What were the social issues during the fall of the Byzantine Empire?

There were
basically two social causes to the fall of the Byzantine Empire. First was a class struggle over
land between the free peasants and the wealthy aristocracy. Byzantine rulers had depended on the
peasants to serve in the military and pay taxes. Over time, as land became a more lucrative
investment, wealthy nobles were motivated to grab land and enslave the local populations of
peasants. This was similar to the system of feudalism that already existed in Western Europe for
centuries. Byzantine emperors obviously wanted to protect the free peasant system, but
ultimately failed. The loss of free peasants to serfdom caused a severe loss in tax revenue and
hurt the military to the point that the emperor needed to pay others to protect his
kingdom.

A second social cause in the fall of the Byzantine Empire was the
split in the church between the east and west. This occurred in 1054 and is called the Great
Schism. Due to the split in the church, cooperation between east and west was not as easy to
achieve. This meant that the Byzantine Empire was left to defend itself from powerful Muslim
empires that were emerging to their East. Additionally, the west actually assaulted the
Byzantine capital during the Crusades, which weakened the empire even
further.

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