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Resistance to Tithes in the Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Giles Constable
Giles Constable
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University
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Extract

The system of compulsory tithes in the Middle Ages has long been used by protestant and liberal historians as a stick with which to beat the medieval Church. ‘This most harassing and oppressive form of taxation’, wrote H. C. Lea in his well-known History of the Inquisition, ‘had long been the cause of incurable trouble, aggravated by the rapacity with which it was enforced, even to the pitiful collections of the gleaner’. Von Inama-Sternegg remarked on the growing hatred of tithes in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, especially among the small free landholders, ‘upon whom the burden of tithes must have fallen most heavily’. Gioacchino Volpe said that tithes were ‘the more hated because they oppressed the rich less than the poor, the dependents on seigneurial estates less than the small free proprietors to whose ruin they contributed…. At that time tithes were both an ecclesiastical and secular oppression, a double offence against religious sentiment and popular misery’. G. G. Coulton, writing before the introduction in England of an income tax at a rate of over ten per cent., proclaimed that before the Reformation tithes ‘constituted a land tax, income tax and death duty far more onerous than any known to modern times, and proportionately unpopular’.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , October 1962 , pp. 172 - 185
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

page 172 note 1 Lea, Henry C., A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, New York 1887–8, i. iii. 183Google Scholar.

page 172 note 2 von Inama-Sternegg, K. T., Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Leipzig 1879–1901, ii. 42Google Scholar.

page 172 note 3 Volpe, Gioacchino, ‘Eretici e moti ereticali dal XI al XIV secolo nei loro motivi e riferimenti sociali’, Il Rinnovamento, i (1907), 649–50Google Scholar, reprinted in his Movimenti religiosi e setts ereticali nellà società medievale italiana, Florence 1922, 16.

page 172 note 4 Coulton, G. G., ‘Priests and People before the Reformation’, (1907)Google Scholar reprinted in his Ten Medieval Studies, Cambridge 1930, 124; cf. The Medieval Village, Cambridge 1925, 290–306 (‘Tithes and Friction’) and Five Centuries of Religion, Cambridge 1923–50, iii. 150–1 and 224–5, where he said that in order to understand the system of tithes we must realise ‘how these contributions were dragged, as it were, from the entrails of the peasantry’.

page 172 note 5 Thompson, James W., Feudal Germany, Chicago 1928, 394Google Scholar; cf. 133 ff.

page 173 note 1 Thompson, James W., An Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, New York–London 1928, 651–2 and 693Google Scholar; Thompson, James W. and Johnson, Edgar, An Introduction to Medieval Europe, New York 1937, 670Google Scholar.

page 173 note 2 Krueger, Hilmar C., ‘Economic Aspects of Expanding Europe’, in Twelfth-Century Europe and the Foundations of Modem Society, ed. Clagett, Marshall, Gaines Post, and Robert Reynolds, Madison 1961, 64Google Scholar.

page 173 note 3 Davison, Ellen S., Forerunners of Saint Francis, London 1928, 351Google Scholar.

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page 173 note 5 Pantin, W. A., The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Birkbeck Lectures, 1948) Cambridge 1955, 204Google Scholar; Cheney, Christopher R., From Becket to Langton (Ford Lectures, 1955). Manchester 1956, 162Google Scholar.

page 173 note 6 Epperlein, Siegfried, Bauernbedrückung und Bauernwiderstand im hohen Mittelalter (Forschungen zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte, 6), Berlin 1960, 82–3Google Scholar.

page 173 note 7 de La Tour, Geoffroi Tenant, L'Homme et la terre de Charlemagne à saint Louis, Paris 1943. 539Google Scholar.

page 173 note 8 The New York Times, 28 December 1960.

page 174 note 1 The attitudes of Lea, Coulton, and Thompson are well-known to medievalists. On Volpe, who was a politician as well as an historian, see the Encyclopedia Italiana, xxxv. 563; and on the involvement of tithes with politics in contemporary Italy, see Boyd, Catherine E., Tithes and Parishes in Medieval Italy, Ithaca 1952, 1–25Google Scholar.

page 174 note 2 Review by H.-X. Arquillière of A. Luchaire, La société française au temps de Philippe-Auguste, cited by Netzer, H., in Mélanges … Ferdinand Lot, Paris 1925, 601Google Scholar. Even more dangerous are arguments based on an absence of conciliar legislation on tithes: cf. Diez, Gonzalo Martínez, ‘El patrimonio eclesiástico en la España Visigoda’, Miscelanea Comillas, xxxii (1959), 24Google Scholar, who wrote that, ‘El valor de este silencio, particularmente si se tiene en cuenta la natural resistencia humana ante cualquier impuesto o prestación obligatoria, se pondera por si mismo’.

