The decline of the Roman Empire did not bring an immediate end to its fiscal system. David Bachrach explores how the obligation to pay taxes gradually evolved into the requirement to perform military service, reshaping government and society in the early Middle Ages.
By David Bachrach
Among the most famous and certainly most contentious debates regarding the fate of the late Roman fiscal regime was that between Jean Durliat and Chris Wickham. In his most widely read study on the subject, Les finances publiques de Dioclétian aux Carolingiens, published in 1990, Durliat argued for substantial continuities in the late Roman tax system up through the time of Charlemagne, and most importantly for the centrality of taxation to the effective functioning of royal government. Wickham responded with a withering and frequently tendentious review of Durliat’s text titled “La chute de Rome n’aura pas lieu,” (The Fall of Rome Will Never Happen). Wickham offered his own detailed analyses of what he saw as the collapse of the late Roman fiscal system in numerous publications, perhaps the most widely read of which is Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800, published in 2005.
Both of these authors took quite extreme positions. Even those scholars who argued for substantial continuities between the later Roman Empire and the early medieval period, or Late Antiquity as it now generally is known, found much to criticize in Durliat’s approach. Wickham, for his part, systematically ignored the ongoing function of late Roman governmental institutions, which were adopted by the rulers of the erstwhile western provinces, particularly north of the Alps, as has been demonstrated in convincing detail by scholars such as Alexander Callender Murray and Stefan Esders.
An important middle ground between these two extreme positions was set out by Walter Goffart, a frequent critic of both Durliat and Wickham. In a series of studies, Goffart demonstrated that a process was begun during the later empire, which was continued by the rulers of various successor states, in which the obligation to pay taxes in either cash or kind was transmuted into the obligation to perform labour duties on behalf of the res publica. The most important of these functiones was the obligation to provide military service at one’s own cost.
Walter Goffart and Military Obligations
Map of the Merovingian kingdoms – map by Rudric / Wikimedia Commons
In the first of these studies, published in 2008, Goffart drew attention to the widely attested but not heretofore explained fact that Frankish kings were able to require unpaid military service from their subjects during both the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties. Notably, this obligation was tied explicitly to the possession of property in both narrative works and government documents. Individuals possessing a stipulated minimum quantity of land, as measured by value rather than surface area, were required to serve at their own cost in the king’s army either on foot or, if sufficiently wealthy, on horseback. Individuals who failed to perform this military duty were subject to a very substantial fine, not a tax as Wickham had thought, denoted as the heribannum.
Goffart’s focus in this study was on illuminating the administrative mechanisms whereby men with property were assessed for military service. He drew attention particularly to the distinction in a vast array of governmental and private documents, as well as royal ordinances, between the mansi dominicati and the dependent mansi attached to these demesne lands. He argued that the distinction in the sources between mansi ingenuiles and mansi serviles was less significant, at least with regard to administrative organization, than was the total number of dependent mansi attached to a particular mansus dominicatus. The number of dependent mansi of whatever type, Goffart argued, reflected the scale of the demesne lands held by the individual proprietor or ecclesiastical institution. Goffart concluded that the Carolingian government, drawing on earlier Merovingian and ultimately Roman precedents, based its assessment of military obligations on the value of the demesne lands held by the proprietor, with value reflected through the total number of dependent mansi attached to it.
Crucially, from Goffart’s perspective, during the reign of Charles the Bald (840–877), the holders of demesne lands were subject to service in the royal army, while the tenants on the various mansi were subject to financial payments to the government. Goffart tied this system of property division, from an administrative perspective, to the division during the later Roman Empire between tax-paying lands, held by Romans, and the recipients of tax allotments from the government, who were obligated to provide military service to the state.
In the second of his studies, published in 2016, Walter Goffart returned to the idea of military obligation in an effort to dispose of the view that there was a duty for territorial defence, which fell on the poor, that was distinct from the obligation for participation in offensive campaigns that fell only on the rich and their “war bands.” Consistent with his view that all free men in the later Roman Empire were subject to public obligations, Goffart argued that there was no evidence in the Carolingian capitularies for a distinctive duty of Landwehr. Instead, quite poor men, that is, those with just half a mansus in property, were required to club together to send one of their number on campaign. Conversely, wealthier men were subject to military service in defence of their home regions.
