Collectoriae, 1274-1447.

ArchivalResource

Catholic Church. Camera Apostolica. Collectoriae, 1274-1447.

Collectoriae, 1274-1447.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/145567183

MacFarlane and Boyle emphasize the importance of this series, which consists mainly of the reports and accounts submitted to the Camera by the collectors appointed throughout western Christendom to gather various taxes and other debts claimed by the pope. Those taxes included the census, an annual tribute from exempt monasteries; annates, the assessed income of minor benefices for the first year of their tenure, when this was reserved to the pope; tenths, an income tax on benefices levied for particular purposes such as a Crusade; other emergency subsidies, for example, the thirtieths and subsidia caritativa; spoils, the money, movables and debts receivable belonging to deceased clerics, if these were reserved by the pope; the reserved income of vacant benefices; Peter's Pence. The collectors were commissioned with great executive and judicial powers, including excommunication and summary justice; their reports consequently give a valuable insight into the economic and social condition of their collectories. Their cash accounts, scrupulously drafted and audited in the Camera, reveal the ongoing business of papal finance. Various records kept in the Camera itself were bound and stored with Collectoriae reports and became part of this series, for example some registers of letters of the camerarii and some dossiers of papal letters bearing on the functions of the Camera. A very large number of unbound documents that once accompanied Collectoriae material are now found in Instrumenta miscellanea. Both this series and the Introitus et exitus include information on the administration of the papal states, instructions to local fiscal officials within them, and other valuable local information, and are thus a rich source for the social history of central Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

24 linear m.

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