page 174 note 3 Thompson, Feudal Germany, 395, n.i, and 584, n.3.

page 174 note 4 Viard, Paul, Histoire de la dîme ecclésiastique principalement en France jusqu'au Décret Gratien, Dijon 1909, 92–3 and 228–9Google Scholar, and Histoire de la dîme ecclésiastique dans le royaume de France aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, Paris 1912, 71–2.

page 174 note 5 Hauck, Albert, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, 8th (unchanged) ed., Berlin 1954, ii. 232Google Scholar. On p. 729 he said that, ‘Die rücksichtslose Eintreibung der Zehnten machte da und dort böses Blut’.

page 174 note 6 Bruhat, L., Le monachisme en Saintonge et en Aunis (XIe et XIIe siècles), La Rochelle 1907, 214–15Google Scholar; Tremel, Ferdinand, ‘Das Zehentwesen in Steiermark und Kärnten von den Anfangen bis ins 15. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift des historischen Vereines für Steiermark, xxxiii (1939), 13Google Scholar.

page 175 note 1 Chartes du Forez, xv: Les Dîmes en Forez, Mâcon 1957, 207, 210.

page 175 note 2 To appear under the title Monastic Tithes from their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Cambridge University Press).

page 175 note 3 Cf. ibid., ch. i, sect. 1. Medieval penitentials, which are a safer guide to actual practice than conciliar and episcopal decrees, contain comparatively few references to evasion of tithes.

page 175 note 4 E. J. Davis, Anatolica, London 1874, 331, who discussed the tithes (‘Ushr’ or ‘Ushoori’) paid in Turkey. Tithing was known in several religious systems, but its comparative history has not yet been seriously studied: cf. Schmid, H. F., ‘Byzantinisches Zehntwesen’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen byzantinischen Gesellschaft, vi (1957), 68Google Scholar.

page 175 note 5 Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed. Schmeidler, B. (Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum), Hanover-Leipzig 1917, 231Google Scholar. On the payment of personal tithes in the later Middle Ages, see Little, A. G., ‘Personal Tithes’, English Historical Review, lx (1945), 67–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 176 note 1 Hauck, Kirchengeschichte, ii. 412; Adam of Bremen, Gesta, 264.

page 176 note 2 Schmid, H. F., ‘Der Gegenstand des Zehntstreites zwischen Mainz und den Thüringern im 11. Jahrhundert und die Anfänge der decima constituta in ihrer kolonisationsgeschichtlichen Bedeutung’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung jür Rechtsgeschichte, Germ. Abt., xliii (1922), 267–300Google Scholar; Die ältesten Urkunden von Allerheiligen in Schqffhausen, Rheinau und Muri (Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte, 3), Basel 1883, pt. 3, 21–2; Salzburger Urkundenbuch, ed. W. Hauthaler and F. Martin, Salzburg 1910 ff., i. 236. Further references may be found in the notes to chap, ii of my Monastic Tithes.

page 176 note 3 Chronica S. Petri Erfordensis moderna, s.a. 1123, in Monumenta Erphesjurtensia, ed. O. Holder-Egger (Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum), Hanover-Leipzig 1899, 164. On the ‘tithe-war’ in Thuringia, see Hauck, Kirchengeschichte, iii. 731 ff.

page 176 note 4 Tremel, in Zs. d. hist. Vereines f. Steiermark, xxxiii. 14–18.

page 176 note 5 Urkundenbuch des Klosters Unser Lieben Frauen zu Magdeburg, ed. Hertel, G., Halle 1878, 16, 17, 27–9Google Scholar.

page 177 note 1 Schumacher, H. A., Die Stedinger, Bremen 1865, 72–3Google Scholar, 82, and 223–31 (on their ‘heresy’); Lea, Inquisition, iii. 182–9; Evans, A. P., ‘Social Aspects of Medieval Heresy’ Persecution and Liberty: Essays in Honor of George Lincoln Burr, New York 1931, 98Google Scholar.

page 177 note 2 Hugh of Poitiers, Historia Vizeliacensis, iii, in Migne, P.L., cxciv. 1611 C; cf. Graham, Rose, An Abbot of Vézelay, London 1918, 56Google Scholar. There is no evidence that these townsmen were associated with the heretics at Vézelay mentioned below.

