''De fisco Barcinonensi'' ("Concerning the Barcelonian Fisc") is a letter (''epistola'') from a group of bishops in the province of

Tarraconensis Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the northern, eastern and central territories of modern Spain along with modern northern Portugal. Southern Spain, the region now called Andalusia was the ...

in the

Visigothic Kingdom The Visigothic Kingdom, officially the Kingdom of the Goths ( la, Regnum Gothorum), was a kingdom that occupied what is now southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to the 8th centuries. One of the Germanic successor states to ...

to the treasury agents in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

. The letter reminds the officials of the fixed rate of public tribute and demands that exactions in excess of that amount should stop. In the manuscripts, ''De fisco'' is preserved after the acts of the Second Council of Barcelona of 540, but its signatories are mostly those of the acts of the First Council of Zaragoza of 592. Most scholars believe it should be dated in connexion with the latter council. The bishops describe themselves as "all hosewho contribute to the fisc of the city of Barcelona", but the bishop of Barcelona, Ugnas, did not sign. The location of the regional fiscal administration in Barcelona perhaps explains why that city survived the

Islamic conquest The spread of Islam spans about 1,400 years. Muslim conquests following Muhammad's death led to the creation of the caliphates, occupying a vast geographical area; conversion to Islam was boosted by Arab Muslim forces conquering vast territories ...

better than the provincial capital,

Tarragona Tarragona (, ; Phoenician: ''Tarqon''; la, Tarraco) is a port city located in northeast Spain on the Costa Daurada by the Mediterranean Sea. Founded before the fifth century BC, it is the capital of the Province of Tarragona, and part of Tarr ...

. The ''Epistola de fisco Barcinonensi'' is an important source on tax collection in the Visigothic period. It is addressed to the "accountants" (''numerarii'') whose job it was to collect the tax, and who were appointed for one-year terms by the local "count of the patrimony" (''comes patrimonii'')—at the time a certain Scipio—and the bishops (''episcopi''). The involvement of the bishops was, according to their letter, "by custom" (''sicut consuetudo''). This custom had been formalised by the

Third Council of Toledo The Third Council of Toledo (589) marks the entry of Visigothic Spain into the Catholic Church, and is known for codifying the filioque clause into Western Christianity."Filioque." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. ...

in 589, which mandated annual provincial councils of bishops and fiscal agents (''actores fiscalium patrimoniorum'') so that the latter would be just in their dealings with the people. The circumstances and tenor of the letter strongly suggest that the tax was levied on the entire rate-paying (predominantly Roman) population of the province, while the "patrimonial" nature of the levy indicates that it went to the royal treasury. It may be a relict of the one third of land, in the form of land taxes, that went to the Visigothic king at the time of the conquest, while the remaining two thirds went to his followers. The going tax rate in Barcelona in the 590s was fourteen ''

siliqua The siliqua (plural ''siliquae'') is the modern name given (without any ancient evidence to confirm the designation) to small, thin, Roman silver coins produced in the 4th century A.D. and later. When the coins were in circulation, the Latin wo ...

e'' (or ''

solidus Solidus (Latin for "solid") may refer to: * Solidus (coin), a Roman coin of nearly solid gold * Solidus (punctuation), or slash, a punctuation mark * Solidus (chemistry), the line on a phase diagram below which a substance is completely solid * ...

'') per '' modius'' of barley. It is impossible to convert this rate into a percentage, since the value of a ''modius'' cannot be stated with precision, and it probably represented a unit of land that could produce a certain amount of barley. Unless the ''modius'' was a great deal larger than that of earlier times, the tax rate was comparable to that under the Romans.

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