Pratique juridique grecque et économie dans la Calabre post-byzantine (xii^e-xiii^e siècle)

Based on new sources, which have become available thanks to the publication of private Greek legal documents from the Archivo Ducal de Medinaceli (Toledo), this essay aims to study the rural society of hellenophone Southern Calabria – in particular, the region of the Straits, with the insular town of Messina at its centre – in the form in which it appears at the end of the 12th century. Being both significant and performative, the practice document records a wealth of data as rich and varied as the body of social and economic relationships that it attemps to formalize. The specialized language of the juridical act and its formulary, which does not avoid the use of stereotypes but rather exploits the possibilities of stereotypes and their variants, allows us to examine the impact of Norman power and its administration on a ­community based on Byzantine rite and private law whose language remained Greek during the whole of the 12th century. Estate transactions, agreements and exchanges, platee, cognomina, titles and functions, all of which were expressions of a new way of organising society, invite us to investigate the relations between the agents ­concerned – the former owners, belonging to the italo-Greek élite, the peasants, the ‘­men’ of the monastery, the archimandrite and the central power. What was the land tenure, what rural habitat did the definitions of boundaries outline, and, above all, what kind of dominion did the monastic institution exercise over its lands? These are some of the questions that this essay will seek to answer by widening out its scope to encompass the region of Messina that was under the economic sphere of influence of the Archimandritate, this later being renowned as one of the wealthiest lords of the Kingdom of Sicily in the Norman period.