Teloneum

rdf:langString Teloneum

rdf:langString In the Middle Ages, the teloneum (also telonium or toloneum, from Greek τελώνιον, telonion, toll-house), in French tonlieu, sometimes anglicized thelony, was a market toll, a tax paid on a sale in the marketplace. The term originally referred to the customs house, but came gradually to refer to the tax levied. The collector of the teloneum was the telonearius. The term teloneum first appeared in the fifth century. It came to cover numerous more specific tolls, such as the portaticum, rotaticum and pulveraticum. In the Merovingian period, the teloneum was a major source of royal revenues. The kings did sometimes give exemptions to abbeys, but rarely to anybody else. The teleonarii frequently farmed the taxes, often to Jews. A document issued by King Philip I of France around 1090 defined a teloneum as a tax on the transitum a vendentibus vel ementibus vel transeuntibus (transfer between seller and buyer).