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Some weirdo from Cuba or Haiti or somewhere sent me an email that said if I post this update and send in $5,000 to a holding company in Lagos, I get 20% of the Princess of Nigeria's inheritance. Let's hope this works!

Urban Culture and other Domestic Developments​

On the surface, what occurred to the urbanization of the Roman Empire seems to be a depressing affair. Urbanization rates dropped substantially in the 1340s-50s, with some cities such as Thessalonica falling to a ‘paltry’ 30,000 at times and Constantinople dropping to around 40,000- a mere shadow of its former glory when the city harbored 200,000 souls. Cities across the empire were shrinking as people flocked to the countryside. But in practice things are never that easy. In fact if you asked the average Roman bureaucrat what he thought of people moving out into the countryside, he’d think its a good thing. More people to work the lands, defend the frontier, mine, and otherwise do something productive with their lives. Although, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First of all, why is the number dropping so fast? Why doesn’t the government doing anything about it?

Pretty simple really. Its 2 things, the change in the domestic situation, and this wonderful thing called the Black Death. As you probably know by now, just a few years ago most of the prospects for owning land were relatively low. Various powerful families own most of the land, people were on average poor even by the standards of Medieval Europe, an attempt at creating serfdom, and other economic factors that tended to create a large amount of urban poor. By 1345, that’s all gone. The latifundia have been broken up, the government is giving out land on an unprecedented scale, wages are rising, taxes have been slashed and anyone who might try to press you into not quite serfdom has either fled or been killed. This is a huge opportunity. Predictably, people took it.

The second is this wonderful we know as the Black Death. A transfer of bubonic plague from Asia into Europe in the late 1340s, it ravaged its way across the continent, taking with it c. ⅓ of the population by the start of 1350. Rome, being very urbanized for its time, with many of its cities having less than adequate sewage systems (lack of funds is a terrible thing to have) was one of the worst places hit by the plague. In cities, plague spread rapidly and mercilessly. As such, people eventually made the connection that cities were unsafe places to be and migrated into the countryside setting up their farms and small towns. The new round of land grants that began after the fallout of the Black Death was yet another incentive to move away from the towns. This was especially noticeable in Thessalonica, which had the most drastic drop in population. Many of the urban poor fled the city in droves, taking with them the radical theology they had come to know and support. The so called ‘Zealots of Thessalonica’ was at the forefront of exporting radical doctrine to the masses.

And speaking of Thessalonica, the city’s character once more changed throughout the 1340s. When the pro regency forces conquered the city, they discovered one much different than what they had come to know. Pre Civil War Thessalonica was an aristocratic dominated shipyard where due to a variety of factors, came to house the largest concentration of nobility outside Thrace and Constantinople. It had, since the fall of Nicaea, shifted into the second city of the empire with a thriving shipyard and industry. However, as previously mentioned, Thessalonica was filled to the brim with poor residents, many of whom made a meager living as dockworkers, fishermen, servants and other such lower class professions. Living in sight of such opulence yet having these riches constantly out of their grasp, the lower classes were a fertile and receptive ground for anything willing to challenge the balance of power. Therefore, when the Zealots of Thessalonica began to organize and take the streets, preaching equality for all, they workers eagerly took to it.

For those who are not familiar, the Zealots of Thessalonica were a popular movement originating during the Second Palaiologian Civil War espousing a radical theology that took Christ’s teaching of social justice to what many had seen as the logical extreme. Rather than simply providing to the poor, the Zealots espoused what allohistorically one would call socialism. They demanded a radical redistribution of wealth amongst which everyone would receive a fair share of resources. In a time when the traditional values of social justice and philanthropy had been seemingly going to the wayside, these new men gave a refreshing message, energizing the population to take action.(It must be noted that such a thing was not without precedent -one can find similar movements all across history, the followers of the Zoroastrian Prophet Mazdak during the reign of the Shahanshah Khavad in ancient Persia are one such example.) Naturally the aristocracy was terrified, but blocked off from their estates by Kantakouzenos’ army (Thessalonica was, strangely enough, always pro Regency despite its relatively high numbers of nobility and other large landowners) there was no way to enforce their demands and stamp out the increasingly aggravated peasantry.

