276 Grey
the period. Thus, for example, Augustine remarks upon peasants in early 5th-
century North Africa placing boundary markers belonging to their powerful
neighbours on their own fields in order to take advantage of the other’s repu-
tation, and the mid 5th-century Gallic presbyter Salvian describes small land-
owners seeking to take advantage of the mutual obligations and expectations
that attended becoming the registered tenants of more powerful landowners.58
Each of these phenomena can be glimpsed in the collection of provisions
promulgated during the reign of Theoderic. Further, documentary evidence
detailing landholdings of the church around Ravenna, as well as charters from
the later 6th century and beyond, reveal an ongoing concern to determine the
productive capacity of particular units of land, using terminology that is redo-
lent of the tax system of the late Roman Empire.59 While we should be careful
not to rely too heavily upon the impression of continuity that this evidence
provides, it nevertheless seems reasonable to suggest that the evident concern
in the Edictum Theoderici to determine property rights was impelled at least in
part by the need to ensure that the fiscal obligations assessed on particular par-
cels of land continued to be acknowledged by the individuals who had been
entered into the tax rolls as fiscally responsible for those parcels of land.60 It
is for this reason that we see such close attention paid to both sale of land and
gifts and bequests in wills. The evident inconcinnity revealed here between the
information entered into the tax rolls and the economic realities on the ground
offers glimpses of a market in land that is no less fluid and dynamic than in
preceding centuries.
In such circumstances the maintenance of clear boundaries between prop-
erties would seem essential, both for the fiscal purposes of the state and for
the economic interests of the landowners in question. A letter of Cassiodorus
reveals the potential for disputes, ignorance, and confusion over the precise
whereabouts of boundaries when it remarks upon the problems that might
attend impermanent or mobile boundary markers.61 This letter provides a con-
text for the directive contained in the Edictum Theoderici against the raising of
boundary markers belonging to another on one’s own property. The potential
58 Augustine, Dolbeau 4.2; Salvian, On the Governance of God, 5.8.39–43, with fuller discus-
sion in Grey, Constructing Communities, pp. 210–12.
59 E.g. Cassiodorus, Variae 3.20. See the recent detailed discussion of Costambeys, “Condition
of the Peasantry”, pp 96–101.
60 Cassiodorus, Variae 3.14; 5.14. For fuller discussion of the particularities of the tax system
of Ostrogothic Italy as it emerges from Cassiodorus’ correspondence, see Bjornlie, “Law,
Ethnicity, and Taxes”, pp. 147–9.
61 Cassiodorus, Variae 3.52.