The pronoia (plural pronoiai; Greek: πρόνοια, meaning "care", "forethought" or "providence," from πρό, "before," and νόος, "mind")[1] was a system of granting dedicated streams of state income to individuals and institutions in the late Byzantine Empire.
Grants were not transferable or (excluding certain exceptional cases late in the institution) hereditary; a pronoia gave the grantee possession, not ownership, which remained Imperial.
In the late 11th century Alexius I attempted to reform the aristocracy, taking the pacifying measure of distributing Roman territory amongst its members.
Pronoiars were often reluctant to give military service if they lived a prosperous life on their grant, and they had some autonomy if they chose not to serve.
After the Crusaders captured Constantinople in 1204, the pronoia system continued in the Empire of Nicaea, where the emperors ruled in exile.
When Constantinople was recaptured by Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1261, he allowed pronoiai to be inherited, which made the empire more like the feudal states in Europe.
He also audited the pronoiai to make their values more realistic according to contemporary conditions, as the empire had lost much of its land and revenue since the 11th century.
However, by this time, there were only a few thousand pronoiars, and although they paid for their own expenses, the emperors could not afford a full army or navy to strengthen the empire's defenses.
The impoverished empire had very little tax revenue, and pronoiars began to extract rents from the paroikoi, turning back to the old Thema system.