Imperiage/pariage/pariatge

Today’s Libro verde entry (front page, right bottom) has Fernando VI in 1758 undoing various stuff done by Felipe V in 1714, including reëstablishing the right of imperiage. I speculated that “this must be some kind of feudal arrangement governing property and revenue sharing between landowners”, but a description has turned up (thankyou JA) in José Canga Argüelles‘ Spanish tax dictionary, Diccionario de Hacienda con aplicación a España (PDF) (1826):

PARIAGE OR IMPERIAGE. Don Juan I of Aragon conceded in 1394 under this name to the board of commerce the right to charge 2 dineros per libra, [that is to say] 10 reales ardites [Catalan coin worth 2 sueldos], on the value of merchandise disembarked in [Barcelona]. In 1714 this right was appropriated by the crown, which relinquished it in 1759, when Don Carlos III ceded it to the board, augmenting it by a half. The value of pariage in a calendar year is 2,500 reals, which is invested in port works and in paying the expenses of the board.

This word doesn’t turn up in any of the RAE’s dictionaries, but it’s there in Alcover/Moll:

Dret duaner que pagaven les mercaderies desembarcades i introduïdes a Barcelona, en els segles XV i XVI. Sien tengudes e obligades en pagar lo dit dret del pariatge, doc. a. 1499 (Capmany Mem. ii, 309).a) L’organisme encarregat de percebre aquest dret. Una galera que’l periatge havia armada, doc. a. 1401 (Ardits, i, 89).

Imperiage/pariatge also turns up–of all places–in Harald Bielfeld’s history of taxation in Magdeburg (Geschichte des Magdeburgischen Steuerwesens von der Reformationszeit bis ins achtzehnte Jahrhundert, 1888), where I think he traces it back to Roman tax systems–the useful content is obscured.

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