CULTIVATED ESTATES. – The decline in the revenues of the Roman Church, caused by the hostility of the emperors of the East, the granting of lands in emphyteusis, and other factors, compelled the popes to make up for it by more rational exploitation of the patrimonies remaining to them in the vicinity of Rome.
Beginning with Pope Zachary (d. 752), they organized these lands for direct cultivation, eliminating large leaseholders, consolidating large estates, grouping each around a populated center, and providing them with a church, mill, storehouses, and everything else required for spiritual, economic, and social life, linking them together for the exchange of necessary products. The cultivators who worked these lands thus entered the class of papal employees alongside the clergy and formed rural militias that, when needed, were capable of taking up arms to defend the Pope. These cultivated estates, which numbered five under Zachary, later increased in number, especially under Adrian I (d. 795), ensuring greater stability for ecclesiastical property and more substantial income to meet the internal challenges of the temporal power. They were situated in Roman Campania and southern Tuscany.