466 Lizzi Testa
Bruttii, a southern region that roughly corresponds with Calabria today,70 the
canonicarii (employed as collectors) had exacted a part of the munera that
the sacrosanctae Ecclesiae of the province would have to pay (unless otherwise
exempted).71 They did this for their own profit, on behalf of accounting officers
who maintained the budget estimates of tax revenues (numerarii). The prefect
ordered that “he who is further stained with this fraud will be dismissed from
the militia and lose access to his possessions”.72 Cassiodorus refrained from
imposing the death penalty prescribed by law for abuses of this kind, but pre-
scribed the loss of office and the total confiscation of the assets of guilty par-
ties, giving the offence the connotation of sacrilegium.73 Since tax exemption
for churches was an expression of pietas, as an offering to God made possible
by the humility of the sovereign and through divine impulse (impulsu divinita-
tis), tax fraud at the expense of the churches was to be treated as a direct insult
to God (sacrilegium).74
It is not clear from the text which churches were affected by this kind of
fraud. Most likely they would have been small churches, grouped together for
fiscal purposes to pay the capitatio, so as to collectively form a taxable area
closer to the iugum (100 iugeri). The region was once believed to have had a
high density of churches built in major cities (the six municipiae and the three
coloniae of Pliny the Elder’s list) from as early as the 4th century. In reality
the region only saw a real growth of ecclesiastical seats in the 5th century and
above all in rural areas, as in neighbouring Apulia. The edict of Cassiodorus
suggests that over time even small rural churches were granted tax exemp-
tions, which were more essential to their survival than territorial growth.
With regard to churches in southern Italy, granting exemptions was not only
an expression of royal pietas. The speed of repressive measures put in place
70 Paoletti, “Occupazione romana e storia delle città”, p. 469; Buonocore, Regio III. Regium
Iulium, Locri, Taurianum, Trapeia, pp. XIII–XIV.
71 Many 4th- and early 5th-century constitutions explicitly forbade the use of palatine
canonicarii in the process of collection, since they were tax inspectors responsible for
monitoring the fiscal work of the provincial governor and his office. (Delmaire, Largesses
sacrées et res privata, p. 162 lists at least nine, dating from 385 to 458). However, from the
second half of the 5th century (in both parts of the empire) only the canonicarii (in East
trakteutaì or tractatores) were directly responsible for the collection of fees and taxes in
the provinces, under the authority of both financial comites and the praetorian prefect
(Seeck, “Canonicarius (compulsor)”, pp. 1489.
72 Cass., Va r. 12.13, pp. 478, lines 20–4.
73 Gnoli “Rem privatam de sacro surripere”, and Gnoli, Ricerche sul crimen peculatus, p. 105;
cf. Cass., Va r. 9.16, ed. Fridh, lines 5–7.
74 Cass., Va r. 12.13, ed. Fridh, pp. 477–8, lines 4–6 and 30–9.