LIBER CENSUUM ROMANAE ECCLESIAE
It is the register of the periodic censuses owed to the Roman Church under various titles by monasteries, churches, cities, bishoprics, lay dominions, 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 *Liber Censuum* 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 *Liber Censuum* is cod. Vat. lat. 8468, executed according to Cencio’s instructions by Guglielmo Rofio of St-Jean-d'Angély, clerk of the Apostolic Chamber and copyist in the Chancery. The census table is only one part of the manuscript, which also contains a list of bishoprics and monasteries directly dependent on the Holy See, the *Mirabilia urbis Romae*, the *Ordo* of Cencio, two chronicles of the popes—one up to Celestine III, the other up to Eugenius III—and a cartulary.
The principal sources of the *Liber Censuum*, according to minute studies by E. Stevenson, P. Fabre, and L. Duchesne, are the *Collectio canonum* of Anselm, the *Numerus* of Lucca (before 1086), the *Collectio canonum* of Cardinal Deusdedit (between 1083 and 1087), the *Politicum* of the canon Benedict (between 1140 and 1143), the *Liber Censuum* of Pope Eugenius III (between 1145 and 1153), that of Pope Adrian IV (between 1154 and 1159), the *Gesta pauperis scholaris Albinii* (1189), and Cencio himself (1192).
The subject matter. The censuses dealt with in the *Liber Censuum* are divided into two classes: some were owed to the Roman Church by virtue of a lease contract by tenants on the patrimonies of the Roman Church, especially from the time of St Gregory the Great; the others by virtue of the protective function of St Peter or the Apostolic See, to whose spiritual power various monasteries and churches entrusted themselves from the 8th century onward, such as, for example, the female monastery of SS. James and Philip near Lucca, and particularly the abbey of Cluny, which in the document of its foundation in 910 already bound itself to send to Rome every five years a census of ten “soldi” to feed the lamps at the tomb of St Peter. As a consequence, the monks enjoyed the protection of the Prince of the Apostles and had the Roman Pontiff as defender of their rights. Until the end of the 11th century the census was a sign of temporal immunity, but from the beginning of the 12th century it also signified spiritual freedom, i.e., exemption. By the end of that century, a monastery that was tributary was also exempt and vice versa.
For the Apostolic Chamber, however, there was in fact no distinction between the different censuses. For it, all those who held lands belonging to the right and property of the blessed Peter or of the Roman Church were liable to the census. Hence the census was an acknowledgment of the overlordship that the Roman Church exercised over all the lands subject to II.
Alongside monasteries and churches, castles, cities, principalities, and kingdoms were also among the tributaries of the Roman Church; these too were said to be “consisting in the right and property of the blessed Peter.” Especially under the pontificate of Gregory VII, in consequence of the supremacy of the Church of Peter 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 every year, as a sign of loyalty and devotion, a census or rather the alms of St Peter, such as, for example, the Kingdom of the Normans in Sicily, the kings of Aragon, Castile and León, the northern kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia, Croatia, and England.
Cencio believed he was producing a definitive work. He left wide blank spaces in the manuscript so that future censuses could be added “until the end of the world.” At the end of the 15th century the *Liber Censuum* was still in use at the Apostolic Chamber.