Gregory of Tours:
Exemption of the Church in Clermont from Royal Taxes, c. 590
If, as this document suggests, the collectors were responsible for the taxes, it may
well be that there was a system of farming out. At least that would be a good reason for
the exemption which they, in common with the clergy, were granted.
Book X. Chapter 7:
But in the same city [Clermont] King Childebert remitted all tribute both from
the churches and from the monasteries and from the other clergy who seemed to belong to
that diocese, as well as that from all those who held office in the diocese. For the
collectors had already been reduced to penury in that, for a long time when land, through
the succession of new generations, had been divided into many parts, they were scarcely
able to collect this tribute. By the inspiration of God, the king commanded the collection
of the tribute to be improved so that what was owing from the past to the fisc should not
harm the collector of the tribute, or cause any churchman to be brought to account for
tardiness in paying.
Source:
J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus, (Paris, 1849), Vol. LXXI, p.
534; reprinted in Roy C. Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval
Economic History, (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York:
Biblo & Tannen, 1965), p. 356.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been modernized by
Prof. Arkenberg.
This text is part of the Internet
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© Paul Halsall, October 1998
halsall@fordham.edu
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