owed. Jacoby hypothesized that the use of the term pronoia can be explained by
the fact that with rare exception the recipients of these grants were Greeks.3
In most cases such as this, it would be misleading to say that the institution
of pronoia had passed to Byzantium’s neighbors. Rather, it is more accurate to say
that the term pronoia, signifying some kind of property grant from a governmental
authority, had been appropriated. Indeed there appears to have been something al-
most magical about the word pronoia that it would be incorporated into the land
tenure jargon of areas that in some cases had not known a Byzantine presence for
centuries. The abundant Venetian sources dealing with the appearance of the term
pronoia on the Adriatic coast and the islands of the Aegean tell us about how the
Venetians accommodated the indigenous institutions they encountered in their
conquests but nothing about any Byzantine institution. Consequently, any conclu-
sions regarding how Byzantium’s neighbors appropriated the institution of pronoia
can be no more reliable than our understanding of the native institutions of these
peoples. George Ostrogorsky, who devoted a large chapter of his book on pronoia
2 Cronaca dei Tocco di Cefalonia di Anonimo, ed. G. Schiro, Rome 1975, lines 139–40, 935.
M. Lascaris, Cinq notes a la Pronoia de M. Ostrogorsky, Byzantion 21 (1951) 270–71. D. Jacoby,
Les archontes grecs et la feodalite en Moree franque, in Jacoby, Societe et demographie a Byzance et
en Romanie latine, London 1975, no. VI, 437. D. Jacoby, Les etats latins en Romanie, in Jacoby,
Recherches sur la Mediterranee orientale du XIIe au XVe siecle, London 1979, no. I, 9 note 28.
Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 252 note 1. On the situation on the island, see also C. Asdracha and S.
Asdrachas, Quelques remarques sur la rente feodale, Travaux et Memoires 8 (1981) 7–14; and C.
Asdracha, From the Byzantine Paroikoi to the Vassalli Angarii, Etudes balkaniques 22, 1 (1986)
114–22.
3 F. Thiriet, Regestes des deliberations du Senat de Venice concernant la Romanie, Paris
1958–61, III, no. 2575 (text note 1). Jacoby, Les archontes grecs, 437. D. Jacoby, La feodalite en
Grece medievale, Paris 1971, 243–44, 247–49. Also, on Tinos, from 1432: C. Sathas, Mnhmeia
Ellhnikhj Istoriaj. Documents inedits relatifs a l’histoire de la Grece au moyen age, Paris 1880–90,
III, 412.36–38, and also 413.12 (Thiriet, Regestes, III, no. 2273). Jacoby, Les archontes grecs, 437.
And for Mykonos, see Jacoby, La feodalite, 237–42, 245–52.
MARK C. BARTUSIS: Serbian pronoia and pronoia in Serbia 179
to the study of how pronoia manifested itself in Zeta and northern Albania before
and after Venetian occupation, found that the institution as imported into these ar-
eas confirmed his understanding of Byzantine pronoia.4 Indeed, if one posits that
any difference between, say, Albanian “pronoia” and Byzantine pronoia is due to
the influence of native institutions, any conception of Byzantine pronoia will be
confirmed.
I tend to regard many of these appearances of “pronoia” outside of a By-
zantine context as curiosities which in the end may tell us as little about the soci-
eties in which they appeared as they do about Byzantium. On the whole, the study
of “pronoia” as it appears in these non-Byzantine areas is best left to specialists
interested in those areas.
The one exception to this is Serbia, whose rulers first encountered pronoia
in the later decades of the thirteenth century and, through the conquest of By-
zantine territory, actively administered Byzantine pronoiai. But more than this, we
have many documents that deal not only with the Serb administration of pronoiai
within conquered Byzantine territory, but also with pronoiai as it eventually mani-
fested itself in traditional Serbian territories. Thus, we are on much firmer ground
when dealing with Serbian pronoia. It bore a certain resemblance to Byzantine
pronoia, and the circumstances of Serbian contact with Byzantium and informa-
tion provided by the documentary evidence permit us to make some generaliza-
tions about Serbian pronoia and do in fact illuminate some aspects of the By-
zantine institution.
Another exception should be Bulgaria, which similarly conquered Byzan-
tine territories in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and certainly must have
encountered pronoiai in its administration of conquered Byzantine territories.
Even though the scholarship occasionally states the existence of pronoia in Bul-
garia as a fact,5 not a single Bulgarian source makes any mention of the institution
of pronoia, nor does any other source refer to pronoia in Bulgaria. This is proba-
bly due to nothing more than the fact that we have so few extant documents deal-
ing with the area of later medieval Bulgaria. The area where Bulgaria came into
contact with Byzantium–Thrace-did not have the good fortune to be an area where
the monasteries of Mt. Athos had substantial holdings. I would certainly bet on
the existence, even on the extensive existence, of pronoiai in fourteenth-century
Bulgaria, but I cannot prove it.
The appropriation of the institution of pronoia by the Serbs was a two-step
process. First, Serbian rulers had to figure out what to do with Byzantine pronoiai
4 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 222–57.

5 E. g., J. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000–1500, Seattle 1994, 73:
“When Bulgaria reverted to Byzantine rule in 1018, its territories were organized on the Byzantine
model into military fiefs called pronoias”; D. Nicolle and A. McBride, Hungary and the Fall of Eastern
Europe, 1000–1568, London 1988, 24: the Second Bulgarian Empire “controlled large areas held by
pronoia cavalry and other troops”; and J. Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans, Ann Arbor 1991, 303.
On the other hand, the comprehensive work of I. Biliarski, Instituciite na srednovekovna Balgarija:
Vtoro balgarsko carstvo, XII–XIV vek, Sofia 1998, does not mention pronoia at all.
180 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
in territories that they had conquered. And second, they began to create their own
pronoiai. Thus, when the E. P. Naumov asked whether pronoia entered Serbia
simply because the Serbs took over the administration of Byzantine lands after
conquest or whether the institution of pronoia was borrowed as a response to Ser-
bian needs, the answer is, of course, both.6 When the Serbs conquered areas in
which there were Byzantine pronoiai, it was necessary for them to determine how
pronoiai would fit into their fiscal, economic, agrarian, and military systems. And
because Serbian rulers then began to create their own pronoiai, the institution was
evidently of some utility.
Our knowledge of the Serbian appropriation of the institution of pronoia is
derived almost exclusively from the documentary sources. These sources fall into
three categories: those written in Greek, those written in Serbian, and a few writ-
ten in medieval Italian in the cases where Venetian authorities had direct relations
with Serbia. The Greek and Serbian documents can be further divided according
to whether the documents deal with pronoiai granted by Byzantine rulers or Ser-
bian rulers, though sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between the two. The
Greek documents can be further subdivided according to whether they were issued
by Byzantine or Serbian authorities.
Stefan Milutin (1282–1321)

The earliest reference to pronoia in a document issued in Serbia (or, for that
matter, in a Slavic language) is the chrysobull issued by Stefan Uro{ II Milutin for
the monastery of St. George near Skopje from 1299/1300. While this document
provides us with the earliest evidence of Serbian familiarity with pronoiai, it rep-
resents merely the terminus ante quem for the Serbian introduction to the By-
zantine institution of pronoia. When did the Serbs first encounter pronoiai? Cer-
tainly Milutin would have encountered it with his early invasion of Byzantine ter-
ritory in 1282. Whether it was known to the Serbs before this is unknown. While
Serbia was a vassal state of Byzantium under Manuel I Komnenos, there does not
appear to have been any attempt to introduce Byzantine fiscal or military practices
into the area.7 This does not preclude the possibility that Serbian rulers were fa-
miliar with the pronoia, but there is no evidence for this. For Serbian military his-
tory the date of the introduction of the pronoia has some importance. As Stojan
Novakovi} wrote long ago, if it could be established that the institution of pronoia
entered Serbia during Milutin’s reign, then up to that time the army was composed
6 E. Naumov, K istorii vizantijskoj i serbskoj pronii, Vizantijskij Vremennik 34 (1973) 23.

7 On the whole, the nature of the Byzantine administration of the Balkans during the twelfth
century is quite obscure, and, as a result, opinions of its tenor vary. For example, M. Angold, The
Byzantine Empire, 1025–1204: A Political History, 2nd. ed., London and New York 1997, 134,
wrote, “Byzantine rule in the Balkans was harsh. It had many of the characteristics of a military occu-
pation.” On the other hand, P. Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the
Northern Balkans, 900–1204, Cambridge, Eng. 2000, 133, emphasizes “the independence of action re-
tained by the local Slav rulers, and the process of consultation with regional ùpans that was essential
for decision-making.”
solely of landowners–a general popular army–with pronoia holders and then mer-
cenaries entering the ranks only around the turn of the fourteenth century.8
Within Milutin’s chrysobull the passage of interest concerns a property (mesto,
the equivalent of the Greek word topos) in a village called Re~ice. This property
was once held by a man named Dragota, who was evidently dead. Re~ice had
been granted to the monastery centuries earlier by the monastery’s founder, “Em-
peror Romanos,” probably Romanos III Argyros (1028–1034).9
And Dragota’s plot of land ‰mestoŠ in Re~ice is ascertained as imperial
pronoia, and not Dragota’s ba{tina, and my majesty gives it to the church.
Further, ‰becauseŠ Manota, Dragota’s son-in-law, thought that he would lose
his father-in-law’s dowry, he delivers himself to the church so that he might
hold his father-in-law’s property and that he might work for the church ac-
cording to the military law, ‰that is, on the conditionŠ that his horse not be
loaded and he not bear loads ‰for the church, since he is a soldierŠ. If
Manota and his children and grandchildren withdraw from the church, let
them be deprived of Dragota’s plot; let the church hold it, as my majesty as-
certained it in old chrysobulls as imperial pronoia, and not Dragota’s ba{tina
(I Dragotino mesto u Re~icah’ obrete se carska pronija, a ne ba{tina Dra-
gotina, i dade je kraljev’stvo mi cr’kvi. I togo radi Manota, zet’ Dragotin’,
videv’ ere ot’stupi ot’ njego t’stna prikija, i predade se cr’kvi da si dr’ì
t’stninu i da rabota cr’kvi u vojni~’ski zakon’, da mu se kon’ ne tovari i tovara
da ne vodi. Ako li Manota i egova detca i unu~ije otstupet’ ot’ cr’kve, da su
lisi Dragotina mesta; da si ga dr’ì cr’kvi, jakoè ga i obrete kraljev’stvo mi u
starih’ hrisovuleh’ car’ske pronije, a ne Dragotinu ba{tinu).10
In medieval Serbia, ba{tina was allodial or patrimonial property, and in this
document it is distinguished from pronoia. If Dragota’s holding had been ba{tina,
he would have had more of a claim to it, and, presumably, Milutin would not have
given it to the monastery.
Michael Lascaris proposed to identify Dragota as the resident of Melnik and
Bulgarian governor of Serres named Dragota who, according to the Byzantine his-
torian Akropolites, surrendered Serres to John III Vatatzes in 1246 and was re-
warded with a purple cloak and gold. After this, Dragota and another resident of
Melnik Nicholas Manglavites helped Vatatzes capture Melnik. Later, Dragota is
seen commanding what Akropolites calls the “Melnikiotikon army.”11 As very
weak support for this identification, Lascaris pointed out that Milutin’s chrysobull
8 S. Novakovi}, Stara srpska vojska: istorijske skice iz dela “Narod i zemlja u staroj srpskoj
dràvi,” Belgrade 1893, 74–76.
9 V. Mo{in et al., Spomenici za srednovekovnata i ponovata istorija na Makedonija, Skopje and
Prilep 1975–88, I, 118–19, 223 ‰hereafter, SnMŠ.
10 SnM, I, 225–26 (33) = S. Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici srpskih dràva srednjega veka,
Belgrade 1912, 614–15 xxxiii.
11 Georgii Acropolitae Opera, ed. A. Heisenberg, Leipzig 1903; repr. Stuttgart 1978, I, 74–78,
114–17 ‰hereafter, AkropolitesŠ. T. Vlachos, Die Geschichte der byzantinischen Stadt Melenikon,
Thessaloniki 1969, 40–41.
182 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
also mentions–among scores of names of people and properties–a “M’glavitsko

Pole” (“Manglavites’ field”) and a field donated by a Kosta Ljutovoj (a Nicholas
Litovoes was the Bulgarian governor of Melnik at the time it was captured by
Vatatzes). He concluded that Manota, as the son-in-law of an important wealthy
man, would not have accepted the patronage of a monastery unless he had good
reasons, unknown to us.12
While the size of the field that Akropolit once held is not provided, and
while the aforementioned property of Dragota was only a small part of the village
of Re~ice, a mere mesto, the document states that the monastery was granted
fields of 85 pogoni that Kosta Ljutovoj had given to a church, as well as 15
zeugaria in the field of Manglavit (v Poli M’glavit’skom). Fifteen zeugaria was
equal to some 1,500 modioi, and the 85 pogoni, if the pogon was equivalent to the
zeugarion,13 amounted to something on the order of 8,500 modioi, properties of
large if not enormous size. Further, we do not know what other properties any of
these men, including Dragota, may have held, and, as Ostrogorsky pointed out,
Manota might not have been Dragota’s only heir (and the similar case can be
made for the other personages).14
However, the appearance of these other names may be mere coincidence. A
family named Ljutovoj is attested in the area of Skopje from the 1160s through
1220, and members of the family held patrimonial property in the region.15 More
significant, as Ostrogorsky also pointed out, is the fact that Dragota, according to
Akropolites, was already dead in 1255. In fact he died while in rebellion against
Byzantium. As Akropolites writes, “he did not judge befitting the things provided
to him by the emperor John” Vatatzes.16 It is unlikely that his heirs would have
been allowed to keep any land holdings he may have received from Byzantium.
But even if they had, this would mean that Manota had been holding the dowry
property for at least forty-five years. Thus, it seems unlikely that the Dragota of
our document should be the Dragota of Akropolites.
While it is not possible to link Dragota with some historic personage, it is
possible to narrow down the date at which Dragota received his pronoia. Milutin
refers to Dragota’s holding as an “imperial pronoia,” and because Milutin never
claimed to be an emperor, Dragota received his pronoia from a Byzantine em-
12 SnM, I, 215, 220. Akropolites, I, 76. Lascaris, Cinq notes, 265–68.

