Mitaton officer

The only evidence for the mitat as an official occurs in the Rila Charter of Tsar Ivan Shishman. In the document’s protective formula, the plural form “mitati” appears among the names of state officers who were forbidden to disturb the monastery’s people and possessions. The charter subsequently lists, in a separate passage, the dues and compulsory services from which the monastery was exempt. This structure indicates that the first passage refers to officials rather than to the obligation itself. No individual holder of the office is known by name.

The title derives from the mitaton, Greek μητάτον, an obligation requiring the population to provide lodging and food for troops on the march. The mitat as a compulsory service appears in the Vatopedi, Virgin, and Mraka charters, as well as in documents issued by Serbian rulers. In those instances there is no reason to interpret the word as an official title. The Rila Charter is exceptional because the name of the obligation appears to have been transferred to the officers responsible for organizing its performance.

The mitaton has often been identified with the priselitsa and the padalishte, but the documentary evidence does not require the three terms to be treated as exact synonyms. A charter of King Milutin from 1300 lists the mitat and the priselitsa separately. There the priselitsa is associated with the nametak, a levy probably intended for the support of a tax officer. This supports a distinction between the mitaton as an obligation to billet and provision troops and the priselitsa as a duty to receive and feed travelling officials. A broader interpretation holds that both soldiers and officials benefited from the mitaton, but their separate treatment in the document of 1300 favours the narrower meaning.

The mitaton officers were therefore probably responsible for enforcing this angareia, or compulsory unpaid service owed to the state. Their work stood at the boundary between fiscal and military administration: they organized a public obligation, while the army was its immediate beneficiary. They may have travelled with or ahead of the troops, although it is equally possible that each officer was assigned to a particular district. The single surviving attestation does not allow a choice between these possibilities, nor does it reveal their chain of command, insignia, or the precise period during which the office existed. The fact that the mitati occupy only the sixteenth place in the Rila Charter’s list suggests that their rank was relatively low.