Benefice

A benefice (/ˈbɛnɪfɪs/) or living is a reward received, usually in exchange for (or as a consequence of) services rendered; such payment also operates as a retainer to help ensure the delivery of such services, or fulfilment of the duties of the relevant office, into the future. The term is still used, although the substance of benefices has recently changed, in many historical parishes and positions within the Anglican Church.

The Roman Empire used the Latin term beneficium to denote a gift (usually of land) given to an individual from the Empire for services rendered to it. Its use was adopted by the Western Church in the Carolingian era, meaning a benefit bestowed by the crown or church officials upon a person, usually a member of the clergy. A benefice specifically from a church, such as a vicar's stipend or the right to live in a presbytery, is called a precaria (pl. precariae); and one from a monarch or nobleman is usually called a fief. A benefice is distinct from an allod, in that an allod is property owned outright, not bestowed for a period by a higher authority.

Catholic Church

Roman imperial origins

In ancient Rome a benefice was a gift of land (precaria) for life as a reward for services rendered, originally, to the state. The word comes from the Latin noun beneficium, meaning "benefit".

Carolingian era

In the 8th century, using their position as Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, Carloman I and Pepin III usurped a large number of church benefices for distribution to vassals, and later Carolingians continued this practice as emperors. These estates were held in return for oaths of military assistance, which greatly aided the Carolingians in consolidating and strengthening their power. Charlemagne (emperor 800–814) continued the late Roman concept of granting benefices in return for military and administrative service to his empire. Thus, the imperial structure was bound together through a series of oaths between the monarch and the recipient of land (and the resulting income) (see Fief). He ordered and administered his kingdom and later his empire through a series of published statutes called capitularies. The Capitulary of Herstal (AD 779) distinguished between his vassals who were styled casati (sing. casatus) and non-casati, that is those subjects who had received a benefice from the hand of the king and those who had not, and

towards the end of Charlemagne's reign it appears that a royal vassal who had satisfactorily fulfilled his duties could always look forward to the grant of a benefice in some part of the Empire. Once he had received a benefice, he would take up his residence on it; it was only rarely that a vassus casatus continued to work in the Palace.

In the year 800 Pope Leo III placed the crown of Holy Roman Emperor on the head of Charlemagne. This act caused great turmoil for future generations, who would afterward argue that the emperor thereby received his position as a benefice from the papacy. In his March 1075 Dictatus Papae, Pope Gregory VII declared that only the pope could depose an emperor, which implied that he could do so just as a lord might take a benefice away from a vassal. This declaration inflamed Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and furthered the friction caused in the Investiture Conflict.

Middle Ages

The expanded practice continued through the Middle Ages within the European feudal system. This same customary method became adopted by the Catholic Church.

The church's revenue streams came from, amongst other things, rents and profits arising from assets gifted to the church, its endowment, given by believers, be they monarch, lord of the manor or vassal, and later also upon tithes calculated on the sale of the product of the people's personal labour in the entire parish such as cloth or shoes and the people's profits from specific forms of likewise God-given, natural increase such as crops and in livestock.

Initially the Catholic Church granted buildings, grants of land and greater and/or lesser tithes for life but the land was not alienated from the dioceses. The Synod of Lyon of 567 annexed these grants to the churches. By the time of the Council of Mainz of 813 these grants were known as beneficia.

Holding a benefice did not necessarily imply a cure of souls although each benefice had a number of spiritual duties attached to it. For providing these duties, a priest would receive "temporalities".

Benefices were used for the worldly support of much of its pastoral clergy – clergy gaining rewards for carrying out their duties with rights to certain revenues, the "fruits of their office". The original donor of the temporalities or his nominee, the patron and his successors in title, held the advowson (right to nominate a candidate for the post subject to the approval of the bishop or other prelate as to the candidate's sufficiency for the demands of the post).

Parish priests were charged with the spiritual and temporal care of their congregation. The community provided for the priest as necessary, later, as organisation improved, by tithe (which could be partially or wholly lost to a temporal lord or patron but relief for that oppression could be found under canon law).