13 See SnM, I, 214 note 37. The size and method of computing the zeugarion has not yet been
resolved: see The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. P. Kazhdan et al., New York 1991, s.v.
“zeugarion” ‰hereafter, ODBŠ. Nevertheless, for our purposes, a Byzantine document from 1286 pro-
vides a useful figure; in one specific case, four zeugaria were equivalent to 400 modioi: Actes de
Zographou, I. Actes grecs, ed. W. Regel et al., Vizantijskij Vremennik 13 (1907), suppl. 1 (repr. Am-
sterdam 1969), no. 10.
14 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 193 note 1. G. Ostrogorsky, Sur la pronoia a propos de l’article de
M. Lascaris, Byzantion 22 (1952–53) 161–63.
15 A. Solovjev, Srbi i vizantijsko pravo u Skoplju po~etkom XIII v., Glasnik Skopskog nau~nog
dru{tva 15–16 (1936) 29–43, esp. 35.
16 Akropolites, I, 114.26–27. Vlachos, Die Geschichte der byzantinischen Stadt Melenikon,
47. Ostrogorsky, Sur la pronoia, 161–63, and Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 193 note 1.
peror, not a Serbian ruler.17 Since the area around Skopje was conquered by
Milutin in 1282, and if this includes Re~ice, or Re~ica, today a suburb two miles
southwest of the center of modern Tetovo in the Vardar valley, about 26 miles
west of Skopje, we have a terminus ante quem.18 Further, the ruler of Bulgaria
Konstantin Asen (1257–1277) issued a chrysobull for the monastery of St. George
confirming its possessions, including the village of Re~ice with all its contents,
which mentions no other landholders in the village. Thus, the property in question
was confiscated from the monastery and granted to Dragota after this document
was issued. Unfortunately the chrysobull of Constantine Asen bears no date; V.
Mo{in placed it around 1258 and R. Gruji} in the mid–1260s.19 This means that
the holding was taken from the monastery and granted to Dragota sometime after
1258 (at the very earliest), most likely after 1270 when the area around Skopje
was restored to Byzantine authority, and before 1282, when Milutin conquered the
area around Skopje. In other words, the confiscation occurred during the reign of
Michael VIII, probably after 1270.20
It seems that Dragota was no longer alive in 1300 and his pronoia was in the
hands of his son-in-law Manota. Ostrogorsky wrote that Manota, in order not to lose
the pronoia of his father-in-law which the king had given to a monastery, put him-
self at the service of the church of St. George. Thus Manota entered the service of
the church, and the act of Milutin notes clearly that he and his descendants should
perform military service for the church. Nevertheless, by the formula characteristic
of the act, Manota was free of the corvees imposed on men of servile condition.21
Ostrogorsky argued that this document shows that a principle of succession
for pronoiai existed in Serbia “to a full and unlimited degree.” He reasoned that
since Dragota was no longer alive in 1299/1300 and his pronoia was in the hands
of his son-in-law, the pronoia had been alienated by Dragota.22 However, it is by
17 Primarily on the basis of this phrase “imperial pronoia,” Naumov, K istorii vizantijskoj i
serbskoj pronii, 24–25, argued that Milutin’s chrysobull had nothing to do with the Byzantine institu-
tion of pronoia, and that “pronoia” in the act simply meant “property.” But Naumov’s argument falls
apart because a Byzantine mathematical treatise of which Naumov was unaware uses the phrase
pronoia basilikh to denote grants held by soldiers: K. Vogel, ed., Ein byzantinisches Rechenbuch
des fruhen 14. Jahrhunderts, Vienna 1968, 48–51, no. 32.1.
18 For the location of Re~ice (41.990¿N, 20.944¿E), see also V. Kravari, Villes et villages de
Macedoine occidentale, Paris 1989, 215–16, map 2. The accepted dating for Milutin’s conquest of
Skopje (1282) was challenged by L. Mavromatis, La fondation de l’empire serbe, Thessaloniki 1978,
35, who argued for a later date (the early 1290s). J. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans, Ann Arbor
1987, 219, thought that Mavromatis had made the date of the conquest an open question, but since
then scholars have generally ignored Mavromatis’ argument. See, e.g., Kravari, Villes et villages, 49;
M. @ivojinovi}, La frontiere serbo-byzantine dans les premieres decennies du XIV siecle, Buzantio
kai Serbia kata ton IDÏ aiwna, Athens 1996, 57; and ODB, s.v. “Skopje.”
19 SnM, I, 182, 191. The history of the area of Skopje during the 1250s and 1260s is poorly
known: see SnM, I, 122–23.
20 The ruler of Bulgaria does refer to himself as tsar, which raises the possibility that “imperial
pronoia” could mean a pronoia granted by a Bulgarian ruler, for which otherwise there is no evidence
whatsoever.
22 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 190.
184 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
no means certain that Manota held the pronoia legitimately. Indeed he received it
in dowry when he married Dragota’s daughter, and he felt he had a claim to it. But
Milutin, it would seem, disagreed. He gave Dragota’s pronoia to a monastery. In
order to maintain his hold of the property, Manota agreed to serve the monastery
as a soldier. If there was a principle in play here, it was that a pronoia remained
the property of the state. The situation was irregular. Dragota held a pronoia from
a Byzantine emperor. The region in which the pronoia lay was conquered by Ser-
bia. No longer feeling any obligation toward the Byzantine emperor (if he ever
had one), Dragota grouped the pronoia with the rest of his property. The pronoia
became the dowry he gave his son-in-law. After Dragota’s death it was discovered
that the property was not Dragota’s hereditary property and Milutin gave the prop-
erty to a monastery.
All of this was in accord with the handling of pronoiai in Byzantium. What
is not in accord with Byzantine practices is what Manota agreed to in order to
keep possession of the property. “Delivering oneself to the church” is without pre-
cedent in Byzantium and reflects Serbian practices.
The “soldier’s law” to which the document refers is known only through this
document. It was not an actual code of law, but the general set of rules–customary
and juridical–under which soldiers lived. It pre-dates the Serbian appropriation of
the institution of pronoia.23 This “soldier’s law” is again mentioned in Milutin’s
chrysobull in a passage that immediately follows the passage dealing with Manota.
We read, “My majesty ‰givesŠ Kalogorgije with his children and with their ba{tina
to the church, that they serve St. George according to the soldier’s law ‰vojni~’ski
zakon’Š and that their horse not be loaded and they not bear loads.”24 Evidently,
Kalogeorge–a Greek, based on his name–held hereditary property in the same vil-
lage as Manota.
Yet a third case similar to that of Manota is mentioned later in the docu-
ment: “And Hranca for his father-in-law’s property agrees with the church to be a
church soldier according to the law of St. Symeon and St. Sava, and that his horse
not be loaded and he not bear loads.” T. Taranovski pointed out the similarity to
the western European commendatio whereby a man bound himself more or less
voluntarily in service for life to another in return for protection and maintenance;
one could add that the inclusion of a property element is reminiscent of the west-
ern European fief de reprise whereby a man agreed to convert his patrimonial
holding into a fief for the mutual benefit of him and his lord.25
Ostrogorsky wrote that Manota entered church service as a pronoia holder
and that, after conveying himself and his ba{tina to the monastery, Kalogeorge
23 See R. Mihalj~i}, Vojni~ki zakon, Zbornik Filozofskog fakulteta, XII–1, Belgrade 1974,
305–09, and S. [arki}, Nomoj et ‘zakon’ dans les textes juridiques du XIVe siecle, Buzantio kai
Serbia kata ton IDÏ aiwna, Athens 1996, 263–64.
24 SnM, I, 226 (34). Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 194.
25 SnM, I, 235 (69). Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 197. T. Taranovski, Istoria srpskog prava u
Nemanji}koj dràvi, I, Belgrade 1931, 39. On the fief de reprise, see S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals,
Oxford 1994, 50 and the index.
“doubtlessly joined the class of soldier-pronoiars” as well.26 These statements

raise some questions about the status of Manota and his property. First, was
Manota a pronoia holder prior to 1299? Ostrogorsky assumed he was, but the docu-
ment says nothing about this. We read only that the property was an “imperial
pronoia” and that Manota received it from his father-in-law Dragota. Because
Manota was to serve the monastery as a soldier, he evidently was a soldier before
1299. Nevertheless, it does not appear that Manota considered the property a
pronoia; if anything, it would seem that he considered it ba{tina, and Milutin was
arguing otherwise. Second, was Manota’s property a pronoia after it was granted
to the monastery? And if so, who was its holder? If, as Ostrogorsky, wrote,
Manota was a pronoia holder after he entered church service, then his property has
to be considered his pronoia. The odd thing is that, according to this scenario, the
granting authority of the pronoia would be the monastery. Yet this is how Ostro-
gorsky viewed the matter. By the same token, when Kalogeorge turned himself
and his property over to the monastery, he likewise became a pronoia soldier of
the monastery and his property became a pronoia.
But one can raise a serious objection to whether either man was a pronoia
holder under the monastery. In the last section of the document dealing with
Re~ice, we read, “and from now and through the centuries, no pronoiar is to enter
Re~ice except St. George” (da ne uleze in’ pronijar’ u Re~ice razve Sveti Geor-
gije). The only way this statement can be literally true is if Manota and Kalo-
george (who “held” land in the village) were not considered pronoiars and if the
church was considered the pronoiar of their properties. Further, at the very end of
this last section, after assigning a monetary penalty for anyone who illegally de-
manded charges from the property of the monastery, we read, “The same goes for
all the church villages in Vodno and in Nerezi, in which is church pronoia and not
at all ba{tina” (Tako`de i po vseh’ seleh’ cr’kvnih’ vo Vodne i v’ Nerezih’, ponjeè
cr’kvna pronija jest’, a ne ni~ija ba{tina). The easiest way to make sense of this is
to read the last phrase as “and not at all (someone else’s) ba{tina.” In any event,
the clause refers to “church pronoia.”27
Is the document dealing with ecclesiastical/monastic pronoiai or ecclesiasti-
cal/monastic pronoiars? If it was the monastery that held the pronoiai, then the
men, Manota and Kalogeorge, were simply part of the traditional Serbian practice
of assigning men, including lesser nobles, to serve monasteries as soldiers.28 The
Serbian innovation would be that a monastery could hold a pronoia.29 If Manota
and Kalogeorge were the pronoiars, then the traditional Serbian practice of assign-
ing military men to monasteries was modified to account for the introduction of

27 SnM, I, 226–27 (35), 227 (35).
28 E. g., Mo{in, SnM, I, 313.138, 322.5–7, and SnM, III, 354 xiv. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite,
195–96.
29 This hypothesis would find some support if the post-Byzantine Serbian word prnjavor,
meaning a “village belonging to a monastery,” is derived from pronoia, as Novakovi}, Stara srpska
vojska, 74, and Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 211, assumed.
186 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
pronoia into Serbia. The men became pronoiars and the properties from which
they derived their livelihood were their pronoiai. Either interpretation works as a
Serbian adaptation of pronoia, and I cannot decide between the two.
This is the first Slavic document to contain either of the terms pronija or
pronijar. Pronija obviously is derived from the Greek pronoia. As for pronijar,
there are two possible etymologies: (i) Pronijar may be an abbreviated form of
proniariji (a noun in the singular), which is derived directly from the Greek
pronoiarios. The earliest appearance of pronoiarios in Greek is found in a letter of
John Apokaukos, metropolitan of Naupaktos, from 1228, which of course pre-dates
the first appearance of pronijar.30 For parallel derivations we have apoklisijar
from the Greek apokrisarios and notar, derived either directly from the Latin
notarius or via the Greek notarios. (ii) However, after the appearance of pro-
noiarios in Apokaukos’ letter, the Greek term does not appear again in any source
until the fifteenth century. Thus, it is possible that the origin of pronijar in Serbia
is completely independent of the Greek pronoiarios and instead was formed by
adding the common Slavic agent-noun suffix -ar (pisar “writer,” globar “fine col-
lector,” ulijar “beekeeper,” all attested in medieval Serbian) to pronija. The fact
that the plural of pronijar in Serbian documents is usually pronijarije would tend
to support the first possibility.
Around the same time as Milutin’s chrysobull for St. George a couple of
Greek documents mentioning pronoia were issued that were later translated into
Serbian. One is a Slavic translation of a lost Greek praktikon from 1300 for the
possessions of the monastery of Hilandar in the theme of Thessaloniki. In one par-
ticular village–Gradac (or Gradec), the Slavic translation of the Greek Kastrion or
Kastrin–the monastery held numerous paroikoi that had come “from the pronoiai”
of six laymen, all Greeks. Because Gradac (today Kastri) is located in the lower
Strymon valley near the Aegean, and because all of these men who earlier held
pronoiai in Gradac without doubt had received their grants originally from a
Byzantine emperor, this praktikon tells us little more than that Serbs had encoun-
tered Byzantine pronoia by 1300.
Of slightly more interest is a chrysobull of the Byzantine co-emperor Mi-
chael IX Palaiologos (1294/5–1320), issued sometime between April 1299 and
the end of 1300, which confirmed King Milutin’s gift to Hilandar of the monas-
tery of St. Niketas north of Skopje. Among the properties belonging to St. Niketas
was “the pronoiastic village called Banianis with all its rights.”31 This is the last
30 A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Iwannhj Apokaukoj kai Nikhtaj Cwniathj, Tessara-

