790 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
During the absence of a cardinal on legatine business or for other reasons, he ceased to participate in the fund.
These revenues were handled by two treasurers: a papal treasurer, or chamberlain, and a treasurer for the college of cardinals.1 The latter held his office for life. The two offices were never vested in the same person. Each treasurer, at least from the time of Benedict XII. in the fourteenth century, kept his own set of books and at times copies of the papal ledgers were made and turned over to the cardinals. To such a system had the finances been reduced that, as early as the reign of Boniface VIII., the Registers of preceding pontiffs were consulted.2 In the period 1295-1298, the college of cardi nals received as their share, coin amounting to 85,431 gold florins, a sum equal in face value to $ 200,000. 3
To the pope's own exchequer went the additional sums accruing from annates as denned above, the special taxes imposed by the pope at will, and the gifts for special papal favors. The crusades against the Saracens and Frederick II. were an inviting pretext for special taxation. They were the cause of endless friction especially in France and England, where the papal mulcts were most frequent and most bitterly complained of. The first papal levy for revenue in France seems to have been in 1188. As early as 1247 such a levy upon church property was met by a firm protest. In 1269, Louis IX. issued the pragmatic sanction which forbade papal taxes being put on church property in France without the sovereign's consent. One of the most famous levies of medi aeval England was the Saladin tax, for a crusade against the Saracens.
1 camerarius collegii dominorum cardinalium. The first treasurer whose name is known was William de Bray, cardinal-priest of St. Marks, 1272-1282. For a list of his successors to 1401, see Kirsch, pp. 44-46, and Baumgarten, pp. xliii sqq.
2 Kirsch, p. 66. Baumgarten, p. xxiii, is of a different opinion and puts the first systematically kept ledgers in 1295.
8 For a list of the strange coins paid into this fund and a computation of their value in gold florins, see Kirsch, pp. 56 sq. Kirsch estimates the gold florin as equivalent in face value to 10 marks or $2.50 and the mark in the 14th century as having four times the purchasing power of a mark to-day.
§ 124. THE POPE AND THE CURIA. 791
The curia was already, in the time of St. Bernard, noto rious for its rapacity. No sums could satisfy its greed, and upon it was heaped the blame for the incessant demands which went out from Rome. Bernard presents a vivid, if perhaps overcolored, picture of this hungry horde of officials and exclaims: "When has Rome refused gold? Rome has been turned from a shrine into a place of traffic. The Germans travel to Rome with their pack animals laden with treasure. Silver has become as plentiful as hay. It is to Eugenius' credit that he has turned his face against such gifts. The curia is responsible. They have made Rome a place of buying and selling. The 4 Romans,' for this was the distinctive name given to this body of officials, are a pack of shameless beggars and know not how to decline silver and gold. They are dragons and scorpions, not sheep." l
The English chronicler, Matthew Paris, writing a cen tury later, has on almost every other page of his chronicle a complaint against the exactions of the papal tax gatherers. One might easily get the impression from his annals, that the English Church and people existed chiefly to fill the Roman treasury. The curia, he said, was like a gulf swallow ing up the resources of all classes and the revenues of bishops and abbots.2 The contemporary Italian chronicler Salimbene has biting words for the luxury and idleness of the cardinals and reports the invectives of Hugh de Digne delivered at the council of Lyons, 1245. 3
Bernard of Cluny and other poets of the time lashed the curia for its simony.4 Everything at Rome had its price.
1 De consid., III. 1, 3. Bernard returns again and again (in his de consid., I. 11 ; IV. 4, etc., and his Letters) to the venality of the curia. He even suggested that Eugenius might have to leave Rome to get away from its cor ruption, De consid., IV. 3.
8 Luard's ed., V. 96. 8 Coulton's ed., pp. 261 sq.
* Bernard of Cluny in his de contemptu mundi has the following lines: — Roma dat omnibus omnia, dantibus omnia Romce Cum pretio : quiajure ibi via, jus perit omne Ut rota labitur, ergo vocabitur hinc rota a JKoma Roma nocens nocet, atque mam docet ipsa nocendi Jura relinquere, lucra requirere, pallia vendi