Goffart returned once more to the issue of military service performed in lieu of paying taxes in a study published in 2018. Here, he challenged the interpretation of the capitularies developed by Timothy Reuter, who had argued that there was a transformation of the Carolingian military system in the years immediately after the turn of the ninth century. Reuter’s overarching argument was that Charlemagne, as well as Louis the Pious, tried, and ultimately failed, to develop larger military forces to undertake the territorial defence of the Carolingian Empire after the era of conquests supposedly had come to an end. Goffart refuted Reuter’s assumptions, based on alleged silences in the sources, and concluded once again that poorer men had been subject to military obligations tout court alongside their wealthier neighbours since at least the later sixth century. In short, both poorer and wealthier men served on campaign before and after 800, and both also served locally in a military capacity before and after 800.
However, despite illuminating the administrative systems that were in place in the Carolingian Empire to mobilize property owners for all types of military service, and making numerous convincing points regarding the ways in which military service became a substitute for taxation in cash or kind, Goffart did not ultimately explain the actual process by which this transition took place.
Terra Salica and the End of Taxation
Start of the Salic law in the Wandalgarius Codex of 793/4 – St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 731. S. 235
In his 2008 article, Goffart pointed to one of the loose ends that he had left which pertained directly to this question. He observed that individuals legally defined as Romans served in the armies of the Merovingian kings in the sixth century and stated: “One would like to know whether these Romans were given the option at some time of having the taxable status of their lands commuted into service in the royal army on the same terms as the Franks.”
One possibility that Goffart raised but did not explore in this regard was the problem of terra salica. This issue was taken up, however, by Bernard Bachrach in a study focused on the problem of “military lands.” Bachrach observed that the Law of the Salian Franks distinguished between allodial lands, which women could inherit, and terra salica, which could only be inherited by a male relative.
This development of two classes of property, one of which was inheritable by women and one which was not, grew out of the conditions of Frankish settlement within the Roman Empire. As groups of Frankish foederati were settled within the northeastern provinces of the Western Empire, they were granted lands for which they owed military service, but not taxes. By contrast, other lands acquired through purchase, development, or otherwise by Franks within the Empire were subject to the same types of taxes as those held by Romans. Naturally, the Frankish owners of these allodial lands wanted to hold them under the same tax-free (although not service-free) tenure as lands granted by the government.
The famous case of the tax collectors Audo and Parthenius, discussed by the late sixth-century bishop and historian Gregory of Tours, may shed light on this issue. These two men were killed by the Frankish subjects of King Theudebert (d. 548) when they tried to collect taxes. The problem in this case may have been that the Franks did actually owe taxes on their non-salic lands but wanted to subsume these within their salic holdings, for which they only owed military service. However, the Franks also often wanted their daughters to inherit some of their lands, which was not possible if these were designated as terra salica. Ultimately, governmental authorities no longer found it necessary to distinguish between terra salica and allodial properties, and no later than c. 735 we find the official rejection, in a copy of the Lex Salica, of the “impious custom” that sisters could not share in an inheritance with their brothers.
The reason for the abandonment of this “impious custom” was that most property owners by this time had come to owe military service rather than taxes for their landholdings, whether these originally were terra salica or other categories of property.
Rather than Romans being given the option of transforming their allods into terra salica, however, the explanation perhaps should be sought in the transformation of the legal identities of the population of the regnum Francorum. Whereas the majority of the population ruled by Clovis I (d. 511), as well as his sons and grandsons, consisted of Romans, by the later seventh century it appears that most of the population had the legal identity of Franks. Part of the adoption of Frankish law and identity, and perhaps a very great incentive to do so, was the replacement of the regular payment of taxes with the periodic performance of military service.
David Bachrach is a Professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he researches medieval military history, particularly in England and Germany.
The decline of the Roman Empire did not bring an immediate end to its fiscal system. David Bachrach explores how the obligation to pay taxes gradually evolved into the requirement to perform military service, reshaping government and society in the early Middle Ages.