kontaethrij thj kaqhgesiaj K. S. Kontou, Athens 1909, 379–82.
31 Actes de Chilandar I: des origines a 1319, ed. M. @ivojinovi} et al., Paris 1998, no. 18.14–15
= SnM, I, 289 (3) = Actes de Chilandar, I. Actes grecs, ed. L. Petit, Vizantijskij Vremennik 17 (1911),
suppl. 1 (repr. Amsterdam 1975), no. 51.12–13: eti de kai cwrion pronoiastikon kaloumenon
Mpanianin meta pantwn twn dikaiwn autou. On the village (42.108¿N, 21.388¿E), with other ref-
erences, see Kravari, Villes et villages, 94, map 3. On the date, see SnM, I, 286–87, but cf. F. Dolger,
Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des ostromischen Reiches von 565–1453, 4. Teil: Regesten von 1282–1341,
Munich 1960, no. 2624 (“1308”).
extant document in which a Byzantine emperor uses any form of the word pronoia
(noun, adjective, verb, etc.) in its technical sense until the fifteenth century. The
parallel chrysobull of the senior emperor, Andronikos II, which was probably is-
sued at the same time, has not been preserved, but it does exist in a Slavic transla-
tion. While this Slavic translation bears the date May 1308, it was produced in the
middle of the fourteenth century and contains a number of fabricated interpola-
tions. Nevertheless, it too speaks of “the village of Banjane, a pronoia, with all its
rights” (selo Banjane pronija s’ vsemi pravinami jego).32 As in the case of Manota
and Kalogeorge, ambiguity frequently accompanies these documents that deal
with pronoia.
The village of Banjane, about eight miles north-northwest of Skopje, came
under Serbian control following Milutin’s conquest of the region of Skopje in
1282. We do not know why Banjane was called a “pronoiastic village.” If it was
so called because it had recently been held by a pronoia holder, it would have
been originally granted by Milutin after 1282, or more likely by a Byzantine em-
peror during one of three periods: before 1203, between ca.1218 and 1230 (by a
despot of Epiros), or between 1246 and 1282 (by a Nicaean emperor or Michael
VIII).33 If this village had indeed been granted as a pronoia by a Byzantine ruler,
it would represent the northernmost limit of the Byzantine institution of pronoia.
Nevertheless, there are other possibilities, among which is the possibility that, fol-
lowing Serbian practice, the village passed to the church as a pronoia.34
Stefan De~anski (1321–1331)
While it is certain that Dragota’s pronoia was not granted by a Serbian ruler,
the next example of pronoia in a Serbian document is not as easy to characterize.
In 1326 Milutin’s successor Stefan De~anski granted the bishop of Prizren the vil-
lage of Ho~a “that pronoiars held” ({to su dr’àli pronijarije).35 In addition, De-
~anski confirmed the bishop’s possession of a stasis at Djurdjevi{te which Milutin
had given him, with its peasants, “that they would be the church’s and that they
serve the church, as it is their condition ‰zakonŠ. And let them be free of all
‘pronoiaric’ corvees as they were before ‰the donationŠ” (A ot’ vseh’ rabot’ pro-
nijarskyih da su svobodni kako su i ot’ ispr’va bili).36
Granting a religious foundation a village “that pronoiars held” is reminis-
cent of a common phenomenon in Byzantium, though in Byzantium the passage
would be phrased “that person N. held” or “that soldiers held.” The Serbs had
32 SnM, I, 319, and see 317. A composite act, with falsified interpolations, of Milutin from
around 1303 mentions Milutin’s earlier donation of St. Niketas and its properties, including the village
of Banjane, to a dependency of Hilandar. Here Banjane is called simply a “village” (selo), not a
pronoia: SnM, I, 313.137 (and see 297–99) = Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 477 iii = Actes de
Chilandar, II. Actes slaves, ed. B. Korablev, Vizantijskij Vremennik 19 (1915), suppl. 1, no. 16.13.
33 On this chronology, Kravari, Villes et villages, 161.
34 See Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 191–92. Ostrogorsky misidentifies some of the relevant docu-
ments.
35 SnM, III, 265 ii = Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 638 ii. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 203.
36 SnM, III, 270 x = Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 640 x.
188 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
adopted Byzantine phraseology. Another example is found in Du{an’s chrysobull

for the tower of Chryseia (near Hilandar on Mt. Athos) from January 1345. He
gave the tower the village of Gajdarohor (mod. Aedonochori, west of the Strymon
and north of the Aegean by a bit less than three miles) including land there “which
Serbo held” ({to je dr’àl’ Sr’bo).37 Serbo was probably a pronoia holder. On the
other hand, the reference to “‘pronoiaric’ corvees” in the second reference is more
a reflection of a Serbian than Byzantine practice. In Serbia there was a much
greater emphasis on corvees, whereas Byzantium was more monetized.38
Ho~a has been identified as modern Ho~a Zagradska (42.175¿N, 20.691¿E),
about four miles southwest of Prizren, and Djurdjevi{te is about thirty-two miles
west-southwest of Skopje, about seven miles west of the Vardar River (41.893¿N,
20.864¿E).39 This area was conquered by Milutin in 1282–83, and so it had been
outside of Byzantine control for more than forty years. Nevertheless, we cannot
say whether these pronoia holders were Greeks or Serbs, or whether they, or even
their fathers, had received their initial grant before or after Milutin’s conquest. Yet
the fact that the peasants were specifically freed of “pronoiaric corvees” would in-
dicate that there were still pronoia holders in the area of Djurdjevi{te.
In regard to terminology, this is the earliest appearance of the Slavic form
pronijarije, the plural of pronijar, as well as the only appearance of the adjective
pronijarski, formed simply by adding the Slavic adjectival suffix of possession
-ski to pronijar.
Stefan Du{an (1331–1355)

With the conquests of Stefan Du{an the Serbs came into even greater con-
tact with Byzantine pronoia. Generally, Du{an did little to inject Serbian practices
into the Greek-speaking areas that he conquered and that he simply continued
Byzantine administrative practices. Thus, when the sources mention pronoiai in
areas taken by Du{an, it is often difficult to know whether these were grants cre-
ated by Du{an or by Byzantine rulers. For example, Du{an’s 1345 act for the
church of the Perivleptos at Ohrid permits “neither kephale nor sevastos nor pro-
noiar” (ni kefalija, ni sevast’, ni pronijar’) entry into the villages and metochia of
the church. All of the terms in the clause denoted functions and were borrowed
from Byzantium. A kephale was normally the governor of a town, an island, or a
province. While in Byzantium sevastos was generally an honorary title or epithet
frequently used in conjunction with another courtly title (e.g., the sevastos tzaou-
sios N.) and implied no function, in Serbian sources the situation was a bit differ-
ent. The term sevast designated an official, evidently a high functionary, but it is
unclear exactly what his functions were or whether the title could cover different
types of officials. Milutin’s chrysobull for the monastery of St. George discussed
37 SnM, I, 361. P. Bellier et al., Paysages de Macedoine, leurs caracteres, leur evolution a
travers les documents et les recits des voyageurs, Paris 1986, 122.
39 SnM, III, 265 note 10. Kravari, Villes et villages, 187–88 and map 2.
above, as well as other sources, mentions a sevast’ gradsky (“town sevastos”) who
may well have been the governor of a town.40
Thus, Du{an’s act for the church of the Perivleptos forbids two types of gov-
ernment officials as well as pronoiars from entering church property. The associa-
tion of government officials with pronoia holders in exemption clauses does have
a parallel in Byzantium. A number of imperial documents from the Nicaean pe-
riod list pronoia holders along with state officials as the people who should not
both the property of a particular monastery. For example, in 1258 Michael VIII
Palaiologos issued an order to safeguard the rights of the monastery of the Virgin
Kechionismene near Miletos, a dependency of the monastery of St. John Theo-
logos on Patmos. The document concludes with a passage that orders certain cate-
gories of people from harassing this monastery’s property: “those serving succes-
sively as doukes ‰in thisŠ region, apographeis, ‰reassessors,Š and soldiers having
pronoiai in this place, and even those of Miletos themselves, ought to keep the
things belonging to such monastery without loss and unharmed.”41 The fact that
the list includes “those of Miletos themselves”–which could certainly include any
landholders–in addition to doukes, fiscal assessors (apographeis), and soldiers
having pronoiai locally, suggests that it was not exclusively government officials
who might trouble the monks, but anyone with some status. All of the people in
the list were in a position to make unjust demands of the monastery. By the same
token, this is probably why Du{an includes pronoiars with sevastoi and kephalai
in the 1345 act.
Du{an acquired the town of Ohrid in 1334 by treaty with Byzantium. Evi-
dently there were pronoia holders in the area of Ohrid in 1345, but what we do not
know is whether these pronoia holders were Greeks or Serbs, or whether they re-
ceived their pronoiai from a Byzantine or Serb ruler. Nevertheless, it does appear
that Du{an granted pronoiai to Serbs in the Byzantine territories he conquered. In
one specific case we read that when the Serbs invaded the area of Verrhoia around
1344, they took a metochion from the monastery of Prodromos tes Petras and “the
Serbs gave this in a pronoiastic way to various persons” (twn Serbwn kai touto
didontwn pronoiastikw tropw proj diafora proswpa). When Byzantine con-
trol was restored over the area in 1356, the monks received the property back from
the emperor.42
40 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 673 xvi = A. Solovjev, Odabrani spomenici srpskog prava,
Belgrade 1926, 129. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 207. See ODB, s.v. “kephale,” “sebastos,” and Pseudo-
-Kodinos, Traite des offices, ed. J. Verpeaux, Paris 1966, s.v. sebastoj in the index. SnM, I, 186 note
23 and 229 (39). For the sevastos and kephale in Bulgaria, see Biliarski, Instituciite na srednovekovna
Balgarija, 125–35, 286–92.
41 E. Vranouse, Buzantina eggrafa thj monhj Patmou, I¶ Autokratorika, Athens 1980,
no. 25.17–18: twn kata kairouj douk‰.Škeuontwn e‰n th tŠoiauth cwra apogra‰feŠwn ‰te kai
eŠx‰iswtŠwn kai twn pronoiaj econtwn stratiwtwn en tw autw topw, alla dh kai autwn twn
Palatianwn . . . . We should understand doukeuontwn for the document’s misspelled douk‰.Ške-
uontwn. And for other documents with similar lists, see Vranouse, no. 23.7 (1214), and no. 26.20–22
(1258).
42 Actes de Vatopedi, II, ed. J. Bompaire et al., Paris 2006, no. 144.19–20.
190 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
Here we have a case in which a Byzantine source claims that the Serbian
government granted pronoiai in conquered territory. Should we accept this at face
value? Even though the events described had taken place years earlier, monaster-
ies had a long collective memory, especially when it served their purpose. The
monks of Verrhoia, from whom the information was obtained, certainly knew
whether their property was confiscated or not. The only questions are, Was the
confiscated property granted to Serbs? and under what conditions was the prop-
erty granted? Because the document notes that the monastery regained the prop-
erty once the area again came under Byzantine control, it would seem that the
property had been granted to Serbs. But it would be presumptuous to assume that
the monks in Verrhoia or the judicial tribunal in Thessaloniki had knowledge of
the terms under which the individual Serbs were granted this property or that they
could distinguish between property granted as a Byzantine-style pronoia or prop-
erty granted as a simple reward in full ownership. At most we can say that it ap-
peared to the monks that some of the Serb conquerors had been granted the
monastery’s property as pronoia grants.
The first clear evidence that Serbian rulers granted pronoiai in areas that
were not under Byzantine control at any time during the thirteenth or fourteenth
centuries is found in a chrysobull from 1346 for the monastery of St. Stefan in
Banjska, southeast of Novi Pazar. Du{an granted two villages to the monastery:
Ki~iki with its possessions, “as pronoiars held them earlier” (kako jesu dr’àli
pr’vo pronijarije), as well as the village of Ulotino with all its associated proper-
ties, “as pronoiars held” (kako su pronijarije dr’àli).43 While I do not know the
location of the village of Ki~iki, Ulotino is northwest of the town of Plav in
Montenegro, near the Albanian border, about sixty-eight kilometers (by road)
west of Pe}.44 Because this area had not been under Byzantine authority since be-
fore the Latin Conquest of 1204, it is quite unlikely that the document is referring
to men who received grants of pronoiai from a Byzantine emperor. The ethnicity
of the pronoiars (Serb or Greek) is unknown as well as which Serbian ruler made
the initial grants.
Du{an’s Zakonik. One of the most important sources for the history of medi-
eval Serbia is the Zakonik, or Law Code, of Stefan Du{an. This collection of law
contains three passages referring to pronoia, all of which date to the initial issu-
ance of the code in 1349. Article 59, entitled “Concerning pronoia,” states that
“no one is free to sell or buy a pronoia who does not have ba{tina; from ‘pro-
noiaric’ land no one is free to place ‰itŠ under the church; if it is ‰soŠ placed, it is
not valid” (O pronii: Proniju da nest vol’n’ nikto prodati ni kupiti, kto ne ima
ba{tine; ot pronijar’ske zemlje da nest vol’n’ nik’to podloìti; pod cr’kov’; akoli
podloì da nest tvr’do).45 The literal meaning of the first sentence of the passage is
43 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 631 i, iv = L. Slaveva and V. Mo{in, Srpski gramoti od