Some individual institutions within the church accumulated enormous endowments and, with that, temporal power. These endowments sometimes concentrated great wealth in the mortmain ("dead hand") of the church, so called because it endured beyond any individual's life. The church was exempt from some or all taxes. This was in contrast to feudal practice where the nobility would hold land on grant from the king in return for service, especially service in war. This meant that the church over time gained a large share of land in many feudal states and so was a cause of increasing tension between the church and the Crown.

Pluralism

The holder of more than one benefice, later known as a pluralist, could keep the revenue to which he was entitled and pay lesser sums to deputies to carry out the corresponding duties.

By a Decree of the Lateran Council of 1215 no clerk could hold two benefices with cure of souls, and if a beneficed clerk took a second benefice with cure of souls, he vacated ipso facto his first benefice. Dispensations could easily be obtained from Rome.

The benefice system was open to abuse. Acquisitive prelates occasionally held multiple major benefices. The holding of more than one benefice is termed pluralism (unrelated to the political theory of the same name). An English example was Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury (1052–72).

After the Reformation, the new denominations generally adopted systems of ecclesiastical polity that did not entail benefices and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) called "for the abandonment or reform of the system of benefices".

French Revolution

The French Revolution replaced France's system by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy following debates and a report headed by Louis-Simon Martineau in 1790, confiscating all endowments of the church, which was until then the highest order (premier ordre) of the Ancien Régime; instead, the state awarded a salary to the formerly endowment-dependent clergy, and abolished canons, prebendaries and chaplains. This constitution kept the separation between the nomination (advowson) and the canonical institution (benefice/living, which conferred a jurisdiction) but the state set a fixed system of salaries and would elect the metropolitan bishops who in turn would elect the curates.

Parts of these changes remain such as the abolition of the three historic roles mentioned, and the constitution is still in force in Belgium.

Contemporary developments

The Second Vatican Council ruled that diocesan bishops should all have complete freedom "in bestowing offices and benefices" and therefore "rights or privileges which in any way limit this freedom [were] to be suppressed".

Church of England

The term benefice, according to the canon law, denotes an ecclesiastical office (but not always a cure of souls) in which the incumbent is required to perform certain duties or conditions of a spiritual kind (spiritualities) while being supported by the revenues attached to the office (temporalities).

The spiritualities of parochial benefices, whether rectories, vicarages or perpetual curacies, include due observation of the ordination vows and due solicitude for the moral and spiritual welfare of the parishioners. The temporalities are the revenues of the benefice and assets such as the church properties and possessions within the parish.

By keeping this distinction in mind, the right of patronage in the case of parochial benefices, or advowson, appears logical, being the right originally vested in the donor of the temporalities to present to his bishop a clerk to be admitted, if found fit by the bishop, to the office to which those temporalities are annexed. In other words, the gift of the glebe (a rectory manor or church furlong) was only ever granted subject to receiving an incorporeal hereditament (inheritable and transferable right) for the original donor.

Nomination or presentation on the part of the patron of the benefice is thus the first requisite in order that a clerk should become legally entitled to a benefice. The next requisite is that he should be admitted by the bishop as a fit person for the spiritual office to which the benefice is annexed, and the bishop is the judge of the sufficiency of the clerk to be so admitted.

Parochial clergy suitability

Under the early constitutions of the Church of England a bishop was allowed a space of two months to inquire and inform himself of the sufficiency of every presentee, but by the 95th of the Canons of 1604 that interval was reduced to 28 days, within which the bishop must admit or reject the clerk. If the bishop rejects the clerk within that time he is liable to a duplex querela (Latin: "double complaint", the procedure in ecclesiastical law for challenging a bishop's refusal to admit a presentee to a benefice) in the ecclesiastical courts or to a quare impedit in the common law courts, and the bishop must then certify the reasons of his refusal.

In the rare cases where the patron happens to be a clergyman (a clerk in orders) and wishes to be admitted to the benefice of his own advowson, he must proceed by way of petition instead of by deed of presentation, reciting that the benefice is in his own patronage, and petitioning the bishop to examine him and admit him.

