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The pronoia (plural pronoiai; Greek language: πρόνοια, meaning "care", "forethought" or "providence," from πρό, "before," and νόος, "mind") "Economics in Late Byzantine World," from Foundation of the Hellenic World was a system of granting dedicated streams of state income to individuals and institutions in the late Byzantine Empire. Beginning in the 11th century and continuing until the empire's fall in the 15th century, the system differed in significant ways from European feudalism of the same period.
The limits and specifics of a pronoia were recorded in an Imperial document called praktika ("records"); holders of pronoia (the grantees, in other words) were called pronoiarios, and those working the income stream in question (for instance, farmers on the land) were called paroikoi in the documents. The word pronoia could refer to the grant itself (land, for instance), its monetary value, or the income it produced.
Although pronoia was often used to reward military service or other loyalties, it carried no specific military obligation (in contrast to feudal fiefs), although the threat of revocation provided coercive power for the state.
By the 11th century, Byzantine aristocrats had ceased to hold any significant power. Honorific titles and power were granted by the emperor and competition was fierce; the most desired grants were those that involved governance and tax collecting in various pieces of the Empire. By the reign of Constantine IX in the middle part of the century they had also begun to assert sovereignty over various parts of the empire, collecting for themselves and often plotting rebellions against the emperor.
In the late 11th century Alexius I attempted to reform the aristocracy, taking the pacifying measure of distributing Roman territory amongst its members. Doing so had the added benefit of removing them from Constantinople, making it harder for them to directly challenge the emperor's authority. Most pronoiai granted by Alexius, however, were to members of his own (Comnenus) family. Alexius simply legitimized the holding of land by aristocrats, and brought it under centralized state control.
The size and value of the pronoia, the number of paroikoi, and the duties owed by them were recorded in praktika. A pronoiar would likely be able to collect trade revenue and part of the crop harvested on the land, and could also hold hunting rights and transportation rights. A praktika also recorded the duties owed by the pronoiar to the emperor. If necessary, the emperor could request military service, although the pronoiar could not force his taxpayers to join him. Pronoiars were often reluctant to give military service if they lived a prosperous life on their grant, and they had some autonomy if they chose not to serve. If they could gain the support of their taxpayers, they could lead rebellions against the empire, but these were not as dangerous as rebellions in the capital, which Alexius' system could now more successfully avoid. Neither Alexius, Manuel, or the other 12th century emperors seemed to worry about provincial rebellions, seemingly assuming that a pronoia grant would eventually appease a rebellious noble. During the Fourth Crusade, Alexius IV still thought this way, and granted Crete to Boniface of Montferrat, under the assumption that the Crusaders would go away if their leader had some land.
Recruiting pronoiars to form an army helped unite the remnants of the empire after 1261. However, by this time, there were only a few thousand pronoiars, and although they paid for their own expenses, the emperors could not afford a full army or navy to strengthen the empire's defenses. The impoverished empire had very little tax revenue, and pronoiars began to extract rents from the paroikoi, turning back to the old Thema system.
The empire continued to lose land to the Ottoman Empire, and Constantinople was finally lost in 1453, but the Ottomans continued to use their own version of the pronoia system, called the timar system, which they had borrowed from the Eastern Romans during their conquests.
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