Resistance to Tithes in the Middle Ages
Giles Constable
The system of compulsory tithes in the Middle Ages has long been used by protestant and liberal historians as a stick with which to beat medieval Church. ‘This most harassing oppressive form taxation’, wrote H. C. Lea his well-known History Inquisition , ‘had cause incurable trouble, aggravated rapacity it was enforced, even pitiful collections gleaner’. Von Inama-Sternegg remarked on growing hatred tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries, especially among small free landholders, ‘upon whom burden must have fallen heavily’. Gioacchino Volpe said that were ‘the more hated because they oppressed rich less than poor, dependents seigneurial estates proprietors whose ruin contributed…. At time both an ecclesiastical secular oppression, double offence against religious sentiment popular misery’. G. Coulton, writing before introduction England income tax at rate over ten per cent., proclaimed Reformation ‘constituted land tax, death duty far onerous any known modern times, proportionately unpopular’.
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History