Du{anovo vreme, Prilep 1988, 219.
44 Osterreichisch-Ungarischen Monarchie, die dritte militarische Aufnahme, topographical map,
1:200000, sheet “38¿ 43¿ Novi Pazar” (1898): http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/200e/38–43.jpg
45 Zakonik cara Stefana Du{ana: 1349 i 1354, ed. N. Radoj~i}, Belgrade 1960, art. 59, pp. 54, 106.
that someone would need to have ba{tina before he could buy or sell a pronoia. In
other words, someone who held patrimonial property and a pronoia was permitted
to sell his pronoia and buy one, but someone who held no patrimonial property
could not sell or buy a pronoia. As much as I am loath to rewrite sources, this in-
terpretation simply will not do. Rather, when the first sentence is viewed in con-
junction with the second and third sentences, it is relatively clear that the intent of
the article, despite the poor wording of the first sentence, is to prevent the alien-
ation of pronoiai through purchase, sale, and pious donation.46 Ba{tina could be
alienated or acquired privately; pronoia could not. This is in accord with the
Byzantine treatment of pronoia at that time as well as Milutin’s act of 1299/1300
for the monastery of St. George.47
As a way to make sense of the first sentence of the article, Aleksandar
Solovjev suggested that ba{tina should be interpreted as “patrimonial rights” over
the property. If so, this would leave open the possibility that some pronoiai in Ser-
bia were regarded as ba{tina, that is, the holder enjoyed patrimonial rights over
the grant. On the other hand, George Ostrogorsky preferred to see a firm distinc-
tion between pronoia and ba{tina, and he noted only that this article does not for-
bid the hereditary transmission of pronoiai.48
A creative solution to the problem was proposed by E. P. Naumov: in the
Slavic text, reverse the first comma and first semi-colon. The article may then be
translated, “no one is free to sell or buy a pronoia; he who does not have ba{tina is
not free to place ‰somethingŠ from ‘pronoiaric’ land under the church; if it is ‰soŠ
placed, it is not valid.” The passage is no longer quite as awkward. In any event
the meaning suggested by Ostrogorsky remains the same.49
The second appearance of pronoia in the Zakonik appears in Article 68 enti-
tled “On the law,” and it deals with the obligations on meropsi, the Serbian equiv-
alent of paroikoi:
The law for meropsi in all lands: that they work two days in a week for the
pronijar; and that they give him every year the imperial hyperpyron; and
during mowing time, that they cut hay for him one day; and at grape-gather-
ing time one day; and who ‰among the pronoia holdersŠ does not have vine-
yards, let them ‰the meropsiŠ do other corvees for him one day; and he gets
everything of what the meropsi accomplish, and nothing ‰elseŠ is taken by
46 As George Ostrogorsky and other scholars have concluded: see Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 198,
with further references to the secondary literature.
47 In 1343 a man named Demetrios âlapija, who held a village “by God and by the mercy ‰po
milostiŠ of the lord kralj” donated it to the Htetovo monastery: SnM, III, 298 (84). D. Angelov,
Agrarnite otno{enija v severna i sredna Makedonija prez XIV vek, Sofia 1958, 53, hypothesized that
this man was the holder of a pronoia and not of ba{tina, but if so, this would be a clear violation of ar-
ticle 59 of the Zakonik.
48 A. Solovjev, Zakonik cara Stefana Du{ana 1349. i 1354. godine, Belgrade 1980, 223.
Solovjev’s comment that follows this, “We do not have documents about pronoiai from Du{an’s time,”
is of course incorrect. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 199.
49 Naumov, K istorii vizantijskoj i serbskoj pronii, 28 note 27.
192 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
him against the law (O zakonu: Merophom’ zakon’ po v’sei zemli; u nedeli da
rabotaju dva d’ni pronijaru; i da mu daje u godi{ti per’peru carevu; i zama-
nicom’ da mu kosi sena d’na jedin’; i vinograda d’n’ jedin’; a kto ne ima
vinograda; a oni da mu rabotaju ine rabote d’n’ jedin’; i {to urabota meroph’
tozi v’se da steì; a ino prez’ zakon’ ni{to da mu se ne uzme).
Ostrogorsky assumed that “in all lands” meant every type of land as distinguished
by its holder–church, noble, emperor, and pronoiar–and that pronijar was used in
the article as a catch-all synonym for any landholder. From this Ostrogorsky con-
cluded that there must have been a great expansion of pronoia in Serbia under
Du{an for him to use pronijar to designate any landholder.50
This is not necessarily so. “In all lands” need not mean “in every type of
landholding arrangement.” In the Zakonik zemlja (“land”) is used in its concrete
as well as its abstract sense. Thus, we read as well in another article, “All chur-
ches that are found in the land of my majesty ‰or, ‘my empire’ po zemli carstva
miŠ; my majesty frees of all corvees great and small.” And another article begins,
“The mountains in the land of my majesty. …”51 Therefore, it is possible that “in
all lands” means “in all the lands of my dominion,” and that the article is not con-
cerned with every type of landholding, but exclusively with pronoiai.
Further, the notion that pronijar could mean any landholder is unsupported
by any other source. In many other articles of the Zakonik we find gospodar, the
normal word used to designate the holder of property or the holder of paroikoi,
which incorporates the meaning of “lord,” “master,” and “owner.”52 There was no
reason for Du{an to use pronijar in this one article if he did not mean people who
held pronoiai. In other Serbian documents pronijar appears far too rarely for it to
be recognized as a synonym for landholder. Not even Ostrogorsky claimed that
other appearances of the term had this broad sense.
I think it is quite possible that we are viewing in this article the integration
of the Byzantine institution of pronoia into the medieval Serbian agrarian and fis-
cal system. The obligations of meropsi on the properties of the church and of the
holders of ba{tina were handled by customary rules. There was no need for Du{an
to explain them. Rather, Du{an was applying to pronoia grants the customary
rules that applied to ba{tina. This was simple enough to do because, as Ostro-
gorsky wrote, even though pronoia differed from ba{tina in principle, from an
economic point of view the two were essentially the same.
As for ba{tina, the Zakonik deals with only limited aspects of what was the
main form of large-scale property ownership in Serbia. All of the regulations that
mention ba{tina are concerned with the legal status of ba{tina or the relations be-
tween ba{tina and the state. Thus, there are articles on the legal status of the
ba{tina of priests (art. 31 and 37) and of ba{tina given to people by Du{an or by
50 Zakonik, art. 68, ed. Radoj~i}, pp. 56, 108. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 200.
51 Zakonik, art. 26, ed. Radoj~i}, pp. 48, 96; and art. 81, pp. 58, 112. Similarly, art. 101, 118,
119, 132, and 156.
52 E. g., Zakonik, art. 22, 65, 77, 115, and 117.
prior rulers (art. 39, 40, and 134). Other articles address the hereditary transmis-
sion and alienation of ba{tina (art. 41 and 174). Other articles confirm that ba-
{tina was free of corvees and was not to be confiscated (art. 42 and 43), that
slaves were to be considered part of one’s ba{tina (art. 44 and 46), that the admin-
istration of churches held as ba{tina was a private matter (art. 45), and that
ba{tina was to be distinguished from pronoia (art. 59). One article prohibits alter-
ing documents involving ba{tina (art. 138). There is nothing here about the inter-
nal management of one’s ba{tina; this matter was left to the owner.
The third and last reference to pronoia in Du{an’s Zakonik is in an article
entitled “On courtiers”: “If someone of a lord’s court who is a pronijarevi} does
evil, let ‰hisŠ father’s companions punish him by jury; if he is a commoner, let him
face the boiling cauldron” (O dvoraneh: Dvorane vlastel’sci ako u~ini koje zlo ktoo
ot nih; ktoo bude proniarevik’; da ga oprave o~ina druìna porotom’; akoli e sebr’;
da hvati u kot’l’). This article distinguishes pronijarevi}i–literally “sons of pro-
noiars”–from commoners (sebri), both of whom were to be found at the personal
court of a lord (evidently one of high status).53
Ostrogorsky thought that pronijarevi}i were the sons of pronoiars but that
they held no pronoiai, because if they held pronoiai, they would be called pro-
noiars.54 This is possible, and Solovjev suggested that they may have been the
younger sons of pronoiars, which might explain why they had no pronoiai of their
own. In Byzantine sources the issue never arises because primogeniture was not
practiced and because of the existence of pronoiai held jointly by more than one
person. Further, Solovjev speculated that such a pronijarevi} would seek his live-
lihood in the service of some powerful lord, probably as a soldier, distinguish
himself in battle, and then receive his own pronoia (from whom Solovjev does not
say). According to Solovjev, the purpose of the article was to establish the social
level of those who would judge him.
This is all quite reasonable, but the evidence is only circumstantial. Could
not pronijarevi}i have been pronoiars who had inherited their pronoiai from their
fathers, rather than receiving them from an initial grant from the Serbian ruler?
But all of this begs the more obvious question: are we to think that the only mem-
bers of a lord’s private court were the sons of pronoiars and commoners? Because
this obviously was not the case, the point of the article, as Solovjev noted, was to
establish the social position of pronijarevi}i.55
During Du{an’s reign there was a presence of pronoia in the area of Stru-
mica, and nothing better illustrates the difficulty in dealing with medieval Serbian
documents than the two passages referring to pronoia found in the two versions of
a “revised”–or simply falsified–chrysobull of Stefan Du{an which confirms Stefan
Hrelja’s donation of properties in that area to the monastery of Hilandar. In the
53 Zakonik, art. 106, ed. Radoj~i}, pp. 63, 119. A. A. Majkov, O zemel’noj sobstvennosti v
drevnej Serbii, ^tenija v Imperatorskom ob{~estve istorii i drevnostej rossijskih (1860), kniga 1, p. 29.
54 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 209–10, quoting Taranovski, Istoria srpskog prava, I, 38.
55 Solovjev, Zakonik cara Stefana Du{ana, 263.
194 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
first passage, among the properties listed from the area of Strumica, one version
mentions “the village of Sekirnik and a parcel of land that Laskar Kotanic held”
(Selo Sekir’nik’ i komat’ zemlje {to jest’ dr’àl’ Laskar’ Kotanic’), which is followed
immediately by “the village of [tuka and a parcel of land that the Greek pronoiars
Tutko Osan, Laskar Siderofaj held” (Seli{te [tuka i komat’ zemlje {to su dr’àli
pronijarije gr’~’sci Tut’ko Osan, Laskar’ Siderofai). The other version of the chry-
sobull is similar: “The village of Sekirnik and land that Laskar Kotanic held. And
land that the Greek pronoiars Tutko Osan, Laskar Siderofaj held” (Selo Sekirnyk’ i
zemlja {to je dr’àl’ Laskar’ Kotanic’. I zemlju {to su dr’àli pronijarije gr’~’sci
Tutko Asan’, Laskar’ Siderofai).56
The second passage found in the chrysobull which mentions pronoia appears
in the description of a property called Kunarani. One of the versions contains the
phrase “by the road to the pronoiar’s pear tree” (putem’ na pronijarevo kru{ije). The
published edition of the second version omits this part of the document.57
There are a number of reasons to doubt the authenticity of this act. The
month and world-year of issuance (“May 6844,” corresponding to May 1336),
found in both versions of the chrysobull, do not agree with the indiction year
(“11”) as found in both versions of the chrysobull (May 6844 is indiction 7). Fur-
ther, sometime before Hrelja’s death (in December 1342 or 1343) an unknown
Byzantine emperor (generally considered Andronikos III Palaiologos, but possibly
John VI Kantakouzenos) issued a chrysobull confirming Hrelja’s donations to
Hilandar.58 This act omits any reference to the properties of Laskar Kotanic,
Tutko Osan, and Laskar Siderofaj, or to the property called Kunarani. Later, be-
tween around 1364 and 1376, the monasteries of Hilandar and Panteleemon were
embroiled in a pair of disputes over two sets of properties: the village of Breznica,
once held by the Koteanitzes family, and the properties that once were held by
Tutko Osan and Laskar Siderofaj. Thus, we have a discrepancy between two acts
(the Byzantine chrysobull confirming the donation and Du{an’s chrysobull) and a
motive for the discrepancy (a later property conflict between two monasteries).
Thus, it is quite possible that the two versions of Du{an’s chrysobull were
produced during the dispute between Hilandar and Panteleemon, that is, between
around 1364 and 1376. As for the lost, original act of Du{an that confirmed
Hrelja’s donation, while opinions vary, the true chrysobull, upon which the two
versions were based, was probably issued in 1343.59
56 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 400 vii, 401 viii. Actes de Chilandar, II. Actes slaves, no.
27.54–56. The printed editions of both versions place commas between “Tutko” and “Osan,” and be-
tween “Laskar” and “Siderofaj,” implying four men. However, other documents (see below) show that
the passage is dealing only with two men. Cf. the treatment of the document in Ostrogorsky, Feodalite,
204–05, repeated in Ostrogorsky, Etienne Du{an et la noblesse serbe dans la lutte contre Byzance,
Byzantion 22 (1952) 157–58.
57 Actes de Chilandar, II. Actes slaves, no. 27.67–68.
58 Chilandar, ed. Petit, no. 131.
59 Slaveva and Mo{in, Srpski gramoti od Du{anovo vreme, 131–34. S. ]irkovi}, Hreljin po-
klon Hilandaru, ZRVI 21 (1982) 103–17.
Another possibility has been offered by Mirjana @ivojinovi} who treats the
information found within the two versions of the chrysobull more sympathetically
and presents a clever interpretation. She argued that the reason that the Byzantine
chrysobull omitted all mention of the lands of the two Greek pronoia holders was
because the Byzantine emperor chose not to recognize that this area had been lost
to the Serbs.60
The pronoiars Laskar Siderofaj and Tutko Osan. Whether or not we should
regard the two versions of the chrysobull of Du{an as reliable recreations of a lost
act or as falsifications serving the interests of the monks of Hilandar, we read of
Laskar Siderofaj and Tutko Osan in two other documents. In a Slavic act from
1375/6, two bishops, on the order of Constantine Draga{, decided, probably on the
basis of Du{an’s chrysobull, that “the land of Laskar Siderofag and of Tutko”
(zemli Laskara Siderofaga i Tutkove) belonged to Hilandar. The document speci-
fies that “neither in Greek days” nor in the time of Emperor Du{an was “the land
of Laskar Siderofag or of Tutko” connected with the villages of Makrijevo or
Mokrani (which belonged to the monastery of Panteleemon), and that Hilandar in
fact had received these properties as a gift from Hrelja.61 In the other act, from
1376/7, the despot John Draga{ confirmed Panteleemon’s possession of several
properties. Among them was the village of Makrijevo, with everything it con-
tained, including “the land of Tutko and the land of Siderofaj” (i zemlju Tutkovu i
zemlju Siderofajevu).62
It is quite odd that, a year after the bishops decided in Hilandar’s favor, the
despot John (Constantine Draga{’ brother) confirmed Panteleemon’s possession of
these properties. Perhaps the irregularities of Du{an’s chrysobull were discovered.
In any event, we observe that the two versions of Du{an’s chrysobull alone claim
that Osan and Siderofaj were Greeks and pronoia holders. That the pair were
Greek is quite plausible. Certainly “Laskar” is the Greek surname “Laskaris,”
while “Siderofag” or “Siderofaj” evidently corresponds to the unattested Greek
“Siderophagos/-phagas” (Sidhrofagoj/-fagaj, “iron eater”). The two Slavic
forms reflect respectively the written form and the pronunciation of the name.
Osan/Asan appears to be the Byzantine family name Asen/Asan/Asanes. On the
other hand, Tutko is certainly not Greek; it seems to be Slavic though I have not
60 M. @ivojinovi}, Le conflit entre Chilandar et Saint-Panteleemon au sujet du village de

Breznica, STEFANOS: Studia byzantina ac slavica Vladimiro Vavrinek ad annum sexagesimum
quintum dedicata, ed. R. Dostalova and V. Konzal, Prague 1995 = Byzantinoslavica 56 (1995) 239–40
note 8.
61 Solovjev, Odabrani spomenici, 169–71. ]irkovi}, Hreljin poklon, 113. M. Blagojevi}, Obrok
i priselica, Istorijski ~asopis 18 (1971) 176–77.
62 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 511 iii, and see Actes de Saint-Panteleemon, ed. P.
Lemerle et al., Paris 1982, actes serbes, no. 7. Only the 1376/7 act indicates that each of the two held
distinct property. From the two versions of the chrysobull of Du{an and the 1375/6 act, one might
think that Tutko and Siderofaj held this part of their pronoia jointly. In Byzantium it was rather com-
mon for two men to hold a share a pronoia, but, aside from the case of Tutko and Siderofaj, there is no
evidence of this phenomenon in Serbia. On all these documents dealing with Hilandar’s property near
Strumica, see M. @ivojinovi}, Strumi~ki metoh Hilandara, ZRVI 45 (2008) 205–21.
196 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
encountered it in other medieval Balkan sources. If the two were pronoia holders,
they may have held their pronoia a long time earlier.63
However, given that only a single questionable act claims that Laskar Si-
derofaj and Tutko Osan really were pronoia holders raises the question of whether
the two really were pronoia holders. The documents do make errors regarding the
earlier status of properties. A notable example of this, and one that ostensibly in-
volves a pronoia, is found in an act from 1369 of the despot John Uglje{a. At that
time the bishop of Hierissos and the monastery of Zographou were quarreling
over a property in Hierissos “which the soldier called Saravares held in his pro-
noia” (hn eicen eij pronoian autJ kai stratiwthj Sarabarhj epikeklhme-
noj).64 The story behind the dispute went back to the 1310s when, according to a
Byzantine act from 1320, in exchange for a property turned over to the fisc,
Zographou had received a property in Hierissos “which was taken away from
Saravares” (htij apespasqh apo tou Sarabarh). A few years later another doc-
ument retells the story, explaining that the fiscal officials located a property near
Hierissos “which was from the kellion found inside the Holy Mountain called tou
Saravari.” Evidently the monastery of Saravari had relinquished control over this
property–it is called exaleimmatike ge–for the officials state that, before they
transferred it to Zographou, it was being worked by the monks of Esphigmenou
and the inhabitants of Hierissos. Thus, a property that once belonged to a small
monastery erroneously was transformed into a part of a soldier’s pronoia.65
Nevertheless, if Siderofaj and Tutko were pronoia holders, they had re-
ceived their pronoiai most likely during the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos
(1282–1328), since the area of Strumica was in Serb hands by 1334 if not earlier.
The location of the properties of Tutko and Siderofaj is problematic. Both ver-
sions of Du{an’s chrysobull list the property after mentioning the village of Se-
kirnik, on the north bank of the Strumica river about eight miles east of the town
of Strumica. One version indicates that their property was either in or quite near
63 The name Siderophas (Sidhrofaj) is attested: E. Trapp et al., Prosopographisches Lexikon

