LAND-LEASE LIBELLARIO NOMINE IN THE POST- BYZANTINE NORTHEAST ITALY (8<sup>th</sup>-10<sup>th</sup> CENTURIES)
The article concerns the problem of a long-term lease libellario nomine in the Early Medieval Northeast Italy (8<sup>th</sup>-10<sup>th</sup> centuries), which boundaries mostly coincide with the former Byzantine province of Exarchate with its centre in Ravenna. This kind of a written contract between the church of Ravenna and cultivators despite its typological similarity to the contracts of the rest of Northern Italy contains useful information concerning the peculiarities of social and economic condition of peasant population in the former Exarchate. Author deals with the problem of the origins and development of this kind of land tenure on the lands of Ravenna and proposes several ideas concerning social and juridical position of leaseholders on church lands. This type of contract did not create any visible conditions of legal subordination of peasants to the church lords, moreover, these tenants enjoyed personal freedom and more or less elevated social and economic status combined with the modest level of rent payments and other kinds of seigneurial exploitation. These favourable conditions marked the «transitionary» phase between the collapse of Byzantine power in this part of Italy and the establishment of metayage and rural serfdom from the second half of the 12<sup>th</sup> century.