LIBER CENSUUM ROMANAE ECCLESIAE. — This is the register of the periodic censuses owed to the Roman Church, under various titles, by monasteries, churches, cities, bishoprics, lay dominions, and kingdoms. Its author is Cencio Savelli, camerarius of 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, later 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 hospes at the Chancery. The schedule of the censuses is only one part of the manuscript, which also contains a list of the bishoprics and monasteries directly dependent on the Holy See, the Mirobilia urbis Romae, Cencio’s Ordo, two chronicles of the popes, one up to Celestine III and the other up to Eugenius III, and a cartulary.
The principal sources of the L. c. are, according to the detailed studies of E. Stevenson, P. Fabre, and L. Duchesne, Anselmo iuniore of Lucca’s Collectio canonum (before 1086), the Collectio canonum of Cardinal Deusdedit (between 1083 and 1087), the Politico of the canon Benedetto (between 1140 and 1143), the Book of Censuses of Pope Eugenius III (between 1145 and 1153), that of Pope Hadrian IV (between 1154 and 1159), the Gesta pauperis scholaris Albini (1189), and Cencio himself (1192).
The subject. — The censuses discussed by the L. c. are divided into two classes: some were owed to the Roman Church by virtue of a lease contract made by tenants on the patrimonies of the Roman Church, especially from the time of s. Gregorio Magno; others by virtue of the protective function of s. Pietro and the Apostolic See, to whose spiritual authority various monasteries and churches entrusted themselves from the eighth century onward, such as, for example, the women’s monastery of SS. Giacomo and Filippo near Lucca, and especially the abbey of Cluny, which had already undertaken in the document of its foundation in 910 to send Rome every five years a census of ten “solidi” to maintain the lights at the tomb of s. Pietro. 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 eleventh century, the census was the sign of temporal immunity, but from the beginning of the twelfth century it also signified spiritual freedom, that is, exemption. By the end of that century, a monastery that was tributary was also exempt, and vice versa.
For the Apostolic Camera, however, there was no distinction in practice among the various censuses. In its view, all those who possessed goods belonging to the right and property of blessed Pietro or of the Roman Church were bound to pay the census. Thus the census was an acknowledgment of the high dominion that the Roman Church possessed over all the lands subject to II.
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 Gregorio VII, following the supremacy of the Church of Pietro over all other churches, and in connection with the pseudo-Donation of Constantine and the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, almost all the kingdoms of Europe were more or less dependent on the Apostolic See, to which they offered each year, as a sign of fidelity and devotion, a census, or rather the obolo of s. Pietro, such as, for example, the Kingdom of the Normans in Sicily, the kings of Aragon, Castile, and León, the northern kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia, and Croatia, and England.
Cencio believed that he was producing a definitive work. He left broad blank spaces in the manuscript so that future censuses could be entered “until the end of the world.” At the end of the fifteenth century, the L. c. was still in use at the Apostolic Camera.