der Palaiologenzeit, Vienna 1976ff., CD-ROM version 2001, no. 20817. Someone named “Sidrofaj,”
certainly the same name, once held a property in the village of Bogomila, about 17 miles north-north-
west of Prilep: SnM, IV, 120 (53), 145 (16), 181 (33), and cf. 85 (20), and on the location of the vil-
lage, Kravari, Villes et villages, 240, map 5. The closest parallel form I can find to Tutko is “Tutic,”
the surname of a monk known from an inscription in Prizren from around 1332: Lj. Stojanovi}, Stari
srpski zapisi i natpisi, I, Belgrade 1902, repr. 1982, no. 60.
64 A. Solovjev and V. Mo{in, Gr~ke povelje srpskih vladara, Belgrade 1936, repr. London
1974, no. 36.75–77. Cf. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 211. Another document from the same date refers
simply to the property tou Saravare: Zographou, no. 44.60–67.
65 Zographou, no. 17.80–84 (1320), and no. 18.11–14 (issued sometime after May 1325): htij
hn ¥tou« apo tou ¥entoj tou« kelliou tou euriskomenou entoj tou agiou orouj, tou Sarabari
legomenhn. To make better sense of the clause, the words found in the printed text which I have
bracketed should be deleted. On this monastery, see Th. Papazotos, H monh tou Sarabarh sto Agion
Oroj, Kleronomia 12 (1980) 89–90. Also see Actes de Lavra I–IV, ed. P. Lemerle at al., Paris
1970–82, II, no. 109.350 (1321), for a reference to a vineyard plhsion tou Sarabari at Drymosyrta.
And see M. Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204–1453, Philadelphia 1992,
376–77.
[tuka, a village today about two miles north of Sekirnik (see Figure 1). The other
version does not mention [tuka.
Figure 1. The area east of Strumica
The act of the two bishops from 1375/6, which includes the assertion that
their land was never part of the villages of Makrijevo or Mokrani, both about five
miles southwest of Sekirnik, and south of the Strumica river, indicates their prop-
erty bordered on these villages. If these references are all accurate, then Siderofaj
and Tutko held property bordering on both the village of [tuka and the adjacent vil-
lages of Makrijevo and Mokrani. Even though the modern village of [tuka is over
six miles from the other two modern villages, this is not impossible. The territory of
each village could easily have extended to a point at or close to the Strumica. The
property of Siderofaj and Tutko probably laid close to the Strumica.
Laskar Kotanic. The reference to Laskar Kotanic in the two versions of
Du{an’s chrysobull is connected to a dispute between the monks of Hilandar and
Panteleemon over a village called Breznica. Sometime in the early 1360s the
monk Makarios Laskaris Koteanitzes (his first name, before he became a monk, is
unknown) donated this property to Panteleemon. The monks of Hilandar chal-
lenged this donation, arguing that it had been theirs through chrysobull, and in
1370 the council (Protaton) of Mt. Athos, at the order of the Serbian despot John
Uglje{a, issued a ruling in a Greek act that ordered Panteleemon to return the vil-
lage to Hilandar (Chilandar, ed. Petit, no. 153). To support their claim they evi-
198 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
dently produced the falsified chrysobull of Du{an, as well as a Greek chrysobull

dated 1293, in which Leo Koteanitzes was granted Preasnitza (i.e., Breznica) by
Andronikos II Palaiologos. The extant version of the latter document is either a
poorly-crafted copy of an original chrysobull or a forgery.66 In 1371 a Greek act
(see below) was issued by a judge-general named Michael Skoules, who, on the
order of John Uglje{a, established the boundaries of Breznica for the benefit of
Hilandar.
Three years later (1374), in a Greek act, Constantine Laskaris Palaiologos,
who inherited the village of Breznica from his mother, notes that the dispute over
Breznica had been going on for ten years, beginning during the time of his father.
He writes that he appealed the decision of 1370 to the patriarch and in the end
succeeded in proving that he (and his father) had every right to donate Breznica to
Panteleemon. The document includes the signatures of Constantine’s two broth-
ers, Leo Laskaris Koteanitzes and (simply) George.67
Ostrogorsky thought that the Kotanic (that is, Koteanitzes) in the falsified
chrysobull of Du{an was a pronoia holder, but there is little evidence to support
this view. The family was Greek, and they held property in the plain of Strumica.
Evidently they held such property before the Serb conquest of the area around
1330, and they were not displaced by these events. If the content of the question-
able chrysobull of Andronikos II from 1293 is true, the family held Breznica as
patrimony. But because we do not know this, the manner in which they held the
property is ambiguous.
The pronoiar’s pear tree. The second reference to pronoia in the question-
able chrysobull of Du{an involves the property description of Kunarani and the
mention of “the pronoiar’s pear tree.” According to Sima ]irkovi}, this property
description is based on a genuine prostagma of Stefan Du{an, issued sometime
between 1349 and 1353, which confirmed Hilandar’s possession of Kunarani, lo-
cated east of Strumica. In this document, one of the property’s borders runs, at one
point, “to the ‰or ‘a’Š pronoiar’s pear tree” (na pronijarevo kru{ije).68
The 1371 act of the judge-general Michael Skoules which describes the
boundaries of Breznica also refers to a pronoiar’s pear tree. One of the borders ran
“toward the south to the pronoiarikos pear tree, at which there is a stone” (proj
meshmbrian eij thn pronoiarikhn apidean, en V kai liqoj).69 This is the only
66 Chilandar, ed. @ivojinovi}, I, no. 12 = Chilandar, ed. Petit, no. 11. Dolger, Regesten, no.
2155, considered it a false act, but the recent editors have concluded tentatively that the document is a
medieval facsimile. The Koteanitzes family later donated this property to a monastery, and this would
explain why someone might fabricate a document that allowed Koteanitzes to alienate the property.
For the earlier history of the Koteanitzes family, see Lj. Maksimovi}, Kotanic Tornik, ZRVI 29/30
(1991) 183–91.
67 Chilandar, ed. Petit, no. 155. On this act, Actes de Saint-Panteleemon, p. 174.
68 Edited in ]irkovi}, Hreljin poklon, 116–17. On the document, Slaveva and Mo{in, Srpski
gramoti od Du{anovo vreme, 142–44.
69 V. Mo{in and A. Sovre, Supplementa ad acta graeca Chilandarii, Ljubljana 1948, no. 8.53.
For the correction to the reading of Skoules’ name, see @ivojinovi}, Le conflit entre Chilandar et
Saint-Panteleemon, 241 note 16.
appearance of the adjective pronoiarikos (pronoiarikoj). It clearly derives from

the Serbian pronijarevo. The translator rendered the possessive adjectival suffix
-evo as the Greek adjectival suffix -ikos, and was familiar enough with Greek to
restore the omicron in pronoia that the Serbian pronija drops.
Although somewhat uncommon, it is not unheard of for fruit trees to denote
property boundaries.70 A “pronoiar’s pear tree” would be, obviously enough, a
pear held or once held by a pronoia holder. Because many of the toponyms in the
documents describing Kunarani (Du{an’s prostagma of 1349–53, and the ques-
tionable chrysobull of Du{an) and Breznica (Skoules’ document from 1371) are
the same, it seems certain that the two properties shared a common border, on
which there was a “pronoiar’s pear tree.” It is impossible to say where this tree
was located. Because the course of the Strumica and its ancillary streams have
changed since the Middle Ages due to canalization and other natural alterations, it
is quite difficult to reconcile the toponyms in the property descriptions with mod-
ern toponyms found in the area. I suspect that some of the toponyms have
moved.71 Based on my examination of the relevant document, my guess is that the
pear tree was somewhere between [tuka and Sekirnik.72 Whether the tree was
connected to the pronoiars Siderofaj and Tutko, or perhaps even to Laskaris Ko-
tanic, is unknown. In the end all these documents tell us quite little aside from the
fact that pronoiai, probably granted by a Byzantine emperor, existed in the area of
Strumica.
Thessaly and Epiros after Du{an’s death

After Du{an’s death in 1355 his empire fragmented. Relatives, governors,
and military leaders took control over the various provinces of his territory. Here
and there the documents make mention of pronoia. In the fourteenth century
Thessaly was under direct Byzantine authority for a relatively short time, from
1335 to 1348 when, after initial resistance, it submitted as a whole to Stefan
Du{an in 1348. Du{an’s half-brother Symeon Uro{ was appointed despot and gov-
erned Thessaly (along with Epiros) until Du{an’s death. In the confusion that fol-
lowed Symeon was forced to abandon Thessaly. Nevertheless, he proclaimed him-
self emperor in 1356, and after the death of the despot Nikephoros II of Epiros in
1358 or 1359, he became the independent ruler of Thessaly and Epiros.
Two documents issued by Symeon refer to pronoia. The first is a Greek
chrysobull, issued in 1359, for the monastery of St. George in Zavlantia. The act
70 E. g., in Lavra, II, no. 90.214–16, a “great pear tree” forms a boundary.
71 S. ]irkovi}’s diligent attempt to locate the toponyms in the description of Kunarani (]ir-
kovi}, Hreljin poklon, 110 and see his map), further elaborated by @ivojinovi}, Le conflit entre Chilan-
dar et Saint-Panteleemon, map on page 239), points to an enormous property of more than 150 square
miles (more than 400 km2). For comparison, such a property would be larger than the entire peninsula
of Mt. Athos. Even though much of this land was mountainous pasturage, to me the scale of such a
holding seems unlikely.
72 We may note that the toponym Kru{ica (from kru{-, the root for “pear”) exists on modern
maps at a place to the north and adjacent to the village of Sekirnik. See the map: Vojnogeografski
institut, Belgrade, 1:50,000, sheet 184.2 “Strumica” (1955).
200 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
confirmed the monastery’s possession of and rights over a number of properties.

One was the metochion of St. George in a place called Kotzekovo with its “men,
vineyards, fields, and watermills, as well as the share of the deceased Eudokia
‰…Š around Voxista, which Vodeses held for his oikonomia” (oper kateicen o
Bodeshj eij oikonomian autou).73
In Greek sources from the later thirteenth century through the fourteenth
century, oikonomia was the technical term for a pronoia. Pronoia continued to be
used in common parlance during this period, but it embraced a sense much larger
sense than oikonomia, denoting any grant that originated from an imperial bene-
faction. Oddly enough, there is no evidence that the term oikonomia in its fiscal
sense was ever imported by any of Byzantium’s neighbors including Serbia. This
is yet another indication that most of Byzantium’s neighbors who began to use the
term pronoia were not in fact appropriating the Byzantine institution of pronoia at
all. Rather, they appear to have appropriated the term pronoia to designate any
grant of property or privileges from the government with only a vague connection
with the Byzantine institution.
Returning to the 1359 chrysobull, it is not clear from the syntax whether
Vodeses held the entire complex or merely the “share” (meridion, i.e., the stasis)
of the deceased Eudokia. The dependency of St. George is again listed as a pos-
session of the Zavlantia monastery in a chrysobull from 1366 of the same ruler.
Here it is simply “St. George near Kotzekovo.”74 Vodeses appears to have been a
pronoia holder, but nothing can be said about when or from whom he received his
oikonomia, whether from a Byzantine emperor, from Du{an, from Symeon him-
self, or even from Nikephoros II. Even his ethnicity is unknown.
The other document of Symeon Uro{ is of much greater interest because it
deals with the possibility of someone granting a pronoia who was not a ruler in his
own right. In January 1361 Symeon issued a chrysobull on behalf of “the much-
-beloved, most tender father and godfather of my majesty ‰pathr kai sunteknoj
thj basileiaj mouŠ, megas konostaulos kyr John Tzaphas Orsini Doukas.” In the
document Symeon reports that a fire in Arta had destroyed all of the records of the
extensive properties that Tzaphas had received from Stefan Du{an. At Tzaphas’
request, Symeon now confirmed his possession of these properties with complete
tax exemption and the right of him and his heirs to alienate them.75
D. M. Nicol has pointed out the problems with this document, for which no
manuscript is any longer extant. Symeon refers to his document as a “chryso-
voullon prostagma,” an incorrect use of diplomatic terminology. Many of the
properties mentioned were not under Symeon’s authority at this time, including
the island of Leukas, held by a Venetian. Many of the places mentioned, such as
73 Solovjev–Mo{in, Gr~ke povelje, no. 31.42–46.

