Liber Censuum

The Liber Censuum Romanae Ecclesiae is an eighteen-volume register of the real estate revenues of the papacy, covering the years 492 to 1192, compiled in 1192 by Cardinal Cencius Camerarius, later Pope Honorius III, with the assistance of William Rofio, drawing on earlier church financial records. It lists the churches, monasteries, bishoprics and other properties that owed dues to the papacy, at a time when papal revenues were under pressure from the Staufen emperors and evasion by debtors, and it was deliberately compiled with blank spaces so that later papal administrators could keep it updated. The historian J. Rousset de Pina described it as the most effective instrument, and the most significant document, of medieval ecclesiastical centralization, and it remains one of the principal sources for the economic history of the medieval papacy.