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.[1]
The term teloneum first appeared in the fifth century.[2] 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.[3] 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).[4]