Letter 7045: Although we all live from the utility of our land and everyone expects fair profit from it, you complain that the...

From: Cassiodorus (formula template) To: [Landowner with an over-assessed property] Date: ~522 AD Context: Template for reducing the tax assessment on a single small property that is so heavily taxed it is ruining its owner. Although we all live from the utility of our land and everyone expects fair profit from it, you complain that the tax on your property in the designated province is so burdensome that the vast maw of the assessment has swallowed all your resources. What can be gathered elsewhere with great labor is consumed by this one property, whose tax bill exceeds its yield -- more goes to the collectors than the diligent farmer can produce. Therefore, we believe you can escape ruin only if you lose the ownership of this land, whose barrenness comes from the collectors. It would be a miserable condition to be enslaved to a necessity whose master you once deserved to be. Since the most sacred laws have decreed that this kind of benefit should be extended to the modest -- one who is crushed by the enormous assessment of a single plot and is not relieved by the profit of another -- with due moderation, relief should be provided. We therefore decree to your greatness, whose heart is set on justice, that if the situation is as described, the designated number of tax solidi from the aforementioned property shall be carefully struck from the public registers by issued orders to the relevant officials, so that no double record remains. Let what is enclosed in a single sum be preserved without error through the ages.

XLV. FORMULA, QUA CENSUS RELEVETUR EI QUI UNAM CASAM POSSIDET PRAEGRAVATAM. [1] Cum de agri utilitate vivatur et omnibus inde certum sit iustum venire compendium, tributum illud possessionis in illa provincia constitutae ita quereris onerosum, ut universas tibi voraverit facultates hiatus ille vastissimus functionis et quod aliunde magno labore potest colligi, per illam videatur absumi, cuius utilitatem nimia transcendit illatio, dum plus compulsoribus redditur quam a sedulo cultore praestetur. quapropter credimus te evadere posse nuditatem, si dominium huius ruris amiseris, cui iugis sterilitas de compulsoribus venit, ne condicione miserabili servias necessitati, cuius dominus esse meruisti. [2] Sed quia hoc genus beneficii praestari mediocribus leges sacratissimae censuerunt, ut qui unius cespitis enormitate deprimitur nec alterius commodo sublevatur, moderatione habita ei debeat subveniri, magnitudini vestrae, cui cordi est cogitare iustitiam, praesenti auctoritate decernimus, ut, si ita est, tot solidos tributarios supradictae possessionis datis praeceptionibus ad eos quorum interest ita faciatis de vasariis publicis diligenter abradi, ut huius rei duplex vestigium non debeat inveniri, sed per saecula sine errore servetur quod una tantum summa concluditur.