Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- Note on transliteration
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 The Byzantine world in the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries
- Map 2 Byzantium and its neighbors, c. 1350
- Map 3 Byzantium and its neighbors after 1402
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND POLITICAL SETTING
- PART II THESSALONIKE
- PART III CONSTANTINOPLE
- PART IV THE DESPOTATE OF THE MOREA
- Conclusion
- Appendix I Archontes of Thessalonike (fourteenth—fifteenth centuries)
- Appendix II “Nobles” and “small nobles” of Thessalonike (1425)
- Appendix III Constantinopolitan merchants in Badoer's account book (1436–1440)
- Appendix IV Members of the Senate of Constantinople cited in the synodal tome of August 1409
- Appendix V Some Greek refugees in Italian territories after 1453
- Bibliography
- Index
PART III - CONSTANTINOPLE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- Note on transliteration
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 The Byzantine world in the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries
- Map 2 Byzantium and its neighbors, c. 1350
- Map 3 Byzantium and its neighbors after 1402
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND POLITICAL SETTING
- PART II THESSALONIKE
- PART III CONSTANTINOPLE
- PART IV THE DESPOTATE OF THE MOREA
- Conclusion
- Appendix I Archontes of Thessalonike (fourteenth—fifteenth centuries)
- Appendix II “Nobles” and “small nobles” of Thessalonike (1425)
- Appendix III Constantinopolitan merchants in Badoer's account book (1436–1440)
- Appendix IV Members of the Senate of Constantinople cited in the synodal tome of August 1409
- Appendix V Some Greek refugees in Italian territories after 1453
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION TO PART III
In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Constantinople, which had once been one of the most glorious and populous urban centers of the Mediterranean world, was reduced politically and economically to a rather modest state of existence and was merely able to hold out against the Ottomans for another twenty-three years following the definitive conquest of Thessalonike. Constantinople shared with Thessalonike a more or less identical social structure during this period. In the earlier part of the fourteenth century its population was made up of three distinct social layers: a very rich aristocracy, which drew its wealth primarily from land; a rich “middle” class (the mesoi), including merchants, bankers, small property owners, and minor functionaries; and the poor, consisting of small artisans, manual laborers, small cultivators, as well as entirely destitute people at the lowest end of the social spectrum. After the middle of the fourteenth century, however, as more and more people from the first group, having lost their landed possessions to the Serbs and Ottomans, were compelled to channel their economic activities towards trade and banking, the social criteria separating them from rich middle-class merchants became less clearly distinguishable. Thereafter, as in Thessalonike, a bipartite social structure with the rich at one end and the poor at the other became typical in Constantinople.
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- Byzantium between the Ottomans and the LatinsPolitics and Society in the Late Empire, pp. 117 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009