Upon the bishop having satisfied himself of the sufficiency of the clerk, he proceeded to institute him to the spiritual office to which the benefice is annexed, but before such institution could take place, the clerk had to make the declaration of assent, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer, take the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience and make a declaration against simony. The first was laid down by the Canons of 1603/04 and modified by the Clerical Subscription Act 1865 which also prescribed the form of the declaration against simony; the words of the oath of allegiance accorded to the form in the Promissory Oaths Act 1868. Current practice is to make a declaration of assent to the doctrine and liturgical practice of the Church of England, and take the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience as defined by Canons of the Church of England.

The bishop, by the act of institution, commits to the presentee the cure of souls attached to the office to which the benefice is annexed. In cases where the bishop himself is patron of the benefice, no presentation or petition is required to be tendered by the clerk, but the bishop having satisfied himself of the sufficiency of the clerk, collates him to the benefice and office. A bishop need not personally institute or collate a clerk; he may issue a fiat to his vicar-general or to a special commissary for that purpose.

After the bishop or his commissary has instituted the presentee, he issues a mandate under seal, addressed to the archdeacon or some other neighbouring clergyman, authorizing him to induct the clerk into his benefice – in other words, to put him into legal possession of the temporalities, which is done by some outward form, and for the most part by delivery of the bell-rope to the presentee, who then tolls the church bell. This form of induction is required to give the clerk a legal title to his beneficium, although his admission to the office by institution is sufficient to vacate any other benefice which he may already possess. A benefice is avoided or vacated

1. by death;
2. by resignation, if the bishop is willing to accept the resignation. (Before the introduction of the Church of England Pensions Board, by the Incumbents' Resignation Act 1871 (Amendment) Act 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 23), any clergyman who had been an incumbent of one benefice continuously for seven years, and became incapacitated by permanent mental or bodily infirmities from fulfilling his duties, could, if the bishop thought fit, have a commission appointed to consider the fitness of his resigning; and if the commission reported in favour, he could, with the consent of the patron (or, if that is refused, with the consent of the archbishop) resign the cure of souls into the bishop's hands, and have assigned to him, out of the benefice, a retiring pension not exceeding one third of its annual value, recoverable as a debt from his successor);
3. by cession, upon the clerk being instituted to another benefice or some other preferment incompatible with it;
4. by deprivation and sentence of an ecclesiastical court; under the Clergy Discipline Act 1892 (55 & 56 Vict. c. 32), an incumbent who has been convicted of offences against the law of bastardy, or against whom judgment has been given in a divorce or matrimonial cause, is deprived, and on being found guilty in the consistory court of immorality or ecclesiastical offences (not in respect of doctrine or ritual), he may be deprived or suspended or declared incapable of preferment;
5. by act of law in consequence of simony;
6. by default of the clerk in neglecting to read publicly in the church the Book of Common Prayer, and to declare his assent thereto within two months after his induction, pursuant to the Act of Uniformity 1662 (14 Cha. 2. c. 4);
7. more recently, also on reaching statutory retirement age.

Pluralities laws

Pluralities Act 1838
Act of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title	An Act to abridge the holding of Benefices in Plurality, and to make better provision for the Residence of the Clergy.
Citation	1 & 2 Vict. c. 106
Territorial extent	England and Wales Ireland
Dates
Royal assent	14 August 1838
Commencement	14 August 1838
Other legislation
Amends	Augmentation of Benefices Act 1665
Repeals/revokes	Benefices Act 1545 Augmentation of Benefices Act 1665
Amended by	Statute Law Revision Act 1874 (No. 2) Pluralities Act 1850 Pluralities Acts Amendment Act 1885 Pluralities Act 1887 Mental Health Act 1959 Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1971 Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1974 Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976 Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1993 Statute Law (Repeals) Act 2004 Statute Law (Repeals) Measure 2018
Relates to	Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 Church Discipline Act 1840
Status: Partially repealed
Text of statute as originally enacted
Revised text of statute as amended
Text of the Pluralities Act 1838 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.

