7. Formula of the Office of Comes Sacrarum Largitionum.

Office of Count of Sacred Largesses.

'Yours is the high and pleasing office of administering the bounty of your Sovereign[444]. Through you we dispense our favours and relieve needy suppliants on New Year's Day. It is your business to see that our face is imprinted on our coins, a reminder to our subjects of our ceaseless care on their behalf, and a memorial of our reign to future ages.

'To this your regular office we also add the place of Primicerius [Primicerius Notariorum?], so that you are the channel through which honours as well as largesses flow. Not only the Judges of the Provinces are subject to you, even the Proceres Chartarum (?) have not their offices assured to them till you have confirmed the instrument. You have also the care of the royal robes. The sea-coasts and their products, and therefore merchants, are under your sway. The commerce of salt, that precious mineral, rightly classed with silken robes and pearls, is placed under your superintendence.

'Take therefore these two dignities, the Comitiva Sacrarum Largitionum and the Primiceriatus. If some of the ancient privileges of your office have been retrenched [some functions, probably, taken from the Comes Sacrarum Largitionum and assigned to the Comes Patrimonii], comfort yourself with the thought that you have two dignities instead of one.'