Details
Tithes, vineyards, and wines
A list of tithes collected on fields and vineyards by the church of St-Marcel, near Le Puy, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France, St-Marcel or Le Puy, mid-(?) 14th century].
A complete record of the tithes owed to a southern French church; an unusual document with instances of local dialect, listing dozens of personal and place-names and mentions of local vineyards and grapes.

c.335×230mm. A gathering of 6 leaves, complete in itself. 2 columns of 35 lines in fine southern textualis script, with rubrics and paraph marks in red, a few medieval marginal and interlinear annotations (vertical creases, stains, significant wear, especially at the edges, but entirely legible other than the outer faces: the first page very darkened, somewhat worn, and torn, and thus difficult to read).

Provenance:
(1) The church of Saint-Marcel was slightly to the west of Le Puy, in what is now the suburb of Espaly.
(2) Erik von Scherling, Rotulus 5 (Leiden, 1949), no 2106; perhaps acquired with the residue of his stock after his death by:
(3) Maggs Bros.; offered in their Catalogue 869, Old Medicine & Science: A Catalogue of MSS. [] from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1960), no 7.
(4) Colker MS 60, acquired in 1963 from Maggs.

Contents: The first rubric uncertain, but apparently: ‘Hic est census et debitalia minoris assense ecclesie sancti Marcelli et canonicorum pauperum ecclesie beate Marie Anicen(sis) pro[] [] Et primo de [] qui dant decimas g[…]’, f.1; List of tithes in the various territories ff.1v-4v; ‘Sequitur de oneribus sive panairadas rasemorum debitales. In vinea hospitalis pauperum beate Marie Anic(iensis) [i.e. Le Puy] […]’ f.5; ‘Sequitur de censu & debitale vini molli et afaitat?', f.5v; ‘Sequitur debitale denariorum. Et primo in vinea de chauchadis […]’, f.6; the last page with a list of totals, f.6v.

Many of the place-names show the influence of the local dialect, the langue d’oc: Champchani (Champcheny), las Gipeiras (les Gipeyres), la Tersoneira (Les Teysonnneyres), Anduniza (mont Denise), Milauras (Mialaure), Pessa Enchairada (Pesse-Queyrade), etc. On f.5v the tithes are exacted in flagons of sweet wine: 'legenas vini molli'.
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