Logothete

The exact origin of the title is unclear; it is found in papyri and works of the Church Fathers denoting a variety of junior officials, mostly charged with fiscal duties.

In late Roman times, the rationales were officials attached to the praetorian prefectures and charged with supervising the state treasury and the emperor's private domains.

[4][5][6] The major transformation of the office came in the early 7th century: during the Heraclian dynasty, the administrative machinery of the state, inherited from the time of Diocletian and Constantine the Great, was thoroughly reformed.

[7][8] This process was the result of severe territorial loss and the need to rationalize revenue collection during the final Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and the early Muslim conquests, but had already been presaged by Emperor Justinian's reforms in the 6th century, when the res privata, responsible for the managing of imperial estates, had been divided by kind into five separate departments.

[9] By the mid-7th century, the sacrae largitiones too disappeared altogether, while its various sections, as those of the praetorian prefecture, were separated and set up as autonomous departments, some of them headed by a logothete.

[11][12][13] Although the first concrete evidence for the existence of many of the subsequent offices is often of a much later date, the chief departments, the genikon, the (e)idikon, the stratiōtikon and the dromos were in place by the late 7th century.

Thus, the title was borne for example by Pietro della Vigna, the all-powerful minister of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–1250), king of Sicily.