§ 9. FINANCIAL POLICY OF THE AVIGNON POPES. 91
tax.i jjj certain cases the tax was remitted on account of the poverty of the ecclesiastic, and in the ledgers the entry was made, " not taxed on account of poverty," non taxata propter paupertatem. The amount of this tax seems to have varied, and was sometimes one-third of the income and sometimes a larger portion. 2 In the fourteenth century the following sees paid servitia as follows: Mainz, 5,000 gold florins; Treves, 7,000; Cologne, 10,000; Narbonne, 10,000. On the basis of a new valuation, Martin V. in 1420 raised the taxation of the sees of Mainz and Treves to 10,000 florins each, or $25,000 of our money, so that they corresponded to the assessment made from of old upon Cologne.^ When an incumbent died without having met the full tax, his successor made up the deficit in addition to paying the assessment for his own confirmation.*
The following cases will give some idea of the annoyances to which bishops and abbots were put who travelled to Avignon to secure letters of papal confirmation to their offices. In 1334, the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, Canterbury, had to wait in Avignon from April 22 to Aug. 9 to get his confirmation, and it cost him 148 pounds sterling. John IV., abbotelect of St. Albans, in 1302 went for consecration to Rome, accompanied by four monks. He arrived May 6, presented his case to Boniface VIII. in person at Anagni, May 9, and did not get back to London till Aug. 1, being all the while engaged in the process of getting his papers properly prepared and cer-
1 Gottlob, p. 130.
2 Kirsch: FinanzverioaUung , and Baumgarten, p. xcvii, make it one -third. Gottlob, p. 120, says it was sometimes more.
2 Baumgarten, p. cvi, Scliulte, p. 97 sq. Cases are also reported of the reduction of the assessment upon a revaluation of the property. In 1326 the assessment of the see of Breslau was reduced from 4,000 to 1,785 gold florins. Kirsch : Finanzverwaltxmg , p. 8.
* For cases, see Baumgarten, p. cviii. Attempts to get rid of this assessment were unavailing. The bishop of Bamberg, in 1335, left Avignon without a bull of confirmation because he had not made the prescribed payment. The reason is not recorded, but the statement is spread on the ledger entry that episcopal confirmation should not be granted to him till the Apostolic letters pertaining to it were properly registered and delivered by the Apostolic camera. Goeller, p. 69.
92 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
tified to.i The expense of getting his case through was 2,585 marks, or 10,340 gold florins, or 125,000 of our money. The ways in which tliis large sum was distributed are not a matter of conjecture. The exact itemized statement is extant: 2,258 marks, or 9,032 florins, went to " the Lord pope and the cardinals." Of this sum 5,000 florins, or 1,250 marks, are entered as a payment for the visitatio, and the remainder in payment of the servitium to the cardinals. The remaining 327 marks, or 1,308 florins, were consumed in registration and notarial fees and gifts to cardinals. To Cardinal Francis of St. Maria in Cosmedin, a nephew of Boniface, a gift was made costing more than 10 marks, or 40 florins.
Another abbot-elect of St. Albans, Richard II., went to Avignon in 1326 accompanied by six monks, and was well satisfied to get away with the payment of 3,600 gold florins. He was surprised that the tax was so reasonable. Abbot William of the diocese of Autun, Oct. 22, 1316, obligated himself to pay John XXII., as confirmation tax, 1,500 gold florins, and to John's officials 170 more.^
The fees paid to the lower officials, called servitia mimita^ were classified under five heads, four of them going to the officials, /aTWiVi'args of the pontiff, and one to the officials of the cardinals.^ The exact amounts received on account of servitia or confirmation fees by the pope and the college of cardinals, probably will never be known. From the lists that have been examined, the cardinals between 1316-1323 received from this source 234,047 gold florins, or about 39,000 florins a year. As the yield from this tax was usually, though not always, divided in equal shares between the pope and the cardinals, the full sum realized from this source was double this amount.*
The annates, so far as they were the tax levied by the pope upon appointments made by himself to lower clerical offices
1 Gesta Abb. motiaster. S. Albani, II. 55 sq. SeeGottlob, Servitien, p. 174 sqq. for the full list of his expenses.
2 The contract is printed entire by Kirsch, Finanzverwaltujig, pp. 73-77, and Gottlob, p. 162 sqq.
3 See Gottlob, pp. 102-118 ; Scliulte, p. i;] sqq. * Baumgarten, p. cxx.