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.