The Byzantine Empire of the period 1081–1204 is generally con sidered to have been culturally brilliant but economically decadent. The standard against which this decadence is measured is the situation supposed to have existed during the ninth and tenth centuries when the Empire consisted basically of the Balkan coastlands, the Aegean islands and Asia Minor, and when it possessed a flourishing agriculture dependent upon a free peasantry which also supplied the manpower of its army and navy, a vital urban life, and control of its extensive internal and external trade. Its revenue was therefore assured and its coinage stable. By the twelfth century it had lost the greater part of Asia Minor which had formed the factor essential to its agricultural, military and urban life. The first two were now largely in the hands of feudal magnates who commanded ruinously expensive but unreliable mercenaries, and the trade of the Empire had fallen under the control of the Italian merchant cities. The reduced revenue was incapable of standing the strain placed upon it by increased expenses, the difference being made up by the debasement of the coinage—which caused further chaos in economic life.