75 Solovjev–Mo{in, Gr~ke povelje, no. 32.4, and repeated almost identically no. 32.47–48,77.
The edition in F. Miklosich and J. Muller, Acta et diplomata Graeca medii aevi sacra et profana, Vi-
enna 1860–90, III, 128, writes the name as “Tsaphas.”
Igoumenitsa, are here mentioned for the first time in any historical source. Nicol
concluded that this document granting a suspiciously large assemblage of proper-
ties to Tzaphas was created at a later time “to support the claims or the vanity of
latter-day members of the Italian family of the Orsini.”76
With these caveats in mind, we turn to the section of the document of inter-
est to us. Within a long list of properties is “Phiatza, as he gave it to his nephew
kyr John Tzaphas Orsini by means of pronoia” (thn Fiatzan, kaqwj dedwken
authn tJ aneyiJ autou kuriJ IwannV tJ Tzafv OursinJ dia pronoiaj).77
In their edition, A. Solovjev and V. Mo{in, along with G. Soulis, identified
the holder of Phiatza, “John Tzaphas Orsini” with the beneficiary of the docu-
ment, the megas konostaulos John Tzaphas Orsini Doukas. Solovjev and Mo{in
suggested that the pronoia was conferred by Du{an, while Soulis implied it was
granted by Symeon.78 If Solovjev and Mo{in or Soulis are correct, then the bene-
ficiary of Symeon’s chrysobull, John Orsini Tzaphas Doukas, was not only the
godfather of Symeon, but the nephew of Du{an or Symeon.
On the other hand, G. Ostrogorsky wrote that the passages should be inter-
preted such that the megas konostaulos John Tzaphas Orsini Doukas granted his
nephew John Tzaphas Orsini a property as a pronoia. Thus, he implies, John
Tzaphas Orsini Doukas and John Tzaphas Orsini were two different people. This
is probably correct because (a) three times in the document the megas konostaulos
is referred to as John Tzaphas Orsini Doukas, while in this one passage (lines
41–42), “Doukas” is omitted, and (b) nothing in the passages suggests that the im-
plied antecedent of dedwken is Du{an or Symeon; the immediate verb prior to
dedwken in the chrysobull is katecei (line 25), which clearly refers to the megas
konostaulos Tzaphas. (However, since the megas konostaulos Tzaphas was evi-
dently descended from a brother of John II Orsini, and since Symeon was married
to Thomais, John II Orsini’s daughter, there was a familial relationship between
Symeon and the megas konostaulos.) Yet, Ostrogorsky’s interpretation creates an
otherwise unattested situation: a pronoia granted by someone other than a ruler.
He concluded that we should not try to generalize from this case, and, in any
event, the megas konostaulos Tzaphas was a Latin anyway.79 Indeed, Tzaphas
may have had his own unique understanding of pronoia. In the end, this chryso-
bull tells us little about either the Byzantine or the Serbian pronoia.
76 D. Nicol, The Despotate of Epiros, 1267–1479, Cambridge, Eng. 1984, 140–41. D. Polemis,
The Doukai, London 1968, 186, also questions the document’s authenticity and suggests that John
Tzaphas Doukas Oursinos was godfather to one of Symeon’s children.
78 Solovjev–Mo{in, Gr~ke povelje, pp. 486, 525. G. Soulis, The Serbs and Byzantium during
the Reign of Tsar Stephen Du{an (1331–1355) and His Successors, Washington 1984, 244 note 15.
Soulis also states that Symeon granted Tzaphas the title of megas konostaulos and, through this
chrysobull, increased Tzaphas’ properties (pp. 122, 244 note 15); however, nothing that I see in the
chrysobull allows these observations.
202 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
A few years after the issuance of this chrysobull, Symeon appointed his
son-in-law, the Serbian despot Thomas Preljubovi}, as governor of Ioannina. Pre-
ljubovi} ruled Ioannina and northern Epiros from 1366/7 until his death in 1384.
The sole source for his reign is the anonymous Chronicle of Ioannina, written
around 1440, which makes two vague references to pronoia in Ioannina, both in
connection to what the mid-fifteenth century chronicler regarded as Thomas’ mis-
rule. The chronicle first notes his imposition of corvees (angareiai) and taxes:
“about the wine, the grain and angareiai and burdens and taxes the whole time,
and other kinds of sufferings, that is, mitata and pronoiai and monopolies, at one
time on wine and grain, at another on meat, and then on cheese, always on fish
and fruits, and sometimes for himself and sometimes for his archons.”80 The asso-
ciation of mitata, pronoiai, and monopolia, is puzzling. Mitata and monopolies
were related: the former were various rights of requisition of food and supplies in
kind, and the latter, as they imply, were franchises granting the right to control the
sale of commodities. It would be difficult to create any link between these and
pronoiai except to say that they were all privileges that Thomas either created for
himself or granted to certain of his favorites.
The chronicle describes further depredations of Thomas from 1380/1: “And
as many of the paroikoi from the church who were left as a result of his misdeeds,
while he cast them from the pronoia of the Serbs, he did not permit them in the
church, but held them for himself” (Kai osoi twn apo thj ekklhsiaj paroikoi
apo thn kakopragian autou enapeleifqhsan anqrwpoi, exebale men autouj
apo thj pronoiaj twn Serbwn, ouk eiase de autouj en tV ekklhsiv, alla di’
eautou autouj epekratei).81 At least this passage links “pronoia” to paroikoi
and property: paroikoi were confiscated from the church and granted to Serbs as
“pronoiai,” and later taken from the Serbs. But the nature of this “pronoia” cannot
be determined.
John Uglje{a (1366–1371)
Meanwhile the Serbian despot John Uglje{a ruled a substantial portion of
Byzantine Macedonia from his base at Serres. In April 1369 he gave to the monas-
tery of Koutloumousiou a village on the plain of Mavrovo called Neochorion (to-
day Novo Selo, 12 miles east of Strumica and about four miles west of the Bulgar-
ian border: see Figure 1). The village was granted “s’ vsem’ {to e dr’àl’ Theodor’
Oduevik’ pri carstve mi, i pri Kalavari proniari {to su dr’àli ili ljudi ili mesta ili
vokie s’ vsem . . . .”82 The syntax of the passage is ambiguous and there are two
ways to translate it:
80 L. Vranouses, To cronikon twn Iwanninwn kat’ anekdoton dhmwdh epitomhn, Athens

1965, reprint from Akadhmia Aqhnwn. Epethrij tou Mesaiwnikou Arceiou 12 (1962), par. 12,
lines 21–30 (article pagination, p. 83): hgoun mitata kai pronoiaj kai monopwlia. ODB, s.v.
“mitaton.”
81 Vranouses, To cronikon twn Iwanninwn, par. 23, lines 31–37 (article p. 91). Naumov, K
istorii vizantijskoj i serbskoj pronii, 29–31.
82 P. Lemerle and A. Solovjev, Trois chartes des souverains serbes conservees au monastere de
Kutlumus, in Lemerle, Le monde de Byzance, London 1978, no. XIX, p. 135.14–15.
(i) Koutloumousiou received the village “with everything that Theodore

Odujevi} held under my empire and under the pronoiar Kalavar, with every-
thing that they held, whether people, land parcels, or fruit trees . . . .”
(ii) Koutloumousiou received the village “with everything that Theodore
Odujevi} held under my empire and with everything that the pronoiars un-
der Kalavar held, whether people, land parcels, or fruit trees . . . .”
Neither translation is satisfactory. In the first rendering there is nothing for the
plural “they” to refer to, only Odujevi}. The second rendering takes care of this
problem; “they held” (su dr’àli) refers to the pronoiars. And it creates a nice
parallel between each “with everything” (s’ vsem’). But this second rendering
has its own problems. In all of the other documents which use the Slavic
pronijar in the plural, the plural of pronijar is pronijarije, not proniari. In its in-
flection proniari would seem to be connected to Kalavari, and that takes us back
to the first rendering.
Both renderings assume that there is a parallel between pri carstve mi and
pri Kalavari so that the preposition pri in pri carstve mi and in pri Kalavari should
mean the same thing. Pri carstve mi is easily translated as “under my empire,” but
only in the sense of “during the time of my empire.” This is seen in another docu-
ment (discussed below) in which Stefan Lazarevi} gave a village to his mother
“which Mladen Psisin held in pronoia under ‰priŠ my lord and father the holy
prince.” What could “in the time of Kalavar” mean? Alternatively, pri Kalavari
could mean “near Kalavari.” Was he perhaps the commander of a group of pro-
noia soldiers? If so, that would take us back to the second rendering.83
An attempt to identify this Kalavar meets with some success. A Serbian
chrysobull of Stefan Du{an from 1347 mentions a Kalavar in his service, and a
man named Kalavaris donated the river of Ploumiska to Lavra in a Greek act
dated, weakly, to 1350/1.84 The men in these two documents are referring either
to the Kalavar in the 1369 act or to an immediate ancestor. But such an identifica-
tion does not do much to clarify the meaning of Uglje{a’s act.
In the end, we can say only that Odujevi} may have been a pronoia holder,
and that his land as well as land held either by Kalavar in pronoia or by other
pronoia holders who were connected somehow to Kalavar were granted to Kou-
tloumousiou. Whether the pronoia grant or grants referred to were granted ini-
tially by a Serbian or Byzantine ruler is unknown.
Another act of Uglje{a, this one from May 1369, also mentions pronoia.
Uglje{a confirmed Caesar Vojihna’s gift of property near Drama to the church of
the Archangels at Gabrovo near Strumica (see Figure 1). Vojihna, Uglje{a’s fa-
ther-in-law, was the semi-independent governor of the town of Drama in the later
1350s. The document includes a common type of clause forbidding a list of peo-
ple from troubling the church over the property: “‰neither dvoŠrodrìca
83 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 212, thought the second translation more likely.

84 Solovjev, Odabrani spomenici, 144. Lavra, III, no. 130.
204 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
‰“courtholder”–a rare wordŠ, nor pronoiar, nor courtier, nor who is in authority
who ‰(illegible)Š‰inŠ my empire” (‰ni dvoŠrodr’ìca, ni pronijar’, ni dvoranin’, ni
koja vlast’ koja se . . . carstva mi).85
Vladimir Mo{in suggested that the linking of pronoia holders with what ap-
pear to be government officials suggests that pronoiars were representatives of
state authority.86 Whether or not this was true in Serbia, it was certainly not the
case in Byzantium. Pronoia holders in Byzantium were no more representatives of
the state than were monasteries which had received fiscal privileges from the em-
peror or laymen who had received outright grants of land from the emperor. As
discussed above in relation to Du{an’s 1345 act for the church of the Perivleptos,
similar phrases ordering government officials and pronoia holders not to bother
the properties of particular monasteries appear in several thirteenth-century By-
zantine documents. Pronoia holders, like government officials as well as other
laymen, were all in a position to make unjust demands of the monastery and, at
least in Byzantium, that is why they appear in these lists.
More generally, George Ostrogorsky made the observation that it is remark-
able that, of the eight or nine extant documents issued by John Uglje{a (the au-
thenticity of one is highly suspect), two should mention the institution of pronoia.
His conclusion was that this indicates something of the widespread frequency of
pronoia grants in the part of Macedonia ruled by Uglje{a.87
In 1371 Uglje{a and his brother Vuka{in died fighting the Turks at the battle
of Marica. That same year Du{an’s son and heir, Stefan Uro{ V, the last “tsar” of
medieval Serbia, died as well. The fact that neither Uro{ nor his successor Prince
Lazar (1371–1389), both based in Skopje, issued any extant documents mention-
ing pronoia might suggest the limited establishment of the institution of pronoia in
Serbian lands.
Stefan Lazarevi} (1389–1427) and the despots Brankovi} (1427–1458)

Nevertheless, pronoia reappears in Serbia under Lazar’s son Stefan Laza-
revi} in three documents, two of which illustrate the appropriation of the institu-
tion by the Serbs and one the spread of the institution of pronoia further afield. In
January 1388 Stefan Lazarevi}’s father Prince Lazar confirmed the foundation of
the church of the Presentation of the Virgin at Ibar by a man named Obrad
Dragosali} who had endowed the church with his own ba{tina. These properties–a
village and three hamlets–were located in the area east of the Ibar River, about 14
miles northeast of Novi Pazar. That same month the Serbian patriarch Spyridion
confirmed this as well.88 However, around 1392 Lazarevi} issued a chrysobull in
85 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 751 ii. Actes de Saint-Panteleemon, actes serbes, no. 5
(summary). G. Ostrogorsky, Serska oblast posle Du{anove smrti, Belgrade 1965, 22 note 12.
86 SnM, I, 262.
88 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 775–76, 776. B. Zarkovi}, Ibarski posed manastira Hilan-
dara, Ba{tina 25 (2008) 189. The property of the church included the village of Kukan with the ham-
lets of âjetina, [ipa~ino, and Novoselo. Kukan has been identified as Beljak (see Zarkovi}, Ibarski
which he gave this church and its endowment of villages and hamlets to the
monastery of Hilandar. He explains that Dragosali} had promised this church and
its property to Hilandar, but “because of his unfaithfulness, I took it from him and
I gave his ba{tina to my noble in pronoia” (i dah’ njegovu ba{tinu vlastelinu momu
u proniju). Now Lazarevi} granted Hilandar’s request that it receive the church
and its endowment.89 The pronoia holder is not named; he held the property no
longer than four years or so.
Another act of Lazarevi}, issued in 1404/5, gave the village of Jabl’~je (or
Jabu~je, in the area of Leva~ south of Kragujevac) “which Mladen Psisin held in
pronoia under my lord and father the holy prince” ({to je dr’àl’ u proniju Mladen’
P’sisin’ pri gospodinu i roditelju mi svetomu knezu) to his mother Jevpraksia. She
was to hold it as ba{tina or kupljenica (purchased property), so that she might do-
nate it to Hilandar.90 As in Byzantium, something described as a pronoia was
transferred by the ruler to another party as an alienable grant.
The final document of Stefan Lazarevi} leads to another area where one
finds pronoia. This is Zeta, the Adriatic littoral roughly from Kotor to Skadar. Af-
ter the death of the ruler of Zeta, Bal{a III (1403–1421), Lazarevi} acquired his
territory, sent an army there, and continued Bal{a’s war with Venice. A peace
treaty was signed in 1423 and further negotiations were concluded in 1426 be-
tween Venice and Serbia, the latter represented by the future ruler George Bran-
kovi}, acting in the name of his uncle Stefan Lazarevi}. Among the terms of the
revised 1426 agreement Serbia agreed that the Pa{trovi}i and Vi{evi}i clans–cli-
ents and allies of Venice who inhabited the coastal area south of Kotor now con-
trolled by Serbia–would keep their “pronoiai, patrimony, and dowries” (cum tute
so pronie, patrimonii et dote) and everything else that they held at the time of
Bal{a’s death.91
Even though Zeta had been a part of the Serbian state since the twelfth cen-
tury, the earliest evidence that the institution of pronoia existed there dates to the
very end of the fourteenth century, to the period of Venetian control over the area
of Skadar which began in 1396. This suggests that it was the Venetians and not
the Serbs who introduced pronoia into Zeta. Throughout the fifteenth century nu-
merous Venetian documents and a few from other archives illuminate the adapta-
tion of pronoia to the tribal culture of Zeta, as well as the manner in which the Ve-
netians accommodated that adaptation of pronoia. Most notable is the so-called
Cadaster of Skadar from 1416–17 which lists, among the villages owing taxes to
posed, 192–96), and this, as well as the other three hamlets are found on Osterreichisch-Ungarischen
Monarchie, topographical map, sheet “38¿ 43¿ Novi Pazar”:
http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/200e/38–43.jpg
89 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 458 i. This document grants the village of Prisojnik and
three hamlets in Hra{ti in which there were beehives as well. Whether these were part of Dragosali}’s
donation, and were later granted to a pronoiar, is unclear. See Zarkovi}, Ibarski posed, 191–92.
Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 212–13.
90 Solovjev, Odabrani spomenici, 190–91. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 214.
91 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 283 ii.
206 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
Venice, a number of villages held by pronoiars. Altogether sixteen pronoia hold-

