The capacity of western kingdoms to impose taxes was limited to tolls on trade and imposts on justice; only the Visigothic kingdom of Spain was able to maintain a land-tax on Roman lines. Kings did, however, command substantial resources in land. The Lombards possessed extensive royal estates, and it has been calculated that in the eleventh century, after two centuries of alienations and endowment of the Church, the crown still owned more than 10 per cent of the land in northern Italy. Other valuable sources of royal income included booty, tribute, confiscation of property, the monopoly of minting coinage, and the right to ratify a range of legal transactions and building operations. The main activity to which Roman and Byzantine fiscal resources were devoted was of course the financing of the army. This was a burden which Germanic kingdoms were spared because all free warriors had an obligation to serve their king in the army under their local dukes in return for the land on which they had been settled. The enforcement of this system required constant vigilance on the part of the Lombard kings and their Carolingian successors since there was a relentless tendency for large landowners to reduce peasants to a state of dependence.
Another major prop of the Byzantine state was its control of justice. Not only did centrally appointed judges administer courts at all levels, but the Roman principle of territorial law was maintained with its presupposition that all authority emanated from the emperor; the predominantly Latin Corpus of Justinian was supplemented by the simplified Ecloga collection issued by Leo III in 739 and by the authoritative Basilica Code promulgated by Leo VI. Law was never as systematic or as uniform in the west; it was personal rather than territorial, with the clergy and the native population 'professing' Roman law as preserved in a simplified local (or 'vulgar') form and their Germanic conquerors 'professing' Gothic, Frankish, or Lombard law. Nevertheless, the kings gained more control over the law than their counterparts in the north. In the case of Italy it was royal officials who administered the courts, and the law codes issued by the kings became increasingly influenced by Roman customs. Royal authority was strengthened with the
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