Bishop-Praetorial Lanfranc of Trier

#On His Station

Bishop-Praetorial Lanfranc of Trier enters the archive of the Synod in A.S. 138, on his feet before the Assembly of Thrones, holding a child's shoe. The archive does not know when he was born, when he was consecrated, or when he stopped troubling anyone. It knows the shoe and the hearing. It also knows the bill.

His rank is better documented than he is. Under the Hierarchs of the Synodical Hierarchy, the Bishops-Praetorial govern provinces in spirit. Each is styled Custos Animae, Keeper of Souls, and each must keep two quotas with the same pair of hands: the quota of faith and the quota of tithe. A Keeper of Souls fills the font and the strongbox from the same parish. He shepherds the flock on Sunday and confirms its arrears by Tuesday. Most holders of the office train their two hands never to compare notes. On the evidence of A.S. 138, Lanfranc let them meet in public.

He took his designation from Trier, in the Moselle country of the Rhineland heartland. Vineyard slopes there run down to tariff houses, and every ferry crossing keeps a clerk. The instrument he later attacked was first conceived upriver, on the Upper Moselle circuit. Providence has a sense of humour. The Bureau invoices it.

#On the Seventeen Dioceses

When Lanfranc rose against the Meta-Levy, it was twenty-one years old. It began in A.S. 117 as Raban Holt's proposal from the Upper Moselle circuit: one-fortieth upon each levy, to pay for the escorts, scales, sacks and quills by which the levy was collected. By A.S. 127 the Palatine Counting House had rounded up its six regional aliases and issued a single schedule. By A.S. 138 the instrument had clerks of its own. In the Synod, that is the nearest thing to a soul.

Seventeen dioceses filed against it, and their grievance stood on three legs. First, they said the Meta-Levy exceeded the fiscal Charter of A.S. 92. Their clerks cited that Charter as if it were the constitution itself, though it was a later instrument than the A.S. 90 Concordat of Strasbourg. Second, it fell upon parishes already bled by war levies. Third, it offended natural reason by charging the faithful for the act of charging them.

No roster of the seventeen has reached my desk, and I will not fill their chairs with names of my own choosing. One chair is certain. Lanfranc spoke for the coalition.

#On the Shoe Before the Thrones

He spoke for two hours in Concordat Hall, under the Seven Seals, before the throne semicircle of his peers. I hold the exhibit list and the outcome. I do not hold his voice, and I will not forge two hours of episcopal breath to please a reader who wants a speech. A speech can be counterfeited. An exhibit list has to be answered.

He began with silver. He set out cracked chalices, the plate of parishes too poor to recast them, each one split along the seam where the metal had worn thin from use. He went on to wood. Poor-boxes went on the table with their lids open, so the Thrones could look into the grain and see nothing. Last came leather. He produced a child's shoe and told the chamber it had been taken from a debtor family after confiscation.

I have written elsewhere that Lanfranc was a man of strong lungs, weak citations and the fatal belief that indignation constitutes evidence. I stand by that sentence. I also concede what the minutes concede. The shoe was small. The chamber murmured. For roughly three breaths, several bishops looked almost human.

That is an extraordinary result in the Assembly of Thrones. Its members are accustomed to debating liturgy loudly enough to be heard in the alleys outside. They are not accustomed to hearing anything back. A two-hour harangue normally sends them to sleep in decent order. Lanfranc got a murmur. On a provincial pulpit that would be a triumph. In a fiscal session it was a provocation.

#On the Bureau's Answer

Then the Bureau of Tithes opened its ledgers.

They came up from the Fiscal Census, the obligation register kept in the vaults beneath the Counting House. Tithes laid four entries beside the shoe. The first was the debtor household's arrears. The second was the parish's candle surplus, which was awkward for a parish that had just been described as having nothing. The third was the diocesan cushion replacement schedule. The fourth was a note recording that the same shoe had appeared in an earlier petition three years before.

The Bureau did not dispute that the shoe was small. It disputed that the shoe was new to the courts.

The note shows that the shoe had been to court before. It proves nothing about the child, the confiscation, or what Lanfranc knew of the shoe's earlier career, and I have found no entry naming the hand that carried it into that earlier petition. The candle surplus and the cushions belonged to a parish and a diocese. They were not his private purse, and nothing in the minutes treats them as such. Tithes had no need to prove more. Once a grief has appeared twice it looks rehearsed, and the Thrones may decline a rehearsed grief with clean consciences.

The child, if anyone had cared to ask, was a matter for the Great Ledger of Souls, the register of persons kept by the Bureau of Records. Nobody asked. The Census answers a different question: what a household owes. In a fiscal session, that is the only question with standing.

With the shoe disposed of, Tithes set out its law, one plain step after another. A levy, to be lawful, must be collected. Collection, to be lawful, must be administered. Administration, to be lawful, must be funded. Any funding raised outside the levy structure would be hidden taxation, which the seventeen dioceses had just finished condemning. If the coalition rejected the Meta-Levy, it endorsed hidden costs. If it accepted visible costs, it accepted the Meta-Levy.

Lanfranc saw the walls and named them. He asked whether the Bureau had built a dilemma so narrow that no honest man could pass through it.

The presiding Hierarch replied that honesty was not under review.

#On the Ruling and Its Receipt

The Assembly ruled for the Bureau. The Meta-Levy stood, and its schedule went on attaching itself to every levy that came after.

Costs were assessed against the petitioners and against the adjudicating body. The second half of that sentence is where Tithes shows its genius. Having won, the Bureau bowed, thanked the chamber for its devotion to procedural clarity, and sent the Assembly of Thrones a receipt for the cost of the ruling. It billed hearing candles, guard presence, bench polish, two replacement quills, witness-chair depreciation and an attendance levy upon everyone who had gathered to discuss levies.

The Assembly protested, then paid. The protest incurred a filing charge.

No record shows how the seventeen dioceses shared their portion. No record shows whether Lanfranc's own see paid more than the rest for providing the voice. The cushion schedule would have known. The cushion schedule was not asked.

#On the Surviving Record

The record holds his title, his city and his rank. It holds the session of A.S. 138, which was the one documented summit of his career and must not be mistaken for his birth, his consecration or his last day in office. It holds three objections, four exhibits, one question about honest men and one word in a private margin.

It holds no appeal. It holds no removal, censure, imprisonment, canonisation or burial. I have looked in the places where the Synod keeps such things, and the places were silent. I will not lend Lanfranc a fate he did not leave behind. The Bureau would bill me for the paper.

As of A.S. 201, the Meta-Levy is still active across Synod tithe law. The chalices of A.S. 138 have presumably been recast or buried. The poor-boxes have presumably been filled and emptied a few thousand times since. The shoe's whereabouts are unrecorded. If it ever appears in a third petition, the Census will notice before the petitioners have finished weeping.