Series 4 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society

BAGIMOND’S ROLL
for THE DIOCESE OF MORAY
edited by the Rev. Charles Burns
introduction. During the academic year 1961-62, a survey of two
important diplomatic collections of the Vatican archives, the ‘Instru-
menta Miscellanea’ and the ‘Archivum Ards’,1 was made under the
auspices of the Ross Fund. Many documents of Scottish interest had
been published already from these collections, especially by Theiner,2
but now for the first time these collections as such were made the sub¬
ject of a systematic examination for sources of Scottish history. Several
documents, hitherto unknown, have been discovered as a result of
this survey, one of which, catalogued as Instr. Misc. 6425, is a late
thirteenth-century transcript of Bagimond’s Roll for the diocese of
Moray. Bagimond’s Roll requires no introduction to members of the
Scottish History Society. The history of the Holy Land tithe of 1274,
and the manner of its levying in Scotland by Master Boiamund de
Vitia, have been described in detail by Dr A. I. Dunlop in previous
Miscellany volumes3 and it would be superfluous to repeat that his¬
tory here. Likewise, it is not necessary to explain anew the significance
that Bagimond’s assessment was to have for ecclesiastical taxation in
Scotland throughout the later Middle Ages. It is sufficient to note that
this transcript provides the only complete contemporary return for
any Scottish diocese and that it corroborates the evidence of the roll
1 The name is derived from the medieval papal fortress, (originally the mausoleum of
the emperor Hadrian and now the Castel Sant’Angelo), where Sixtus iv and Leo x
deposited a large collection of important and valuable papal documents for safe¬
keeping. The entire collection was transferred to the Vatican in 1798.
2 Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum Historiam Illustrantia, ed. A. Theiner
(Rome, 1864).
8 Scottish History Society Miscellany, v (1933), 79-106; vi (1939), 3-77.