page 177 note 3 Mansi, J. D., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Florence-Venice 1759 ff., xviii. 281–3Google Scholar.

page 177 note 4 Mabillon, Jean, Annales ordinis s. Benedicti, Lucca 1739–45, iv. 357–8Google Scholar. A somewhat different version of this charter is found in Documenti per la storia della città di Arezzo nel media evo, ed. Pasqui, Ubaldo, i (Documenti di storia italiana pubblicati a cura della regia deputazione toscana, 11), Florence 1899, 220–1Google Scholar.

page 178 note 1 Acta pontificun Romanorum inedita, ed. von Pflugk-Harttung, J., Tübingen-Stuttgart 1880–8, ii. 342Google Scholar; Jaffé, Philip, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1885–8 (=JL), no. 8774Google Scholar. The identity of the priest John is uncertain, but he may have been the same John who wrote a letter to provost Martin of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan excusing himself from a visit because he was having a book of the Digest made: von Pflugk-Harttung, J., Iter Italicum, Stuttgart 1883, 480Google Scholar, who remarked that ‘Das Studium des römischen Rechtes wind ihn auf solche Gedanken [rejection of tithes] gebracht haben’. But he adds that John was a common name in Milan at this time.

page 178 note 2 Acta, ii. 343; JL 8814.

page 178 note 2 Acta, ii. 344; JL 8784.

page 178 note 4 Acta, iii. 198; JL 10447 (1154/9). Hadrian ordered the archbishop to compel ‘the lords to pay tithes from their revenues and the peasants from all the fruits of their labours’. Innnocent III in a letter to the bishop of Ely, however, allowed that, ‘in the case of articles which have been purchased or manufactured we believe that expenses should be deducted from the sum which is tithed when they are sold, and that tithes should be paid on the residue as being the profit’: Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III Concerning England, ed. Cheney, C. R. and Semple, W. H. (Nelson's Medieval Texts), Edinburgh 1953, 76Google Scholar; Gregory IX, Decretals, iii. 30, 28.

page 178 note 5 Liber consuetudinum Mediolani anni MCCXVI, ed. Berlan, Francisco, Milan 1866, 57–61Google Scholar, esp. 60, n. 1; cf. Bosisio, Alfredo, Origini del comune di Milano, Messina–Milan 1933, 22–3Google Scholar, who dated this poem in the eleventh century, although its contents suggest a considerably later date. It was cited by Schmid, in Jb. d. öst. byz. Ges., vi. 106, n.360, as evidence of the agricultural origin of tithes, but it probably shows on the contrary the progressive customary restriction of the revenues from which tithes were paid.

page 179 note 1 Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der … mittelrheinischen Territorien, i, ed. Heinrich Beyer, Coblenz 1860, 514–15; cf. Epperlein, Bauembedrückung, 45–6.

page 179 note 2 Westfälisches Urkunden-Buch, iii, Munster 1859, 338.

page 179 note 3 Urkundenbuch der Abtei Eberbach im Rheingau, ed. Rossel, K., Wiesbaden 1862–70, i. 180–8 (quoted passage on p. 183)Google Scholar.

page 179 note 4 Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Köln, i, ed. Ennen, Leonard, Cologne 1860, 511Google Scholar.

page 180 note 1 Ub. z. Gesch. d. … mittelrhein. Terr., i. 641.

page 180 note 2 Cartulaire de Saint-Jean d'Angély (Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l'Aunis, 30, 33), Paris-Saintes 1901–4, i. 202–3Google Scholar.

page 180 note 3 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, ii. 30, ed. James, M. R. (Anecdota Oxoniensia, iv. 14), Oxford 1914, 101–2Google Scholar.

page 180 note 4 Chronicon Johannis Bromton, in Historiae Anglicanae scriptores X, ed. Twysden, Roger, London 1652, 736–7Google Scholar. Other versions of this tale are found in the Acta Sanctorum, May, vi. 396–7, and the Nova legenda Anglie, ed. Horstman, Carl, Oxford 1901, i. 100Google Scholar. On the chronicle attributed to John Brompton, who was abbot of Jervaulx in 1437, see Wright, Thomas, Biographia Britannica literaria: Anglo-Norman Period, London 1846, 412–13Google Scholar, who attributed it to the late twelfth century, and Gross, Charles, The Sources and Literature of English History, 2nd ed., London 1915, 347Google Scholar, who said it was made up of earlier sources.

