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An Account-Book of the Patrimony of St. Peter in Tuscany, 1304–1306
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
Volume 241 in the Vatican Archive series of ‘Collectorie’ is described in de Loye's printed catalogue of the cameral materials as ‘Collectorie Patrimonii b. Petri’. This inadequate description may be responsible for the failure of historians to exploit the earliest surviving complete account-book for a province of the Papal States and probably the best source for the condition of the States at the opening of the Avignon period. This volume, which consists of sixty-six folios, is the account-book noting the revenue and expenditure of the papal province of the Tuscan Patrimony from August 1304 (a month after the death of Benedict XI) till April 1306 (ten months after the election of Clement V). It was kept by Lapo di Marzo, the Treasurer of the province, and his socius Bartolo ‘de Cepparello’. There are no other full accounts for a papal province before those of the same province covering the years 1312–4.
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References
page 18 note 1 de Loye, J., Les Archives de la Chambre Apostolique au XlVe siècle, Paris 1899, 150Google Scholar.
page 18 note 2 Earlier fragments of accounts are Palmieri, G. (ed.), Introiti ed Esiti di papa Niccolò III, 1279–80, Rome 1889Google Scholar (March of Ancona, May 1279–March 1280) and Theiner, A., Codex Diplomaticus Dominii Temporalis Sanctae Sedis, Rome 1861, i. 283–5Google Scholar (County of Sabina, 1284–6) and 317–21 (Tuscan Patrimony, 1291–6: there is also an unpublished fragment for the same province, 1290, in the Vatican Archive, Arm. XXXV, vol. 14, f. 85 and v.).
page 18 note 3 There are a very few later entries.
page 18 note 4 For these later accounts, see Antonelli, M., ‘Estratti dai Registri del Patrimonio del Secolo XIV’ in Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, xli (1918)Google Scholar. It is possible that no accounts were kept for some time after 1306, since Clement V in granting to the Rector Amanieu d'Albret all the revenues of the province in July 1306 (Regestum Clementis Papae V, Rome 1885, i. 274) probably exempted him from the rendering of accounts, a privilege he granted to the Rector of the County of Sabina (ibid., ii. 335).
page 18 note 5 For this due see Costituzioni Egidiane dell'anno MCCCLVII, ed. P. Sella, Rome 1912, 68–9 (Lib. II, rubrica 13: ‘De capitibus sollidorum sive sallariis solvendis camere a litigantibus’). Here it is enacted that ‘in causis civilibus et pecuniariis certa salaria solventur pro expensis pro salario iudicis supportando’.
page 19 note 1 In fact these payments, like most of those included in the accounts, were made partly in the silver papal currency and partly in gold florins. I have converted all sums to their equivalents in silver, the currency mainly used (at the rate of exchange employed in the accounts, i. e. 1 florin = 43S. 4d. papal currency) and reduced all to the nearest pound.
page 19 note 2 The fuller formula is given in Fabre, P., ‘Un registre caméral du Card. Albornoz en 1364’ in Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire, VII (1887), 187–9Google Scholar. For the oath to the papacy, see Ermini, G., ‘Caratteri della sovranità temporale dei papi nei sec. XIII e XIV’ in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abt. XXVII (1938), 318Google Scholar. It was normal for a tallia militum to be voted by the provincial parliament in the Romagna and the March of Ancona, but this does not seem to have been the case in the Tuscan Patrimony. In other provinces, too, different formulae—such as ‘pro repressione et confusione rebellium’, ‘pro custodia castrorum’, etc.—are found for levying the tax on different occasions. (Ermini, G., I Parlamenti dello Stato della Chiesa dalle Origini al Periodo Albornoziano, Rome 1930, 97–103Google Scholar).
page 19 note 3 On fo. 36 of the account-book there is recorded the despatch of a letter from the provincial vicar to the papal chamberlain at Perugia, enquiring ‘si placeret ei pro tallia militum (ut) recolligeretur dupla sicut recolligebat capitaneus aut simpliciter secundum registrum.’ For a reference to tallia militum duplicata in the March of Ancona 1281 see A. Gianandrea, Carte Diplomatiche Iesine, Ancona 1884, doc. CCIII.
page 19 note 4 For this formula v. Fabre, art. cit., 177–80. The value of these towns varied greatly: Bolsena was farmed at £200 p.a., Gradoli at only £30.
page 19 note 6 A source of revenue described elsewhere more fully as ‘quarta pars lucri de quibus pecuniis camera patrimonii providet notariis curie de papiro, tinta, vernice et aliis necessariis ad scribendum’ (C. Schaefer, Deutsche Ritter und Edelknechte in Italien während des 14. Jahrhunderts, Paderborn 1911, i. 29). This work contains, on pp. 16–44, t ne best account of the administration of the Papal States in the first half of the fourteenth century.
page 20 note 1 Fabre, art. cit., 184–94. Fabre dates the register ‘c. 1298’.
page 20 note 2 Proceno, which owed £10, paid no less than £60.
page 20 note 3 See above, p. 18 n. 4. These salaries may be compared with those for a slighdy later period quoted by Schaefer, op. cit., 24–7. The Rector (or Captain) then received only 4 florins a day, but the salaries of the Treasurer and judges had been raised. The former received 7 groats tournois a day, the latter 100 florins a year each.
page 21 note 1 The information in this paragraph is derived from the summaries of letters given in connection with the payments to messengers noted under the heading of expense minute.
page 21 note 2 Civita Castellana was excommunicated in March 1306 by the Rector in spiritualibus because the town had failed both to pay the first tallia militum for that year and to appear at the subsequent enquiry (f. 38V.).