Dispensation, enabling a clerk to hold several ecclesiastical dignities or benefices at the same time, was transferred to the Archbishop of Canterbury by the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 (25 Hen. 8. c. 21), certain ecclesiastical persons having been declared by the earlier Clergy Act 1529 (21 Hen. 8. c. 13) to be entitled to such dispensations. The system of pluralities carried with it, as a direct consequence, systematic non-residence on the part of many incumbents, and delegation of their spiritual duties in respect of their cures of souls to assistant curates. The evils attendant on this system were found to be so great that the Pluralities Act 1838 (1 & 2 Vict. c. 106) was passed to abridge the holding of benefices in plurality, requiring that no person should hold under any circumstances more than two benefices and such privilege was subject to the restriction that both benefices must be within 10 miles (16 km) of each other.

By the Pluralities Act 1850 (13 & 14 Vict. c. 98) restrictions were further narrowed so that no spiritual person could hold two benefices except the churches of such benefices within 3 miles (4.8 km) of each other by the nearest road, and the annual value of one of such benefices did not exceed £100. By this statute the term "benefice" is defined to mean "benefice with cure of souls" and no other, and therein to comprehend all parishes, perpetual curacies, donatives, endowed public chapels, parochial chapelries and chapelries or districts belonging or reputed to belong, or annexed or reputed to be annexed, to any church or chapel.

The Pluralities Acts Amendment Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vict. c. 54) superseded these and enacted that by dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, two benefices can be held together, the churches of which are within 4 miles (6.4 km) of each other, and the annual value of one of which does not exceed £200.

The Pluralities Act 1838 (Amendment) Measure 1922 (12 & 13 Geo. 5 No. 2) repealed sections 52 and 53 of the 1838 act. These sections required bishops to send annual returns of non-resident clergy to the Privy Council, and this was no longer felt to serve any useful purpose.

The Pluralities Measure 1930 (20 & 21 Geo. 5. No. 7) amended the maximum value of either benefice to £400, and also allowed the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (now the Church Commissioners) to approve the holding of multiple benefices, overriding the limit to two, and the distance and value requirements previously in force.

Current usage

A benefice or living in the Church of England describes any ecclesiastical parish or group of ecclesiastical parishes under a single stipendiary minister, as well as its related historical meaning.

The term dates from the grant of benefices by bishops to clerks in holy orders as a reward for extraordinary services. The holder of a benefice owns the "freehold" of the post (the church and the parsonage house) for life.

Such a life freehold is now subject to certain constraints. To comply with European Regulations on atypical workers, the parson's freehold is being phased out in favour of new conditions of service called "common tenure".

Switzerland

As early as the Early Middle Ages, the founder of a proprietary church might set aside a fund, independent of the diocese's wealth, for the upkeep of the priest and the building. With the Merovingian-Frankish extension of land grants to church property in the 8th century, the support of the clergy increasingly came—first in the countryside—through the granting of particular estates, and from the 8th and 9th centuries of entire village churches. After the introduction of the tithe in the 9th century, church property came to be divided, following a system already confirmed by Pope Gelasius I in 494, into the portions for the priest (the benefice proper), for the poor, and for the fabrica ecclesiae. Benefices consisted of landed revenues, usage rights, and dues in kind and money; very unequally endowed, they were granted for life but could not be inherited.

In the High and Late Middle Ages the link between office and benefice loosened. Although forbidden by canon law, the holding of multiple benefices (pluralism), trafficking in them, and the use of a substitute were not uncommon, and the incorporation of parish benefices allowed monasteries to become benefice-holders. Parishioners resisted these abuses; especially in the Alpine region, but also on the Plateau and in the Jura, they managed from the 15th century (and already in the High Middle Ages in Ticino) to acquire patronage rights that allowed them to administer the local church's property and sometimes to choose their own priest.

The Reformation left the legal institution of the benefice in place but, in the Reformed territories, sharply reduced their number through the closure of monasteries and the secularization of church property. In the dominant city-cantons, the council took over the right to appoint to many benefices from the 16th century and placed church affairs under its supervision—a tendency present to varying degrees in all the confederate cantons. In Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Glarus, Grisons, Uri, and the Toggenburg, local communities gained greater weight; the Grison communes could freely choose their confession, administer church property, and appoint and pay their own minister or priest. From the second half of the 17th century, the governments of the Reformed cantons made the first attempts to equalize benefice incomes, and in the 18th and 19th centuries public funds were created for this purpose in both Reformed and Catholic areas. The benefice system declined only gradually in the 19th century, in the wake of the abolition of feudal land charges and payments in kind, and was replaced by salaried employment. With the secularization of church property, the support of clergy and places of worship passed to the state; in the early 21st century the churches finance pastoral work chiefly through the church tax levied by the state. In Catholic areas, the notion of the benefice was abolished by the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

