424 The oppression of the poor 



passage 1 in which he expounds his indictment of Roman administration 

 and the corrupt influences by which it is perverted from the promotion 

 of prosperity and happiness to a cause of misery and ruin. 



The all-pervading canker is the oppression of the poor by the rich. 

 The heavy burdens of taxation are thrown upon the poor. When any 

 relief is granted, it is intercepted by the rich. Franks Huns Vandals 

 and Goths will have none of these iniquities, and Romans living among 

 those barbarians also escape them. Hence the stream of migration sets 

 from us to them, not from them to us. Indeed our poor folk would 

 migrate in a body, but for the difficulty of transferring their few goods 

 their poor hovels and their families. This drives them to take another 

 course. They put themselves under the guardianship and protection 

 of more powerful persons, surrendering 2 to the rich like prisoners of 

 war, and so to speak passing under their full authority and control. 

 But this protection is made a pretext for spoliation. For the first con- 

 dition of protection is the assignation 3 of practically their whole sub- 

 stance to their protectors: the children's inheritance is sacrificed to pay 

 for the protection of their parents. The bargain is cruel and onesided, 

 a monstrous and intolerable wrong. For most of these poor wretches, 

 stripped of their little belongings and expelled from their little farms, 

 though they have lost their property, have still to bear the tribute on 

 the properties lost : the possession is withdrawn, but the assessment 5 

 remains : the ownership is gone, but the burden of taxation is crushing 

 them still. The effects of this evil are incalculable. The intruders 

 (pervasores) are settled down (incubant) on their properties, while they, 

 poor souls, are paying the tributes on the intruders' behalf. And this 

 condition passes on to their children. So they who have been despoiled 

 by the intrusion 5 of individuals are being done to death by the pressure 

 of the state {publica adflictione), and their livelihood is taken from them 

 by squeezing as their property was by robbery. Some, wiser or taught 

 by necessity, losing their homes and little farms through intrusions or 

 driven by the tax-gatherers to abandon them through inability to keep 

 them, find their way to the estates of the powerful, and become 6 serf- 

 tenants (coloni} of the rich. Like fugitives from the enemy or the law, 

 not able to retain their social birthright, they bow themselves 7 to the 

 mean lot of mere sojourners : cast out of property and position, they 



1 The earlier part of book v of the de gubernatione Dei, especially 34-50. The rising 

 of the Bagaudae (286) in Gaul is dealt with 24 foil. See Schiller n pp 124-6. 



2 dediticios se divituin faciunt et quasi in ius eorutn dicionemque trascendunt. 



3 addicunt, a technical law term. 4 posses sio...capitatio. 



5 /<?rz'a.J70 = attack, encroachment. Cf cod Th II 4 5, 6. 



6 fundos maiorum expetunt et coloni divitttm fiunt. 



7 iugo se inquilinae abiectionis addicunt. See cod Th v 18 (10) de inquilinis et colonis, 

 cod Just xi 48 13. 