What follows next is a slaughter, as angry mobs led by disgruntled monks and other charismatic leaders revolt against the established order. The aristocracy is brutally massacred within the walls of the city, and their property and wealth is redistributed amongst the lower classes. An interim government was established where in which a council- the majority of which were Zealot members or at the very least friendly to the Zealot establishment- ran the affairs of the city. This state of affairs continued until Regency forces broke the siege in 1343 and returned the city under imperial control. (In theory, in practice this really meant Thessalonica was more of an ally than a province)

Thessalonica, by the time the armies of the Regency breached the gates of the city, was no longer just another imperial city- it had become a de facto independent state. Where what once was an imperial city now lay a commune. And it was this curious state affairs, formed by the blockade of the outside world that allowed such a radical change. But whats even stranger is that due to the weakness of the imperial state, this was allowed to continue. Tired of war and rapidly running out of money, Apokaukos had no time for further adventures, and although he personally detested the Zealots, seeing them as a thorn in his side and a potential fifth column, he was pragmatic enough to leave them be for the time being. The Zealots had pledged their loyalty to his cause throughout the war due to a common hatred of the Old Regime and an interest in reform, and when the army proclaimed the reintegration no one really protested. But none of that involved removing members of the imperial council with his own men and restarting taxation. That would come later, and that would very likely start problems.

Apokaukos, in his seemingly incessant pragmatism, allowed the city to continue to run its internal affairs so long as a certain amount of taxation would be paid to the central government every year. As well, (and this was mostly to mollify his powerbase who viewed the action as a potential showing of weakness) his son John was appointed as mayor of the Thessalonian city council in hopes of working as a liaison between the Zealot controlled local government and the imperial state. And at the time, this deal worked out for everyone more or less. The Zealots got to run their own state in which the peasantry would obtain their rightful share and the old regime would be purged- a mini paradise in their eyes while the Imperial government obtained access to the major port, an additional source of revenue and her people for the navy. The circumstances of control would be a very subtle tug of war in the background where the Imperial and the local government battled for influence amongst the populace. This deal is also noticeable for by giving the Zealots their own autonomy, the state began to focus more of its energies on restoring Constantinople as a center of trade, which had been under steep decline.

This deal was not without its problems and opponents. Primarily of which was the Church who opposed the Zealots on the principle of being Barlaamists, and therefore heretical in their doctrine. The reigning Patriarch attempted to pressure the remainder of the Regency faction to move against the Zealots however they could, to limited results. The army simply wasn’t ready for more military actions, much less continue to aggravate potential causes of war, the Zealots were fairly popular in their own right and of course the state’s energies would be needed elsewhere to continue the planned reforms. Then there was the much of the middle class who viewed the Zealots as a threat to their small yet noticeable wealth. Being the ones who staffed the imperial bureaucracy and therefore dictated policy, they did what they could to reduce Zealot influence without resorting to any violent measures. Although it is certain many would be murdered behind the scenes for their beliefs, the most common way to weaken the Zealots was to simply erode their audiences and their popularity. Alleviating the concerns of the peasants with land and other opportunities to improve their station was seen as the moderate option that would dissuage many from choosing more radical paths. This was a mixed blessing- one the one hand Thessalonica shrunk due to all the people moving out and the Zealots were proportionately more powerful (it also didn’t help that the Thermidor effect was kicking in and many began to moderate their positions) but on the other, many peasants themselves exported the ideas of the Zealots to whatever small village they were relocated to, turning those villages into miniature communes as well. Thanks to the decentralization following the fourth crusade and the constant need to avert attention and resources to other matters, once these ideas spread and took root in the far corners of the empire, such matters were difficult to remove. The coming years would see Rome seeing these new ideas of anti aristocratic sentiment move in and spread, far away from their homelands.
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