page 181 note 1 Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, tr. Wyon, Olive, London-New York 1931, i. 351Google Scholar; Davison, Forerunners, 261–2.

page 180 note 2 Glaber, Raoul, Les cinq livres de ses Histoires (900–1044), ed. Prou, M. (Collection de textes pour servir à l'étude et à l'enseignement de l'histoire, i), Paris 1886, 49Google Scholar; cf. da Milano, Ilarino, ‘Le eresie popolari del secolo XI nell'Europa occidentale’, Studi Gregoriani, ii (1947), 46–7Google Scholar, and Borst, Arno, Die Katharer (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 12), Stuttgart 1953, 73Google Scholar. Volpe's small diatribe against tithes formed part of his discussion of Leutard.

page 181 note 3 Monumenta Bambergensia, ed. Jaffé, P. (Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, 5), Berlin 1869, 297Google Scholar (a letter from the canons of Utrecht to the archbishop of Cologne in 1112/14). No reference to his resistance to tithes is found in the other contemporarysources on Tanchelin: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, vi. 449 and 459 (continuations of the chronicle of Sigebert of Gembloux) and xii. 690–1 (life of St. Norbert). On Tanchelin, see Lea, Inquisition, i. 64–5; Hauck, Kirchengeschichte, iv. 96 ff.; and esp. Pirenne, Henri, ‘Tanchelin et le projet de démembrement du diocèse d'Utrecht vers 1100’, Académic royale de Belgique: Bulletin de la Classe des Letlres, 5th Series, xiii (1927), 112–13Google Scholar.

page 181 note 4 Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium, ed. Busson, G. and Ledru, A. (Archives historiques du Maine 2), Le Mans 1902, 437–8Google Scholar.

page 181 note 5 Hugh of Poitiers, Historia Vizdiacensis, iv, in Migne, P.L., cxciv, 1682; cf. Borst, Katharer, 247–8, on the Popelicani.

page 181 note 6 Ébrard of Béthune, Liber antihaeresis, x, in Trias scriptorum adversus Waldensium sectam, ed. Gretser, J., Ingoldstadt 1614, pt. i. 116–18Google Scholar; cf. Enchiridion fontium Valdesium, ed. Gonnet, G., i, Torre Pellici 1958, 143–4 on the title and dateGoogle Scholar.

page 182 note 1 Maxima bibliotheca veterum patrum, Lyon 1677, xxv. 265Google Scholar; cf. Un traité néo-manichéen da XIIIe siècle: Le Liber de duobus principiis, ed. Dondaine, A., Rome 1939, intro., p. 61Google Scholar; Esposito, Mario, ‘Sur quelques écrits concernant les hérésies et les hérétiques aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, xxxvi (1940), 155–6Google Scholar; and da Milano, Ilarino, L'resia di Ugo Speroni nella confutazione del Maestro Vacario (Studi e Testi, 115), Vatican City 1945, 458, n.2Google Scholar.

page 182 note 2 Bernard of Fontcaude, Adversus Waldensium sectam, ii, in Trias scriptorum, pt. ii, 13, and Enehiridion, 68.

page 182 note 3 Enchiridion, 132, 134, and 139, cited from Migne, P.L., ccxv. 1510–13, and ccxvi. 290–3.

page 182 note 4 Gunther, ‘Ligurinus’, De rebus gestis imp. caes. Friderici I, iii. 279–82Google Scholar, in Migne, P.L., ccxii. 370: ‘Illis primitias, et quae devotio plebis/Offerat, et decimas castos in corporis usus/Non ad luxuriam, sive oblectamina carnis/Concedens …’. Cf. Frugoni, Arsenio, Arnaldo da Brescia nelle fonti del secolo XII (Istituto storico Italiano per il medio evo: Studi storici, 8–9), Rome 1954, 100Google Scholar.

page 182 note 5 Gesta di Federico I in Italia, ed. Monaci, Ernesto (Fonti per la storia d'Italia, i), Rome 1887, 32, 1. 774Google Scholar: ‘Pro decimis laicos dampnabat quippe retentis …’. Cf. Frugoni, Arnaldo, 79–95, and Greenaway, G. W., Arnold of Brescia, Cambridge 1931, 167Google Scholar, n.3, who pointed out that this passage was ambiguous and might refer either to lay refusal to pay tithes or to lay possession of tithes, but the use of retinere with reference to tithes in Gratian, Decretum, c. xvi, q. ii, c. 5 (‘Nam qui Deo non vult reddere decimas, quas retinuit…’), in the chronicle of John Brompton cited above (‘decimarum retentor’), and in the chronicle of Henry Knighton cited below suggests that it meant ‘withhold’ or ‘not to pay’.