See also

• In commendam
• Chop-church
• Concordat of Worms
• Statutes of Mortmain
• Cestui que
• Tithe
  • Glebe

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Benefice — (Lat. Beneficium, a benefit)

Popularly the term benefice is often understood to denote either certain property destined for the support of ministers of religion, or a spiritual office or function, such as the care of souls, but in the strict sense it signifies a right, i. e. the right given permanently by the Church to a cleric to receive ecclesiastical revenues on account of the performance of some spiritual service. Four characteristics are essential to every benefice:

• the right to revenue from church property, the beneficed cleric being the usufructuary and not the proprietor of the source of his support;

• a twofold perpetuity, objective and subjective, inasmuch as the source of income must be permanently established and at the same time the appointment to the benefice must be for life, and not subject to revocation, save for the causes and in the cases specified by law;

• a formal decree of ecclesiastical authority giving to certain funds or property the character or title of a benefice;

• an annexed office or spiritual function of some kind, such as the care of souls, the exercise of jurisdiction, the celebration of Mass or the recitation of time Divine Office.

This last mentioned element is fundamental, since a benefice exists only for the sake of securing the performance of duties connected with the worship of God, and is based on the Scriptural teaching that they who serve the altar should live by the altar. In fact, as Innocent III declares, the sole purpose of the foundation of benefices was to enable the church to have at her command clerics who might devote themselves freely to works of religion.

History

The need which benefices are intended to meet was in the earlier centuries of the life of the Church satisfied in other ways. From the beginning, the clergy was supported by the liberality of the faithful, but originally all offerings were transmitted to the bishop, who took charge of their administration and distribution. Usually the mass of donations was divided into four portions, of which one went to the support of the bishop, another to the maintenance of the clergy, a third to the repair and construction of churches, and a fourth to the relief of the needy and afflicted. Under this system even those clerics who ministered in rural parishes were obliged to send the oblations received in their churches to the bishop, to swell the common fund and to be submitted to the ordinary rule of allotment. The inconvenience attending this method, especially because the offerings were frequently in kind, increased with the growth of the Church, particularly with the multiplication of country parishes. Moreover the Church came to possess considerable real property. Hence early in the sixth century we find in some places the practice of allowing some of the clergy to retain for themselves and for their churches the gifts which they had received or even the income from property which the Church had acquired. The latter form of grant, in connexion with lands or permanent endowments, was known as precaria, a name which indicates its unstable tenure; on the death of the possessor the source of his revenue reverted to the common fund of church property, and could not serve for the support of a cleric unless devoted anew to this purpose by a formal act of ecclesiastical authority. Though these precariœ were in the beginning contrary to the canons, circumstances justified their increasing employment, and they paved the way for the recognition of the modern benefice.

All that was needed to transform the precariœ into benefices, was to do away with the need of a new episcopal decree assigning the income from certain lands or other property to the support of a priest on the occurrence of a vacancy, and to recognize in the source of income a perpetual foundation for this specific purpose. When this was done and the incumbent was given permanency in office, the modern benefice came into being. It was of gradual growth, its beginning dating from the sixth century and its universal adoption being delayed until the eleventh century. Since the usufruct allowed to clerics resembled the grants of land which sovereigns were accustomed to make to subjects who had distinguished themselves by military or political service, and which the Church was at times compelled to concede to powerful lay lords in order to secure necessary protection in troubled times, it was natural that the term benefice, which had been applied to these grants, should be employed to denote the similar practice in regard to ecclesiastics. Wherever the common law of the Church holds sway the establishment of benefices is the rule. In more than one country a system developed by centuries of piety has fallen before decrees of secularization, but if the usurping government makes a pretence of compensation by stipends to the clergy, such stipends are regarded by the Church as beneficiary revenue, and those who receive them retain the status of beneficed clerics. In the United States benefices are almost unknown. A solitary example in New Orleans figured as a notable exception in the decree of the Second Plenary Council. A few parochial benefices are found in the province of San Francisco, and there is good ground for the opinion which sees in permanent rectorships all the requisites of a benefice; but these instances, with the episcopates, are in marked contrast with the general organization of the Church in the United States. In England, also, benefices are the exception, but in Canada they are more common (Gignac, Compend. Jur. Eccl., Quebec, 1906). The beneficiary system plays an important part in the discipline of the evangelical churches on the continent of Europe, and of the State church of England. In 1900, out of 22,800 clergymen at work in the Anglican Church, 13,872 were beneficed. (For benefices or "livings" in the Anglican Church see Phillimore, "Ecclesiastical Law"; Idem, "Book of Church Law", London, 1899, 227; ibid. the Benefices Act of 1898. For the Evangelical Churches see Hinschius, "Kirchenrecht", Berlin, 1869 sq.; Friedberg, "Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts", 4th ed., 1895; Real Encyk. f. Prot. Theol. und Kirche, 3d ed., 1897, II, 596.)