By David Bachrach
Among the most famous and certainly most contentious debates regarding the fate of the late Roman fiscal regime was that between Jean Durliat and Chris Wickham. In his most widely read study on the subject, Les finances publiques de Dioclétian aux Carolingiens, published in 1990, Durliat argued for substantial continuities in the late Roman tax system up through the time of Charlemagne, and most importantly for the centrality of taxation to the effective functioning of royal government. Wickham responded with a withering and frequently tendentious review of Durliat’s text titled “La chute de Rome n’aura pas lieu,” (The Fall of Rome Will Never Happen). Wickham offered his own detailed analyses of what he saw as the collapse of the late Roman fiscal system in numerous publications, perhaps the most widely read of which is Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800, published in 2005.
Both of these authors took quite extreme positions. Even those scholars who argued for substantial continuities between the later Roman Empire and the early medieval period, or Late Antiquity as it now generally is known, found much to criticize in Durliat’s approach. Wickham, for his part, systematically ignored the ongoing function of late Roman governmental institutions, which were adopted by the rulers of the erstwhile western provinces, particularly north of the Alps, as has been demonstrated in convincing detail by scholars such as Alexander Callender Murray and Stefan Esders.
An important middle ground between these two extreme positions was set out by Walter Goffart, a frequent critic of both Durliat and Wickham. In a series of studies, Goffart demonstrated that a process was begun during the later empire, which was continued by the rulers of various successor states, in which the obligation to pay taxes in either cash or kind was transmuted into the obligation to perform labour duties on behalf of the res publica. The most important of these functiones was the obligation to provide military service at one’s own cost.
Walter Goffart and Military Obligations
In the first of these studies, published in 2008, Goffart drew attention to the widely attested but not heretofore explained fact that Frankish kings were able to require unpaid military service from their subjects during both the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties. Notably, this obligation was tied explicitly to the possession of property in both narrative works and government documents. Individuals possessing a stipulated minimum quantity of land, as measured by value rather than surface area, were required to serve at their own cost in the king’s army either on foot or, if sufficiently wealthy, on horseback. Individuals who failed to perform this military duty were subject to a very substantial fine, not a tax as Wickham had thought, denoted as the heribannum.
Goffart’s focus in this study was on illuminating the administrative mechanisms whereby men with property were assessed for military service. He drew attention particularly to the distinction in a vast array of governmental and private documents, as well as royal ordinances, between the mansi dominicati and the dependent mansi attached to these demesne lands. He argued that the distinction in the sources between mansi ingenuiles and mansi serviles was less significant, at least with regard to administrative organization, than was the total number of dependent mansi attached to a particular mansus dominicatus. The number of dependent mansi of whatever type, Goffart argued, reflected the scale of the demesne lands held by the individual proprietor or ecclesiastical institution. Goffart concluded that the Carolingian government, drawing on earlier Merovingian and ultimately Roman precedents, based its assessment of military obligations on the value of the demesne lands held by the proprietor, with value reflected through the total number of dependent mansi attached to it.
Crucially, from Goffart’s perspective, during the reign of Charles the Bald (840–877), the holders of demesne lands were subject to service in the royal army, while the tenants on the various mansi were subject to financial payments to the government. Goffart tied this system of property division, from an administrative perspective, to the division during the later Roman Empire between tax-paying lands, held by Romans, and the recipients of tax allotments from the government, who were obligated to provide military service to the state.
In the second of his studies, published in 2016, Walter Goffart returned to the idea of military obligation in an effort to dispose of the view that there was a duty for territorial defence, which fell on the poor, that was distinct from the obligation for participation in offensive campaigns that fell only on the rich and their “war bands.” Consistent with his view that all free men in the later Roman Empire were subject to public obligations, Goffart argued that there was no evidence in the Carolingian capitularies for a distinctive duty of Landwehr. Instead, quite poor men, that is, those with just half a mansus in property, were required to club together to send one of their number on campaign. Conversely, wealthier men were subject to military service in defence of their home regions.
