Someone may consider tithe as a static and fixed ecclesiastical income, which remained without any change or adaptation from its establishment in the 6th century until its abolition, depending on the country, at the end of the 18th or early 19th centuries. Thus, the tithe would be the obligation of Christians to satisfy the bishop of his diocese for one-tenth of their production. It was, therefore, an income that homogenized all, as a result of the spiritual coercion of the Church, which frightened the faithful with eternal damnation if they defrauded their payment.
Nonetheless, if tithe could be generalized to all the territories of Christendom and could exist for so many centuries, it was thanks to the fact that the ecclesiastical authorities knew how to adapt the collection according to space and time. The tithe was not an immutable income but was adapted to the particularities of each place and each moment. Indeed, the tithe was originally limited in scope and voluntary. It was during the time of Charlemagne that the tribute was generalized throughout the empire and the obligation was established. Since the Gregorian Reform, although the process lasted until the beginning of the 13th century, the Church tried to centralize the collection and management of the decimated product in the figure of the bishop, thus reaffirming the episcopal power over his diocese. This can be seen very clearly in the territories of feudal expansion, where conquest and colonization were accompanied by the episcopal reinstatement. Tithe played an essential role in financing the new dioceses, but it was at the same time a key piece in the relationship between the papacy and the royal powers, also in expansion. In other regions, on the contrary, the tithe was appropriated by feudal magnates, including monastic institutions and religious-military orders, or was used by rural communities with a redistributive function of agricultural production.
The study of the tithe series marked a historiographical milestone in the 1960s and 1970s under the leadership of Annals –particularly by Joseph Goy and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. At that time, the tithe was considered a suitable tool for the study of the volume of production in the Ancient Regime. In particular, and given its centrality in the pre-industrial economy, attention was focused on the tithe series of cereals. The ultimate goal was the reconstruction of the evolution of agricultural production during feudalism. But the studies on the tithe were already parked in the middle of the 1980s. The reason for the depletion lay in the strong heterogeneity of the evidence, what made supra-regional comparison impossible, and in the lack of series that covered the long duration, from the 15th to the 18th centuries.
The possibilities of the source, however, had not been exhausted. Indeed, in recent years we have witnessed a recovery of interest in the tithe, as it shows the edition of the Journées internationales d’Histoire du centre culturel de l’Abbaye de Flaran 2008, published in 2010, or the various scientific meetings organized by Michel Lauwers since December 2007 and that gave rise to the book published in 2012. This historiographical renovation happens, not only for quantitative and serial analyses but for rather qualitative approaches, as suggested by the works of Mathieu Arnoux, who sees in the collection and management of this income new forms of solidarity within the peasant communities. To what extent the data provided by the decimal documentation can be considered a reflection of agricultural production is a question that has been discussed by various researchers, such as Gabriel Jover recently who also points out its usefulness when identifying the mechanisms of income redistribution.
Tithing records allow you to go beyond production. The structuring of the territory and the country-city relations can also be studied from the analysis of the decimal documentation. In this sense, it should be asked what was the destination of the rent: the local market, the large metropolises or international circuits? There is no single answer for all territories nor for all times, nor all products. The primacy of cereal – wheat in particular – explains the interest of large capitals to gain the dominance of the producing areas, which implied obtaining all possible income, including also the tithe or, in the Valencian case, the third-tithe. But, as Michel Lauwers or Florian Mazel have pointed out for the north of France, the local elites played a key role in the collection and management of the tithe since, ultimately, they represented the last link in the chain until reaching the producer himself.
Furthermore, these ‘coqs du village’ knew well the local environment and the evasive strategies of their neighbours. And precisely this aspect – the forms of passive resistance of producers to satisfy the income and the resulting conflict – is another aspect that requires a closer look. Undoubtedly, legal resistance through the courts, such as that raised by sugar cane producers in the bishopric of Valencia in 1432-37, are the easiest to analyse, but they were probably the least common. There were others that, although they have left a weaker documentary trail, would be more frequent and generalizable.
This renewal of tithe studies from new perspectives and lines of analysis justifies the need for a meeting in Valencia. The Valencian historians, and in particular the modernists, such as Manuel Ardit, or Valencian-like James Casey, who unfortunately left us at the end of last year, participated in the historiographic debates that took place around the tithe in the 70s and 80s. Now, with this meeting, we intend to link with that outstanding tradition and continue it with new proposals and reflections.
In this sense, the congress that will take place in Valencia on the next 1st and 2nd July aims to serve as a space for discussion and historiographic updating of various aspects related to tithe such as but not only:
• Particularities of the tithe in each territory. Approach to the documentary source.
• Collection mechanisms. From the auction to the harvest in the field. Formation of rental companies, the involvement of local elites in rental and collection.
• The architecture of the tithe. Storage and management of the decimated product.
• The collection of the tithe and the evolution of agricultural production.
• The forms of passive resistance of the peasantry to satisfy income.
Tithe in the Middle Ages: new perspectives 