ABSTRACT
A word from Old Norse gabba meaning originally "to mock, to sneer; a mockery, an insult," it became famous through its peculiar usage in the late 12th-century Voyage de Charlemagne: "a boast." Attested as early as the 10th century in Provencal and later in Old French texts, mostly centered in the northwest, the word retained its original meanings until the 16th century, when it finally died out. The term gabelle had widespread use in Mediterranean Europe to describe indirect taxes on the sale of merchandise. In France, after the mid-14th century, it came to refer almost exclusively to a royal tax on salt. Originally a seigneurial right like other mineral resources, salt became an important source of royal revenue after Philip VI's ordinance of March 16, 1341, ordered seizure of salt throughout the kingdom. It was to be stored in royal ware-houses and then sold for a profit by royal officials called gabclliers.
