"The linguistic command displayed in Two Medieval Toll Registers from Tarascon lets us know that we are in the hands of a master. It is a careful manuscript transcription and translation that is expertly executed." -- Kathryn Reyerson, Center for Medieval Studies, University of Minnesota

Two Medieval Toll Registers from Tarascon presents an edition, translation, and discussion of two vernacular toll registers from fourteenth and fifteenth-century Provence. These two registers are a valuable new source for the economic, linguistic, and transportation history of medieval France, offering a window onto the commercial life of Tarascon, a fortified town on the east bank of the Rhône between Avignon and Arles.

William D. Paden discusses the developing fiscal policy of the counts of Provence, for whom the tolls were collected, and the practice and vocabulary of medieval toll-keeping. An afterword considers the toll registers in relation to the poetry of troubadours, arguing that the realism of the registers and the idealism of troubadour poetry overlapped in the world of medieval Tarascon. 

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‘This is a very fine and orderly edition complete with all trappings… Glossary is a real gem… The glossary even provides indexes of the words named and we thus get a very fine tool to approach Occitan texts from the period – whether in prose or poetry.’

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‘Magisterially edited and translated…. Two Medieval Occitan Toll Registers will reward not only scholars of Occitan, Provence and France, but will also benefit those interested in medieval Mediterranean culture and European trade networks.’