ers appear in the document. This document, combined with the other fifteenth-
-century documents dealing with the area of Skadar, dwarfs the Byzantine sources
available for the study of pronoia. Given the complexity of the material, no brief
summary of the material is possible. The subject deserves a monograph in its own
right.92
Following Stefan Lazarevi}’s death in 1427 his territory was inherited by his
nephew George Brankovi} who ruled the Serbian state until his death in 1456. He
was succeeded by his son Lazar (1456–1458). During their reigns the last refer-
ences to pronoia in medieval Serbia appear.
Two of these involve the city of Dubrovnik. A document from March 1447
from the archives of Dubrovnik contains the instructions of the government of
Dubrovnik for its ambassadors at the court of George Brankovi}. We read that
while Brankovi} had given Dubrovnik the right to seize the property of Serbian
debtors, the city did not have the right to take property given in pronoia (quello
fosse dato in pronia). The despot had the right to dispose of these as he pleased (e
che la soa Signoria possa far de tal caxe et possession date in pronia ogni so
voler). Further, the ambassadors were to ask Brankovi} to issue a document order-
ing his officials who would judge such disputes to satisfy such claims of property
and house, “save and reserving that which was given by the Seigneur ‰Brankovi}Š
in pronoia” (salvo et reservando quello fosse dato per lo Signor in pronia).93 The
implication is clear that the ruler maintained control over the pronoiai that were
granted by him.
Another document from the archives of Dubrovnik deals with Nicolin Cri-
jevi}, a citizen of Dubrovnik and by all evidence a businessman. In 1453 he and
his brother Jakov formed a company, pooling their assets. At this time he de-
clared, “And I Nicolin have certain villages in ‘Slavonia,’ which I have held in
pronoia of the lord despot ‰George Brankovi}Š, as well as whatever else in the fu-
ture I have from the lord despot, we should wish that we should enjoy the said
92 The Cadaster is found under entries 2045, 2107, and 2158 in Acta Albaniae Veneta sae-
culorum XIV et XV, ed. G. Valentini, part 2, vol. 8, Milan 1970; vol. 9 in the series is the valuable in-
dex to vol. 8. G. Ostrogorsky’s chapter on pronoia in Zeta (Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 222–57) remains
the best introduction to the subject, though it only scratched the surface and it is colored by his own
understanding of Byzantine pronoia. Some of the richness that further study of the subject promises
can be seen in the various works of Ivan Boì}: Proniarii et capita, ZRVI 8/1 (1963) 61–70; Paraspor u
skadarskoj oblasti, ZRVI 4 (1956) 13–30; and Le systeme foncier en ‘Albanie venitienne’ au XV
siecle, Bolletino dell’ Istituto di Storia della societa e dello stato veneziano 5–6 (1963/64) 65–140.
Also, P. G. Valentini, Chiarimenti sulla natura della pronia bizantina attraverso la documentazione
della sua continuazione in Serbia e Albania, Atti dello VIII Congresso internazionale di studi bizan-
tini, I, Rome 1953 = Studi bizantini e neoellenici 7 (1953) 488–510. It is surprising that O. Schmitt’s
hefty 700-page book, Das venezianische Albanien (1392–1479), Munich 2001, devotes a mere seven
pages (pp. 167–73) to pronoia (and most of his analysis is based on scholarship dealing with pronoia
in Byzantium).
93 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 215, 216 note 1. B. Kreki}, Contribution to the Study of the Pronoia
in Medieval Serbia, in Kreki}, Dubrovnik, Italy and the Balkans in the Late Middle Ages, London
1980, no. XVIII, 1.
possession between ourselves” (Et jo Nicolin o certi caxali in Schiauonia, li qual o

avuto in pronia del signor despot, tanto queste quanto che altre che per lo avignir
avero del signor despot, vogliemo che le dicte possession usufructemo tra nui), but
if the company dissolved, “these above-mentioned villages in Schiauonia should
remain of me Nicolin” (quelli caxali in Schiauonia sporadetti resteno et siano de
mi Nicolin). Bari{a Kreki} made the point that this is the only known instance of a
foreigner receiving a pronoia in Serbia and in fact one who was no military man.
Thus, by the middle of the fifteenth century there was no necessary connection be-
tween pronoiai and military service in Serbia. We do not know what Nicolin did
to earn his pronoia, but he seems to have felt that he had the right to include it
within his company.94
A more traditional document, and one that has numerous parallels in Byzan-
tium, was issued in December 1457 by Despot Lazar Brankovi}. Through this act
he granted his treasurer Radoslav some villages and other properties in the area of
Smederevo and of Golubac “that my lordship gave to him ‰asŠ pronoia” ({to mu e
dalo gospodstvo mi proniju). If Radoslav died or became a monk, these properties
were to pass to Radoslav and Radovan, his nephews by his sister, “to hold these in
pronoia and to work and fight as the other pronoiars” (da ih dr’è u proniju a da
od nih rabotaju i vojuju kako i ini proniarie). This is the one clear example where
a pronoia in Serbia was hereditary. However, as in Byzantium it seems that it
could not be otherwise alienated. Like the previous document, there is the sense
here that military service was no longer an essential component of holding a
pronoia in Serbia. Michael Lascaris noted that, even though Radoslav’s heirs were
“to work and to fight as the other pronoiars,” it would be difficult to conclude that
Radoslav, Lazar’s treasurer, was a military man. Lascaris suggested that the phrase
may have been a mere formula.95
The last document dealing with pronoiai in Serbia was not issued by a Ser-
bian ruler at all, but by the king of Bosnia Stefan Toma{ (1443–1461) and his son
Stefan Toma{evi}. In October 1458 they issued an act for the benefit of Stefan
Ratkovi}, the logothetes at the courts of the despots George and Lazar Brankovi}.
Ratkovi} “held pronoia from the deceased lord . . . Despot George, and from the
deceased lord Despot Lazar” ({to e imao pr’niju ‰second time ‘pr’nie’Š u sveto
po~iv{ega gospodina . . . despota Djurdja, i u sveto po~iv{ega gospodina despota
Lazara) consisting of many villages. With the death of Lazar in 1458 Serbia fell
under the control of Bosnia. Consequently, after the death of his previous lords,
Ratkovi} went to the Bosnian king and through this act the king transformed his
pronoia into ba{tina. Henceforth, Ratkovi} held the properties in full ownership
with the right to alienate them. G. Ostrogorsky pointed out how unique this was:
“Although the inheritance of pronoia had been since the fourteenth century fre-
quent in Byzantium, and general in Serbia, pronoia, never in Byzantium and never
94 Kreki}, Contribution, 4, 6–8.

95 M. Lascaris, Actes serbes de Vatopedi, Byzantinoslavica 6 (1935) 183–84, no. 9.2–3,6–7,
and cf. line 11. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 216–17. Lascaris, Cinq notes, 269–70.
Table 1. Summary of known pronoia holdings connected with Serbia
208
date when what was held in

location held by granted by passed to
pronoia held pronoia
Re~ice, southwest of Dragota, then his
before 1299/1300 small parcel a Byzantine ruler a monastery
modern Tetovo son-in-law Manota
“pronoiastic” village of
before 1299/1300 north of Skopje ? ? a monastery
Banjane
Gradac on the lower
before 1300 paroikoi multiple Greeks a Byzantine ruler a monastery
Strymon
before 1326 village of Ho~a southwest of Prizren “pronoiars” ? the church of Prizren
a stasis at Djurdjevi{te in the upper Vardar
before 1326 ? ? the church of Prizren
and its peasants valley
Tutko Osan and
at [tuka, east of
before 1334 land Laskar Siderofaj, ? a monastery
Strumica
“Greek pronoiars”
before 1334 “pronoiar’s” pear tree east of Strumica ? ?
1344–56 a metochion Verrhoia Serbs Stefan Du{an back to a monastery
ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
(abstract reference to
1345 Ohrid ? ?
pronoiars in area)
northwest of Plav in
before 1346 village of Ulotino “pronoiars” a Serbian ruler a monastery
Montenegro
before 1346 village of Ki~iki ? “pronoiars” a Serbian ruler a monastery
before 1359 at least a peasant stasis Thessaly Vodeses ? a monastery
John Tzaphas Orsini, Stefan Du{an or
1361 village (?) of Phiatza Epiros
a Latin Symeon Uro{
before 1369 village of Neochorion east of Strumica one or more pronoiars ? a monastery
date when what was held in
location held by granted by passed to
pronoia held pronoia
1369 Drama ? ?
pronoiars in area)
c.1375–1380 included paroikoi Ioannina Serbs Thomas Preljubovi}
mother of ruler as
Mladen Psisin, a Serb
bef. 1389–1404/5 village of Jabu~je south of Kragujevac Lazar ba{tina, and then to
pronoiar
monastery
several villages and Ibar, northeast of
after 1389-c.1392 probably a Serb Stefan Lazarevi} a monastery
hamlets Novi Pazar
? (connected with Pa{trovi}i and
1426 Zeta ?
patrimony and dowries) Vi{evi}i clans
1447 Serbia? Serbs George Brankovi}
pronoiars in area)
Nicolin Crijevi}, a
1453 villages Serbia George Brankovi}
citizen of Dubrovnik
permission granted to
villages and other area of Smederevo transmit to Radoslav’s
1457 Radoslav, a Serb Lazar Brankovi}
properties and Golubac nephews under same
conditions
Stefan Ratkovi}, a George and Lazar Ratkovi} as ba{tina
1458 numerous villages Serbia
Serb Brankovi} by the king of Bosnia
MARK C. BARTUSIS: Serbian pronoia and pronoia in Serbia
209
210 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
in Serbia, was transformed into patrimonial property, having kept the character of
an inalienable and conditional possession.”96
Table 1 summarizes the known pronoia grants either conferred by Serbian
rulers or mentioned in Serbian documents. The table supports the hypothesis that
Stefan Milutin’s conquests in the area of Skopje, where there was a significant
presence of Byzantine pronoiai, marks the genesis of the institution in medieval
Serbia. For example, the ample evidence of pronoiai in the plain east of Strumica
is probably a vestige of Byzantine control in the area. While there were Slavic
pronoia holders in the area of Macedonia since the reign of John III Vatatzes, it is
reasonable to think that over the years Milutin would replace pronoia holders who
had received their grants from the Byzantine emperor with pronoiars of his own
choosing, a majority of whom were presumably Serbs.
The earliest secure evidence of pronoia conferred by a Serbian ruler dates to
early in the reign of Stefan Du{an and was connected to Du{an’s conquests of
Byzantine territory. As for the importation of pronoia into areas of Serbia that had
never known Byzantine pronoiai, the earliest evidence of this also dates to era of
Du{an. Nevertheless, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that pronoiai were con-
ferred by Stefan De~anski, if not by Milutin. The fact that we do not know
whether a Byzantine or Serbian ruler granted many of the pronoiai in Table 1
shows that the Serbian appropriation of the institution often did not disrupt land-
holding patterns. It is when the conquering Serbs acted in a heavy-handed fashion,
dispossessing local landholders (as in Verrhoia and Ioannina) that we learn clearly
who was granting the pronoiai.
Little is known of most of the pronoia holders in Table 1. Following the
Byzantine model, and given the nature of the ruling class in both Serbia and By-
zantium, we might think that the most of the recipients of such privileges were
military men. Certainly by the fifteenth century Serbian rulers were granting pro-
noiai to men who were not necessarily connected to military matters. The paucity
of evidence makes it impossible to say whether this, or any other apparent chan-
ges or developments, was connected to any evolution within the institution in Ser-
bia. The most significant known Serbian modification of the institution can be de-
duced from the 1299/1300 chrysobull of Milutin for the monastery of St. George:
either a church held pronoiai or pronoia holders were specifically commended to a
church.
The administration and fiscal management of pronoiai in medieval Serbia is
poorly understood as well. As in Byzantium, in Serbia pronoiai were granted ex-
clusively by rulers. Article 68 of Du{an’s Zakonik specifies the obligations of the
peasants held by the pronoiar in Serbia. As in Byzantium these included corvees
and money payments, though in Serbia corvee obligations were much more oner-
ous: two days per week according to the Zakonik, while in Byzantium twelve or
twenty-four days per year was the obligation most commonly attested. As in By-
96 F. Ra~ki, Prilozi za zbirku srbskih i bosanskih listina, Rad Jugoslavenske akademije zna-
nosti i umjetnosti 1 (1867) 156. Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 218–20.
zantium it was forbidden to alienate property held as pronoia, though the granting
of hereditary rights as a special privilege, as in Byzantium, meant that the prop-
erty could be transmitted to heirs.
Our knowledge of pronoia in Serbia is relatively limited. Because of this,
and because of the danger inherent in filling in the gaps in our knowledge with in-
formation from what we know about the Byzantine institution, I hesitate to draw
many conclusions about the institution as it manifested itself within Serbian soci-
ety. The most important issue–how significant the institution of pronoia was to
medieval Serbia–still cannot be answered with any confidence. And most cer-
tainly we cannot assume that the pronoiai that Serbian rulers granted to their no-
bles and soldiers was granted under the same terms and was regarded as the same
kind of grant as pronoiai in Byzantium. Nevertheless, the appearance of pronoia
throughout the territory of Serbia for well over a century, and particularly the sev-
eral appearances of pronoia in Du{an’s Zakonik suggests that it did play an appre-
ciable role in medieval Serbia.
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sterdam 1975).
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Actes de Chilandar I: des origines a 1319, ed. M. @ivojinovi} et al., Paris 1998.
Actes de Saint-Panteleemon, ed. P. Lemerle et al., Paris 1982.
Actes de Vatopedi, II, ed. J. Bompaire et al., Paris 2006.
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(repr. Amsterdam 1969).
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Georgii Acropolitae Opera, ed. A. Heisenberg, 2 vols., Leipzig 1903, repr. Stuttgart 1978.
Kreki} B., Contribution to the Study of the Pronoia in Medieval Serbia, in B. Kreki}, Dubrovnik, Italy
and the Balkans in the Late Middle Ages, London 1980, no. XVIII.
Lascaris M., Actes serbes de Vatopedi, Byzantinoslavica 6 (1935) 166–85.
Lemerle P. and A. Solovjev, Trois chartes des souverains serbes conservees au monastere de Kutlumus,
in Lemerle, Le monde de Byzance, London 1978, no. XIX.
Miklosich F. and J. Muller, Acta et diplomata Graeca medii aevi sacra et profana, Vienna 1860–90.
Mo{in V. and A. Sovre, Supplementa ad acta graeca Chilandarii, Ljubljana 1948.
Mo{in V. et al., Spomenici za srednovekovnata i ponovata istorija na Makedonija, Skopje and Prilep
1975–88.
Novakovi} S., Zakonski spomenici srpskih dràva srednjega veka, Belgrade 1912.
Papadopoulos-Kerameus A., Iwannhj Apokaukoj kai Nikhtaj Cwniathj, Tessarakontaethrij
thj kaqhgesiaj K. S. Kontou, Athens 1909, 373–82.
212 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
Pseudo-Kodinos, Traite des offices, ed. J. Verpeaux, Paris 1966.

