Reviewed by Patti A. Mills Indiana State University
By the middle of the twelfth century, the counts of Barcelona had established a loose hegemony over what was to become the Kingdom of Catalonia. This beautiful work by a noted medievalist is an annotated edition of account summaries and other accountingrelated records of these early countkings. Comprising all of the extant accounts, inventories and commissions of the comitalroyal domains, and a selection of other fiscal records, these documents are an invaluable resource for the study of early governmental accounting.
Each of the documents is carefully transcribed according to the editorial standards of the Commission Internationale de Diplomatique and is accompanied by a brief summary of its contents, a physical description and editorial notes. The texts are in medieval Latin. For the reader who has no knowledge of the language, the most valuable part of Bisson’s work will undoubtedly be his masterful 162page introduction, in which he offers his own analysis of the documents and the historical background necessary to their understanding.
At the heart of the introduction are three chapters which Bisson uses to explain the general administrative structure and economy of Old Catalonia; and to chart the development of public accounting procedures and other fiscal activity during the period 11511213. Bisson’s account is incredibly rich in detail, especially his description of local administration; but like other master historians, he manages to distill from his carefully reported findings important conclusions. The evidence shows that over the course of the period accounting and audit activity improved in this corner of the Mediterranean, as was the case in other areas of Europe. The main impetus, however, was to strengthen the counts’ credit, the lifeblood of their expansionist designs. Indeed, the counts’ chief fiscal officers — the accountants and collectors who initiated fiscal reform — were normally his principal creditors. As Bisson writes, “building efficient institutions was not yet an end in itself in the early thirteenth century” [p. 150]. Despite advances in routinization and in the management and preservation of written accounts, public accountability at this time was essentially patrimonial rather than bureaucratic in nature.
The introduction is supplemented by ten “related studies” which assemble a wide variety of information gleaned from the documents. For example, one of the studies provides a “biographical conspectus” of the accountants, auditors and scribes engaged in the fiscal administration of the comital domains. The known audits or “sessions of account” are listed chronologically in another study. Another attractive feature of the work is the series of 23 blackandwhite plates which show the actual scripts and endorsements of several documents.
Few governmental accounting records survive in the aggregate prior to 1250. By his efforts, Thomas Bisson has afforded us a unique glimpse into the early stirrings of public accountability.
