Ch. VI THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 205 
 
 
meat of monastic properties. In Byzantium the monastic and ecclesiastical
properties were very extensive. It has been estimated by a competent authority
on the internal history of Byzantium that at the end of the seventh century
about one third of the usable land of the empire was in the possession of
the church and the monasteries. Much of this property had been confiscated
by the iconoclastic emperors in the eighth century, but with the defeat of
iconoclasm it began to accumulate again. The attempt made by the emperors
of the tenth century, Nicephorus Phocas jn particular, to check this growth
met with no success. About the middle of the eleventh century the monastic
properties "were in no way inferior to those of the crown."27 
 The financial difficulties into which the empire had fallen in the eleventh
century led Isaac Comnenus to envisage the confiscation of monastic properties.
Isaac was primarily interested in finding the funds which he needed for the
military rehabilitation of the empire, but it was hoped that this measure
would also help to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry. The historian
Attaliates, who reports this measure, writes that "it appeared to be profitable
in two ways: [iJ it freed the ... peasants from a heavy burden, for the monks,
relying upon their extensive and wealthy estates, were wont to force them
to abandon their lots ...; and [21 the public treasury which was forced in
diverse ways to spend its resources obtained an addition and relief which
were not inconsiderable without doing any harm at all to others."28 But the
measure rendered Isaac unpopular and was no doubt one of the factors involved
in the intrigues which brought about his abdication. His immediate successors
abandoned the policy of direct confiscation, but at the same time they did
not refrain from the use of monastic properties. They used these properties,
however, not for the financial rehabilitation of the empire, but in order
to reward friends and favorites. They did this by exploiting an old Byzantine
institution, the charistikion, an institution not unlike the western beneficium.

 The charistikion was a grant which consisted of one or more monasteries
and their properties. Monasteries thus granted remained monasteries and did
not lose title to their properties, but their management was put under the
direction of the persons to whom they were granted, who, while undertaking
to support the monks and maintain the buildings, appropriated for themselves

 
 27 Attaliates, Historia, p. 6r. 
 28 Ibid., pp. 6o—6z. For a complete translation of this passage see
Charanis, "The Monastic Properties and the State ...," p. 68.