Ra~ki F., Prilozi za zbirku srbskih i bosanskih listina, Rad Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetno-
sti 1 (1867) 124–64.
Sathas C., Mnhmeia Ellhnikhj Istoriaj. Documents inedits relatifs a l’histoire de la Grece au
moyen age, Paris 1880–90.
Slaveva L. and V. Mo{in, Srpski gramoti od Du{anovo vreme, Prilep 1988.
Solovjev A., Odabrani spomenici srpskog prava, Belgrade 1926.
Solovjev A. and V. Mo{in, Gr~ke povelje srpskih vladara, Belgrade 1936, repr. London 1974.
Stojanovi} Lj., Stari srpski zapisi i natpisi, I, Belgrade 1902, repr. 1982.
Vogel K., ed., Ein byzantinisches Rechenbuch des fruhen 14. Jahrhunderts, Vienna 1968.
Vranouse E., Buzantina eggrafa thj monhj Patmou, I¶ Autokratorika, Athens 1980.
Vranouses L., To cronikon twn Iwanninwn kat’ anekdoton dhmwdh epitomhn, Athens 1965, reprint
from Akadhmia Aqhnwn. Epethrij tou Mesaiwnikou Arceiou 12 (1962) 57–115.
Zakonik cara Stefana Du{ana: 1349 i 1354, ed. N. Radoj~i}, Belgrade 1960.
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Angelov D., Agrarnite otno{enija v severna i sredna Makedonija prez XIV vek, Sofia 1958.
Angold M., The Byzantine Empire, 1025–1204: A Political History, 2nd. ed., London and New York
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(1981) 7–14.
Asdracha C., From the Byzantine Paroikoi to the Vassalli Angarii, Etudes balkaniques 22, 1 (1986)
114–22.
Bartusis M., Land and Privilege in Byzantium: The Institution of Pronoia, Cambridge (forthcoming).
Bartusis M., The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204–1453, Philadelphia 1992.
Bellier P. et al., Paysages de Macedoine, leurs caracteres, leur evolution a travers les documents et les
recits des voyageurs, Paris 1986.
Biliarski I., Instituciite na srednovekovna Balgarija: Vtoro balgarsko carstvo, XII–XIV vek, Sofia
1998.
Blagojevi} M., Obrok i priselica, Istorijski ~asopis 18 (1971) 165–88.
Boì} I., Paraspor u skadarskoj oblasti, ZRVI 4 (1956) 13–30.
Boì} I., Proniarii et capita, ZRVI 8/1 (1963) 61–70.
Boì} I., Le systeme foncier en ‘Albanie venitienne’ au XV siecle, Bolletino dell’ Istituto di Storia
della societa e dello stato veneziano 5–6 (1963/64) 65–140.
Dolger F., Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des ostromischen Reiches von 565–1453, 4. Teil: Regesten
von 1282–1341, Munich 1960.
Fine J., The Early Medieval Balkans, Ann Arbor 1991.
Fine J., The Late Medieval Balkans, Ann Arbor 1987.
Jacoby D., Les archontes grecs et la feodalite en Moree franque, in Jacoby, Societe et demographie a
Byzance et en Romanie latine, London 1975, no. VI.
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au XVe siecle, London 1979, no. I.
Jacoby D., La feodalite en Grece medievale, Paris 1971.
Kravari V., Villes et villages de Macedoine occidentale, Paris 1989.
Lascaris M., Cinq notes a la Pronoia de M. Ostrogorsky, Byzantion 21 (1951) 265–74.
Majkov A. A., O zemel’noj sobstvennosti v drevnej Serbii, ^tenija v Imperatorskom ob{~estve istorii i
drevnostej rossijskih (1860), kniga 1, pages 1–30.
Maksimovi} Lj., Kotanic Tornik, ZRVI 29/30 (1991) 183–91.
Mavromatis L., La fondation de l’empire serbe, Thessaloniki 1978.
Mihalj~i} R., Vojni~ki zakon, Zbornik Filozofskog fakulteta, XII–1, Belgrade 1974, 305–09.
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214 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
@ivojinovi} M., Le conflit entre Chilandar et Saint-Panteleemon au sujet du village de Breznica,

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kai Serbia kata ton IDÏ aiwna, Athens 1996, 57–66.
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Mark Bartusis
SRPSKA PRONIJA I PRONIJA U SRBIJI:
RASPROSTIRAWE JEDNE USTANOVE
Vizantijski fiskalni termin pronija pojavquje se do 15. veka u ve}i-
ni balkanskih oblasti ju`no od Dunava. Me|utim, ono {to je ve}ina vi-
zantijskih suseda usvojila nije bila vizantijska ustanova pronije, nego pre
sam termin pronija, koji je ozna~avao neku vrstu imovinskog poklona od
strane dràvne vlasti, inkorporiranog u terminologiju zemqi{nih poseda
u oblastima koje, u nekim slu~ajevima, nisu vekovima poznavale vizantijsko
prisustvo. Na primer, mnogobrojni podaci o proniji u mleta~kim izvorima
koji se odnose na jadransku obalu i egejska ostrva govore nam mnogo vi{e o
tome kako su Venecijanci prilago|avali doma}e institucije sa kojima su se
susretali prilikom svojih osvajawa, a malo o bilo kojoj vizantijskoj in-
stituciji kao takvoj.
Izuzetak ~ini Srbija, ~ija se elita susrela sa pronijom 1282–83. go-
dine, za vreme osvajawa Stefana Uro{a II Milutina u oblasti Skopqa, gde
je postojalo zna~ajno prisustvo vizantijskih pronija. Prihvatawe ustanove
pronije od strane Srba bio je dvostepeni proces. Prvo, srpski vladar je
morao da uklopi vizantijske pronije na teritorijama koje je osvojio u sop-
stveni fiskalni, ekonomski, agrarni i vojni sistem. Drugo, po~elo je stva-
rawe sopstvenih pronija koje su li~ile na wihove vizantijske prete~e.
Osvajawima Stefana Du{ana (1331–1355) Srbi su do{li u jo{ bliì
kontakt sa vizantijskom pronijom. Naj~e{}e, Du{an je malo ~inio da uvede
srpsku praksu u gr~ke oblasti koje je osvojio i jednostavno je nastavio vi-
zantijsku administrativnu praksu. Zbog toga je, iako se de{avalo da Du{an
poklawa pronije Srbima na vizantijskim teritorijama koje je osvojio, ~esto
te{ko utvrditi da li su pronije u oblastima koje je zauzeo Du{an stvorio
on sam, wegovi naslednici ili vizantijski vladari. îwenica da za mnoge
pronije ne znamo da li ih je poklonio vizantijski ili srpski vladar pokazu-
je da srpsko usvajawe ove institucije ~esto nije naru{avalo postoje}e ze-
mqovlasni~ke obrasce. Samo u slu~ajevima o{trog nastupa osvaja~kih Srba,

kada dolazi do oduzimawa zemqe od lokalnih zemqoposednika, jasno uo~a-
vamo ko je darovao pronije.
Iako je mogu}no, ~ak mo`da i verovatno, da su pronije poklawali Mi-
lutin ili wegov naslednik Stefan De~anski, najranije jasno svedo~anstvo o
tome da su srpski vladari poklawali pronije u oblastima koje nisu bile
pod vizantijskom kontrolom u 13. i 14. veku nalazi se u jednoj hrisovuqi iz
1346. godine. U poveqi Du{an spomiwe dva sela koja su dràli pronijari,
od kojih je jedno u dana{woj Crnoj Gori, oblasti koja nije bila pod vi-
zantijskom vla{}u jo{ od vremena pre latinskog osvajawa iz 1204. godine.
Zakonik Stefana Du{ana sadrì tri odeqka koji se odnose na proniju.
^lan 59 zabrawuje kupovawe, prodavawe ili donaciju pronije duhovnim usta-
novama. ^lan 68 verovatno se odnosi na integraciju vizantijske pronije u
srpski agrarni i fiskalni sistem, jer specifikuje obaveze meropaha prema
pronijaru. Kao i u Vizantiji, one su ukqu~ivale radne i nov~ane obaveze, s
tim {to su u Srbiji radne obaveze bile mnogo izrazitije. Najzad, jedan
drugi ~lan ukazuje na vi{i status dràlaca pronije, pri ~emu se u wemu
razlikuju pronijarevi}i — doslovno „sinove pronijara“ — od sebara.
U politi~koj dezintegraciji koja je usledila posle Du{anove smrti
(1355), u dokumentima se ponekad spomiwe pronija. Na primer, srpski des-
pot Jovan Ugqe{a (1366–1371), koji je vladao zna~ajnim delom vizantijske
Makedonije iz Sera, izdao je 1369. par slovenskih dokumenata u kojima se
spomiwu pronije. S druge strane, ni Du{anov sin i naslednik Stefan Uro{
V (1355–1371), ni wegov naslednik knez Lazar (1371–1389), nisu izdali
nijedan dokument (bar je to slu~aj sa sa~uvanim dokumentima) u kojem bi se
spomiwala pronija, {to mo`da upu}uje na ograni~enost ustanove pronije u
srpskim zemqama.
Pronija se ponovo pojavquje u Srbiji za vlade Lazarevog sina Stefana
Lazarevi}a (1389–1427) u tri dokumenta. Jednim od wih daje se wegovoj
majci neko selo u oblasti ju`no od Kragujevca, koje je neki ~ovek „drào u
proniju“ ({to je dr'àl' u proniju) od vremena Stefanovog oca. Majka je
trebalo da drì tu zemqu kao da je porodi~no (ba{tina) ili kupqeno (kup-
qenica) dobro, {to bi joj dozvoqavalo da ga pokloni nekom manastiru. Kao i
u Vizantiji, dakle, ono {to je bilo opisano kao pronija moglo je vladarevom
odlukom da bude pretvoreno, za nekog drugog, u neotu|ivi poklon.
Spomen pronije postojao je do samog kraja srpske srdwovekovne drà-
ve. Sin \ur|a Brankovi}a, despot Lazar (1456–1458), darovao je svom rizni-
~aru Radoslavu dodatne privilegije nad nekim selima i ostalom imovinom
oko Smedereva i Golupca, {to je Lazar ranije darovao istom Radoslavu kao
proniju. Ovo je jedini jasan slu~aj pretvarawa pronije u Srbiji u nasledno
dobro. îni se da takvo dobro, kao i u Vizantiji, nije moglo da bude otu|eno
na drugu stranu i da je trebalo da bude dràno pod istim uslovima pod
kojima ga je uìvao prvobitni primalac. Budu}i da Radoslav nije obavqao
216 ZRVI XLVÇÇI (2011) 177–216
vojnu slu`bu, moèmo pretpostaviti da ona u Srbiji vi{e nije bila su-
{tinska komponenta dràwa pronije.
Kao i u Vizantiji, pronije su darivali iskqu~ivo vladari. Tako|e, kao
i u Vizantiji, bilo je zabraweno otu|ivati imovinu koja je dràna kao
pronija, mada je dodeqivawe naslednih prava u vidu posebne privilegije
zna~ilo, kao i u Vizantiji, da je imawe moglo biti preno{eno na nasled-
nike. Ugledaju}i se na vizantijski model, a u vezi sa prirodom vladaju}e
klase i u Srbiji i u Vizantiji, ve}ina uìvalaca takvih privilegija bili
su verovatno u vojnoj slu`bi. Ipak, te{ko je uo~iti pravo zna~ewe ove in-
stitucije u sredwovekovnoj Srbiji. A sigurno je da ne moèmo da pret-
postavimo da su pronije koje su srpski vladari darivali svojim plemi}ima
i vojnicima bile davane pod istim uslovima i predstavqale istu vrstu
poklona kao pronije u Vizantiji. Ipak, pojava pronija na ~itavoj teritoriji
Srbije tokom vi{e od jednog veka, a naro~ito nekoliko odredaba o proniji u
Du{anovom Zakoniku, sugeri{u da su igrale zna~ajnu ulogu u sredwove-
kovnoj Srbiji.

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Zbornik radova Vizantolo{kog instituta HßçÇÇÇ, 2011

Recueil des travaux de l’Institut d’etudes byzantines XßVIII, 2011

UDC: 347.236.1(497.11:495.02) )"12/14"

SERBIAN PRONOIA AND PRONOIA IN SERBIA:

1 G. Ostrogorsky, Pronija, prilog istoriji feudalizma u Vizantiji i u ju`noslovenskim zemljama,

pronoiarios” (ser Stefanh Fiomacon proniarion) as one of the parties. While

4 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 222–57.

Stefan Milutin (1282–1321)

6 E. Naumov, K istorii vizantijskoj i serbskoj pronii, Vizantijskij Vremennik 34 (1973) 23.

also mentions–among scores of names of people and properties–a “M’glavitsko

12 SnM, I, 215, 220. Akropolites, I, 76. Lascaris, Cinq notes, 265–68.

“doubtlessly joined the class of soldier-pronoiars” as well.26 These statements

26 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 196.

30 A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Iwannhj Apokaukoj kai Nikhtaj Cwniathj, Tessara-

adopted Byzantine phraseology. Another example is found in Du{an’s chrysobull

Stefan Du{an (1331–1355)

43 Novakovi}, Zakonski spomenici, 631 i, iv = L. Slaveva and V. Mo{in, Srpski gramoti od

60 M. @ivojinovi}, Le conflit entre Chilandar et Saint-Panteleemon au sujet du village de

63 The name Siderophas (Sidhrofaj) is attested: E. Trapp et al., Prosopographisches Lexikon

Figure 1. The area east of Strumica

dently produced the falsified chrysobull of Du{an, as well as a Greek chrysobull

appearance of the adjective pronoiarikos (pronoiarikoj). It clearly derives from

Thessaly and Epiros after Du{an’s death

confirmed the monastery’s possession of and rights over a number of properties.

73 Solovjev–Mo{in, Gr~ke povelje, no. 31.42–46.

80 L. Vranouses, To cronikon twn Iwanninwn kat’ anekdoton dhmwdh epitomhn, Athens

(i) Koutloumousiou received the village “with everything that Theodore

83 Ostrogorsky, Feodalite, 212, thought the second translation more likely.

Stefan Lazarevi} (1389–1427) and the despots Brankovi} (1427–1458)

Venice, a number of villages held by pronoiars. Altogether sixteen pronoia hold-

possession between ourselves” (Et jo Nicolin o certi caxali in Schiauonia, li qual o

94 Kreki}, Contribution, 4, 6–8.

date when what was held in

LIST OF REFERENCES — LISTA REFERENCI

Pseudo-Kodinos, Traite des offices, ed. J. Verpeaux, Paris 1966.

Secondary Works — Literatura

@ivojinovi} M., Le conflit entre Chilandar et Saint-Panteleemon au sujet du village de Breznica,

mqovlasni~ke obrasce. Samo u slu~ajevima o{trog nastupa osvaja~kih Srba,

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