Goffart returned once more to the issue of military service performed in lieu of paying taxes in a study published in 2018. Here, he challenged the interpretation of the capitularies developed by Timothy Reuter, who had argued that there was a transformation of the Carolingian military system in the years immediately after the turn of the ninth century. Reuter’s overarching argument was that Charlemagne, as well as Louis the Pious, tried, and ultimately failed, to develop larger military forces to undertake the territorial defence of the Carolingian Empire after the era of conquests supposedly had come to an end. Goffart refuted Reuter’s assumptions, based on alleged silences in the sources, and concluded once again that poorer men had been subject to military obligations tout court alongside their wealthier neighbours since at least the later sixth century. In short, both poorer and wealthier men served on campaign before and after 800, and both also served locally in a military capacity before and after 800.
However, despite illuminating the administrative systems that were in place in the Carolingian Empire to mobilize property owners for all types of military service, and making numerous convincing points regarding the ways in which military service became a substitute for taxation in cash or kind, Goffart did not ultimately explain the actual process by which this transition took place.
Terra Salica and the End of Taxation
In his 2008 article, Goffart pointed to one of the loose ends that he had left which pertained directly to this question. He observed that individuals legally defined as Romans served in the armies of the Merovingian kings in the sixth century and stated: “One would like to know whether these Romans were given the option at some time of having the taxable status of their lands commuted into service in the royal army on the same terms as the Franks.”
One possibility that Goffart raised but did not explore in this regard was the problem of terra salica. This issue was taken up, however, by Bernard Bachrach in a study focused on the problem of “military lands.” Bachrach observed that the Law of the Salian Franks distinguished between allodial lands, which women could inherit, and terra salica, which could only be inherited by a male relative.
This development of two classes of property, one of which was inheritable by women and one which was not, grew out of the conditions of Frankish settlement within the Roman Empire. As groups of Frankish foederati were settled within the northeastern provinces of the Western Empire, they were granted lands for which they owed military service, but not taxes. By contrast, other lands acquired through purchase, development, or otherwise by Franks within the Empire were subject to the same types of taxes as those held by Romans. Naturally, the Frankish owners of these allodial lands wanted to hold them under the same tax-free (although not service-free) tenure as lands granted by the government.
The famous case of the tax collectors Audo and Parthenius, discussed by the late sixth-century bishop and historian Gregory of Tours, may shed light on this issue. These two men were killed by the Frankish subjects of King Theudebert (d. 548) when they tried to collect taxes. The problem in this case may have been that the Franks did actually owe taxes on their non-salic lands but wanted to subsume these within their salic holdings, for which they only owed military service. However, the Franks also often wanted their daughters to inherit some of their lands, which was not possible if these were designated as terra salica. Ultimately, governmental authorities no longer found it necessary to distinguish between terra salica and allodial properties, and no later than c. 735 we find the official rejection, in a copy of the Lex Salica, of the “impious custom” that sisters could not share in an inheritance with their brothers.
The reason for the abandonment of this “impious custom” was that most property owners by this time had come to owe military service rather than taxes for their landholdings, whether these originally were terra salica or other categories of property.
Rather than Romans being given the option of transforming their allods into terra salica, however, the explanation perhaps should be sought in the transformation of the legal identities of the population of the regnum Francorum. Whereas the majority of the population ruled by Clovis I (d. 511), as well as his sons and grandsons, consisted of Romans, by the later seventh century it appears that most of the population had the legal identity of Franks. Part of the adoption of Frankish law and identity, and perhaps a very great incentive to do so, was the replacement of the regular payment of taxes with the periodic performance of military service.
David Bachrach is a Professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he researches medieval military history, particularly in England and Germany.
Click here to read more from David Bachrach
Further Reading:
Walter Goffart, “Frankish Military Duty and the Fate of Roman Taxation,” Early Medieval Europe 16 (2008), 166–190.
Walter Goffart, “Defensio Patriae as a Carolingian Military Obligation,” Francia 43 (2016), 21–39.
Walter Goffart, “The Recruitment of Freemen into the Carolingian Army, or, How Far May One Argue from Silence?” Journal of Medieval Military History 16 (2018), 17–33.
Bernard S. Bachrach, “Military Lands in Historical Perspective,” The Haskins Society Journal 9 (1997), 95–122.
Top Image: Map of Europe by Antoine Lafréri (1512-1577) – Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Arsenal, GR FOL-146
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