page 182 note 6 Dondaine, Antoine, ‘Durand de Huesca et la polémique anti-cathare’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, xxix (1959), 271Google Scholar.

page 182 note 7 Borst, Katharer, 228. In the dioceses of Béziers and Arles, about 1200, Cathar nobles apparently collected and kept tithes owed to the Church: Guiraud, Jean, Histoire de l'Inquisition au Moyen Âge, Paris 1935–8, i. 328Google Scholar.

page 183 note 1 Cf. the short treatise written about 1133/5 and published by Manselli, Raoul, ‘Il monaco Enrico e la sua eresia’, Bullettino dell'Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, lxv (1953), 60–1Google Scholar.

page 183 note 2 Cf. the twelfth-century poem published by Leclercq, Jean, ‘Un débat sur le sacerdoce des moines au XIIe siècle’, Analecta monastica, iv (Studia Anselmiana, 41), Rome 1957, 103–8Google Scholar.

page 183 note 3 Enchiridion, 32–6.

page 183 note 4 Cf. Koch, Gottfried, ‘Neue Quellen und Forschungen über die Anfänge der Waldenser’, Forschungen und Fortschritte, xxxii (1958), 141–9Google Scholar.

page 183 note 5 Glaber, Histoires, 49; Peter the Venerable, Contra Petrobrusianos, in Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, ed. Marrier, M. and Duchesne, A., Paris 1614, 1135–43Google Scholar. Gerbert in his socalled Profession of Faith swore that he believed in ‘one and the same author, both Lord and God, of the New and Old Testament’, which implies that certain heretics in the late tenth century held that parts of the Bible were written by the Devil: Lettres de Gerbert (983–997), ed. Havet, Julien (Collection de textes pour servir à l'étude et à l'enseignement de l'histoire, 6), Paris 1889, 162Google Scholar. Cf. also Schmidt, Charles, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, Paris-Geneva 1849, ii. 273Google Scholar, and Runciman, Steven, The Medieval Manichee, Cambridge 1947, 150–1Google Scholar.

page 183 note 6 Ralph Ardens, Homiliae, ii. 19, in Migne, P.L., clv. 2011.

page 183 note 7 Mansi, Collectio, xxii. 159.

page 184 note 1 Alan of Lille, Contra hereticos, i. 37, in Migne, P.L., ccx. 341; Rainerius Sacconi, Summa de catharis, in Liber de duobus principiis, ed. Dondaine, 71 and 76.

page 184 note 2 Thouzellier, Christine, ‘Controverses vaudoises-cathares à la fin du XIIe siècle’, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 1960, 175–94Google Scholar.

page 184 note 3 Liber de duobus principiis, ed. Dondaine, 19.

page 184 note 4 The Summa contra haereticos Ascribed to Praepositinus of Cremona, ed. Garvin, J. N. and Corbett, J. A. (Publications in Mediaeval Studies, 15), Notre Dame 1958, 92–104Google Scholar, cf. intro. p. xxxv.

page 184 note 5 Henry Knighton, Chronicon, v, in Twysden, Scriptores X, 2667.

page 184 note 6 Little, in Eng. Hist. Rev., lx. 67.

page 184 note 7 Kidd, B. J., Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation, Oxford 1911, 175–6Google Scholar; cf. Nabholz, Hans, in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Cambridge 1942 ff., i. 560–1Google Scholar, who suggested that the peasants opposed the small tithe ‘because—unlike the great tithe—there was no Biblical authority for it’.

page 184 note 8 It is concerned with actual evidence for resistance to tithes, not with the question of whether tithes were justified or oppressive.

page 185 note 1 The vast majority of medieval litigation over tithes, to which Coulton refers in Five Centuries, iii. 225, dealt with the possession rather than the payment of tithes.

page 185 note 2 Papal levies of a tenth, which were often resisted even by local ecclesiastical authorities, may have been confused with tithes: cf. Lea, Inquisition, ii. 137, 433, and Lunt, William E., ‘Clerical Tenths Levied in England by Papal Authority during the Reign of Edward II’, Anniversary Essays in Mediaeval History by Students of Charles Homer Haskins, Boston-New York, 1929, 157–82Google Scholar, esp. 165–6 on opposition.