LIBER CENSUUM OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. - It is the register of the periodic census dues owed to the Roman Church, under various titles, by monasteries, churches, cities, bishoprics, lay lordships and kingdoms. The author is Cencio Savelli, "camerarius" of the popes Clement III (from 1188) and Celestine III; at the time of the composition of the L. c. he was cardinal deacon of S. Lucia in Orphea, then vice-chancellor and, after the death of Pope Innocent III, supreme pontiff under the name of Honorius III (1216-27).
The original manuscript of the L. c. is cod. Vat. lat. 8486, executed according to Cencio's instructions by Guglielmo Roffio of St-Jean-d'Angely, cleric of the Apostolic Camera and hostus at the Chancery. The odula of the census dues is only one part of the manuscript, which further contains a list of the bishoprics and monasteries directly dependent on the Holy See, the Mirabilia urbis Romae, the Ordo of Cencio, two chronicles of popes, one up to Celestine III, the other up to Eugene III, and a cartulary.
The principal sources of the L. c. are, according to meticulous studies by E. Stevenson, P. Fabre and L. Duchesne, the Collectio canonum of Anselm the Younger of Lucca (before 1086), the Collectio canonum of Card. Deusdedit (between 1083 and 1087), the Politico of the canon Benedict (between 1140 and 1143), the Book of census dues of Pope Eugene III (between 1145 and 1153), that of Pope Adrian IV (between 1154 and 1159), the Gesta pauperis scholaris Albini (1189) and Cencio himself (1192).
The subject. - The census dues with which the L. c. deals are distinguished into two classes: some were owed to the Roman Church by virtue of a contract of lease of the tenants on the patrimonies of the Roman Church, especially from the times of St. Gregory the Great; the others by virtue of the protecting function of St. Peter and the Apostolic See, to whose spiritual authority various monasteries and churches entrusted themselves from the 8th century onward, as, for example, the female monastery of Sts. James and Philip near Lucca, and particularly the abbey of Cluny, which already obligated itself in the document of its foundation in 910 to send to Rome every five years a census of ten "soldi" to feed the lights at the tomb of St. Peter. As a consequence, the monks enjoyed the protection of the Prince of the Apostles and had in the Roman Pontiff the defender of their rights. Until the end of the 11th century the census was the sign of a temporal immunity, but from the beginning of the 12th century it also signified spiritual liberty, that is, exemption. At the end of that century, a monastery that was tributary was also exempt and vice versa.
For the Apostolic Camera, however, there is no distinction in fact between the different census dues. For it, all those were bound to the census who held goods that belonged to the right and property of blessed Peter or of the Roman Church. Therefore the census was a recognition of the high dominion that the Roman Church possessed over all the lands that were subject to it.
Alongside monasteries and churches, castles, cities, princes and kingdoms were also among the censuales of the Roman Church; these too were called in ius et proprietatem beati Petri consistentes. Especially under the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII, following upon the supremacy of the Church of Peter over all other churches, and in connection with the pseudo-Constantinian donation and the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, almost all the kingdoms of Europe were more or less dependent on the Apostolic See, to which they offered every year, in sign of fidelity and devotion, a census or rather the obolus of St. Peter, as, for example, the Kingdom of the Normans in Sicily, the kings of Aragon, Castile and León, the Nordic Kingdoms, Poland, Bohemia, Croatia, and England.
Cencio believed he was doing a definitive work. He left large blank spaces free in the manuscript, so that future census dues could be introduced "until the end of the world." At the end of the 15th century the L. c. was still in use at the Apostolic Camera.