DOMUS CULTA. - The impoverishment of the revenues of the Roman Church, caused by the ill will of the Eastern emperors, the granting of lands in emphyteusis and other causes, forced the popes to make up for it by a more rational exploitation of the estates that remained to them in the vicinity of Rome.

Beginning with Pope Zachary (d. 752), they organized for direct cultivation, eliminating the great leaseholders, large landed properties, grouping each of them around an inhabited center, providing them with a church, a mill, storehouses and whatever else was required for spiritual, economic and social life, and placing them in mutual relation for the exchange of necessary products. The cultivators who made them productive thus entered the class of pontifical employees alongside the ecclesiastics and formed rural militias that, in case of need, were able to take up arms in defense of the Pope. The d. c., which under Zachary numbered 5, later increased, especially under Adrian I (d. 795), in number and ensured to ecclesiastical property greater stability and a more substantial yield in order to face the internal difficulties of the temporal power. They were situated in the Roman Campania and in southern Tuscia.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: L. Duchesne, Les premiers temps de l'Etat pontifical, Paris 1904; G. Tomassetti, La campagna romana antica, I, Rome 1910, pp. 110-12; II-IV, ibid. 1926, passim; O. Bertolini, Roma di fronte a Bisanzio e ai Longobardi, Bologna 1941, p. 509 ff.

Pio Paschini

@incollection{ec4_domus_culta, author = {Paschini, Pio}, title = {Domus Culta}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IV}, pages = {1848}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/domus-culta} }

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