page 22 note 1 See Regestum dementis Papae V, Appendices, 357 ff.
page 22 note 2 Above, pp. 20–21.
page 22 note 3 Since this branch of the Cerchi was in difficulties in 1310 and went bankrupt in 1311 (Davidsohn, R., Geschichte von Florenz, Berlin, 1896–1927, iv. 2, 191Google Scholar) this may be the Geri Ardinghelli who was employed by the Bardi between 1310 and 1325 at Naples, Avignon and London (Sapori, A., Studi di Storia Economica Medievale, Florence 1947Google Scholar, gives a brief ‘curriculum vitae’ on p. 480.) But the identification is not certain, particularly as there were at least two Florentine families of that name (Ottokar, N., Firenze alla fine del dugento, Florence 1926, 69 n.)Google Scholar.
page 23 note 1 Bartolo paid £18 to the judges and lawyers who defended him ‘coram dicto domino vicario et eius curia et familia’ (f. 39V.). For his own version of the accusation, see n. 3, below.
page 23 note 2 Amanieu d'Albret, a relative of Clement V, was appointed Rector of the Tuscan patrimony in June 1305, and of the neighbouring provinces of the Duchy of Spoleto, the March of Ancona and the Gampagna and Marittima in March 1306. He held office in the Tuscan patrimony till December 1311 (Eitel, A., Der Kirchenstaat unter Klemens V, Berlin 1907, 103–4Google Scholar). See also above, p. 18 n. 4. Raimondo de Agromonte, though a subordinate of d'Albret, is described in some letters of Clement V of April 1306 as ‘rector patrimonii b. Petri in Tuscia’ (Regestrum Clementis Papae V, i. 169–70).
page 23 note 3 ‘… de propriis denariis societatis de Circulis … quam solutionem pecuniae fecit Geri Ardinghellii de dicta societate et ego Bartolus thesaurarius predictus tanquam homines carcerati violenter et choatti per dominum Raimundum Bruni de Agromonte vicarium generalem in dicto patrimonio per dominum Amanevum de Lebretto et ita carcerati et choacti fuerunt ex eo quod dictam pecuniam solvere nolebant quia non perceperat dictus thesaurarius de fructibus dicti patrimonii de quibus solvere posset et quidquid perceperat integraliter solverat officialibus dicti patrimonii et ultra illud quod perceperat de fructibus dicti patrimonii solverat dictis officialibus certain quantitatem pecuniae de propria pecunia dicte societatis ut in hoc libro expensorum et introituum plenius continetur’ (f. 43V.).
page 23 note 4 ‘Cum dictus Bartolus olim thesaurarius esset extra officium thesaurarii et non adtenderet nee speraret deinceps administrare nee facere dictum officium thesaurarii in recipiendo redditus et fructus dicti patrimonii de quibus posset redibere dictam pecuniam…” (f. 47).
page 24 note 1 For the difficulties of using papal account-books of this period, see Partner, P. D., ‘Camera Papae: problems of Papal Finance in the later Middle Ages’ in this Journal, iv, 1 (1953)Google Scholar. It is unlikely that the officers of a papal province had household, as well as treasury, finances, but Mr. Partner notes the omission from these accounts of revenue from the profits of pasture-rights and of the salt monopoly.
page 24 note 2 Baethgen, F., ‘Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der päpstlichen Hofund Finanzverwaltung unter Bonifaz VIII’ in Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archival undBibliotheken, xx (1928–9), 167Google Scholar.
page 24 note 3 See above, p. 22.
page 25 note 1 D. Waley, Mediaeval Orvieto, Cambridge 1952, 78. For the attitude of the subjecttowns of the Tuscan patrimony to this weapon, note the remark of the Rector in 1317 that the inhabitants of Nepi ‘do not fear the spiritual arm, for their officials and councillors have long been excommunicated, and the town under an interdict; this does not worry them’ (Antonelli, M., ‘Una relazione del vicario del Patrimonio a Giovanni XXII in Avignone’, Arch, della Soc. Rom. di St. Patria, XVIII (1895), 455)Google Scholar.
page 25 note 2 I am indebted for this opinion and for much of the substance of the two final paragraphs of this paper to Mr. P. D. Partner, who has been working for several years on the unprinted sources for the papacy's finances in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
page 25 note 3 Baethgen, art. cit., 168–9.
page 25 note 4 Les Registres de Boniface VIII, ed. G. Digard, A. Thomas, M. Faucon, R. Fawtier, Paris 1890–, n. 3192 (the Pope acknowledges the receipt from Rinaldo Malavolti, bishop of Siena and formerly Rector of the patrimony of £ 10,000 ‘pro totali residuo introituum et receptorum … quod restabat … deductis exitibus et expensis’). Malavolti was appointed Rector on 15 July 1298 (ibid., n. 5541) and superseded on 13 June 1299 (n. 5549). The round figure of £10,000 is of course open to suspicion.
page 25 note 5 Les Registres de Benoît XI, ed. C. Grandjean, Paris 1883–, nn. 1238 and 1243. P. M. Baumgarten, Untersuchungen und Urkunden über die Camera Collegii Cardinalium von 1294 bis 1437, Leipzig 1898, 162.
page 25 note 6 Information kindly supplied by Mr. Partner from Vatican Archive, Reg. Aven. i, fols. 219 and 308V. (1312) and Introitus et Exit. xi. A (1315–7) and xxi, f. 2iv. (1317–8).
page 25 note 7 For these see Schaefer, op. cit., 27–8.