Book of the Prefect

The "Book of the Prefect" or "Eparch" (from the Greek "Τὸ ἐπαρχικὸν βιβλίον" or "To eparchikon biblion") is a Byzantine commercial manual or guide promulgated by Leo VI in 911 or 912. Based on established customs and laws and now littered with later interpolations, the Book is an essential document in the economic history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean.

The Book is essentially a list of regulations concerning the "collegia" or private guilds that had existed in the Greek world since Roman times. The "prefect" or eparch of the title was the highest economic official in Constantinople and had charge of, for example, tariffs and import/export regulation, which the Book covers. Every trade was theoretically under government control, though the Book of the Prefect is not exhaustive of all crafts: it deals with precisely twenty-two guilds. The chief reason for such imperial (and imperious) concern over commerce was for the efficient raising of a maximum of revenue through taxation.

The Book has been translated into English twice. [A. E. R. Boak, "The Book of the Prefect," "Journal of Economic and Business History", I (1929), 597–619, and E. H. Freshfield, "Roman Law in the Later Roman Empire" (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1932).] Earlier, in 1893, a trilingual edition—in the original Greek, Latin, and French—was made by Jules Nicole, who discovered the only surviving manuscript in a Genevan library. [In "Le Livre du préfet ou L'Edit de l'empereur Léon le Sage sur les corporations de Constantinople," "Mémoires d l'Institut National Genevois", XVIII, 1–100.] New English translations of sections vi.31–33 and xx.56–57 have since been made by Lopez and Raymond (1951) using Nicole's Greek, but the translators call for completely updated English editions using the most recent Byzantine scholarship. [Lopez and Raymond, 19 n1.] In 1970 Variorum Reprints gathered Nicole's editions and Freshfield's English translation along with a photographic reproduction of the mansucript (Genevensis 23) appended to a new introduction by I. Dujčev. This collection was typically used by scholars until a translation was made into German with a new critical edition of the Greek. [Johannes Koder, "Das Eparchenbuch Leons des Weisen" (Vienna, 1991)]

ources

*Lopez, Robert S. (1945). "Silk Industry in the Byzantine Empire." "Speculum", 20:1 (Jan.), pp. 1–42.
*Lopez, Robert S. and Raymond, Irving W. (1951). "Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World". New York: Columbia University Press. LCC 54-11542.
*Mango, Marlia Mundell (2000). "The Commercial Map of Constantinople." "Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 54, pp. 189–207.

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