Division

Benefices are divided into simple and double; major and minor; elective, presentative, and collative; residential and non-residential; perpetual and manual; secular and regular. Simple benefices are those which involve only the duty of reciting the Divine Office or of celebrating Mass. Double benefices imply the care of souls or jurisdiction in the external forum or administrative functions, and, if they be episcopal or supra-episcopal in rank, are styled major benefices. A benefice is elective when the appointing authority may collate only after some electoral body has named the future incumbent; presentative when such nomination belongs to a patron; collative when the bishop or other superior appoints independently of any election or presentation. The distinction between residential and non-residential benefices is based upon the fact that in some cases the canons or articles of foundation impose the obligation of residence in the locality of the benefice while in other cases no such obligation is annexed. Manual benefices are not benefices in the strict sense, since their distinctive note is that appointments to them are revocable at the will of the collating authority. A legal presumption exists that all benefices are secular, but those which exist in churches or houses of religious orders or which by custom or by the will of the founder have been appropriated to religious are known as regular benefices. This last distinction has at times a special importance because of the rule requiring that secular benefices be conferred only on secular clerics, regular benefices only on regulars.

Creation

Benefices can be created only by ecclesiastical authority, since the right to revenue which they suppose is always necessarily connected with some spiritual function, and is therefore reckoned among the jura spiritualia controlled by the Church. The competent authority may be the pope or a bishop or one possessing quasi-episcopal authority, it being always understood that the pope has exclusive control of all major benefices. A benefice must be erected in a church or at an altar, under the title of some saint or mystery, and with the annexed obligation of rendering some spiritual service. Since the idea of compensation is always implied, a sufficient endowment must in every case be guaranteed, the amount varying with the character of the benefice, the locality of the foundation, and the nature of the services which are to be rendered. In some countries, as in Austria, the consent of the civil authorities is a necessary preliminary to the creation of a benefice.

Modification

A benefice once erected is understood to be perpetual, but the law must and does provide for circumstances which may require an alteration of the status of a benefice by union or division, or even its entire suppression or extinction. Sometimes, owing to changed conditions, especially to a diminution of revenue, it becomes necessary to unite two or more benefices. This union may be effected in two ways, either so that an entirely new individual entity is brought into being, or so that the original titles remain, but are conferred on one cleric instead of several. In this latter case a distinction has to be made between a union in which both benefices retain their legal autonomy and a union in which one benefice is made legally dependent on the other. The pope alone can unite major benefices; minor benefices are subject in this respect to episcopal authority, with very few exceptions. A bishop is not allowed to proceed to the union of benefices unless such action be justified by reasons of necessity or of advantage, and unless a hearing be first granted to all interested persons. The patron, if there be one, and the cathedral chapter are the only parties whose consent, as distinguished from mere opinion, is required. The division of benefices, which is most frequently verified in connexion with parishes, is authorized when the incumbent is unable on account of increasing obligations to meet the requirements of his office, even with the help of such auxiliaries as the law allows. The formalities are generally the same as for a union. The term "dismembration" is frequently employed as a synonym for division, but strictly speaking it denotes an act by which a part of the goods or revenues of one benefice is given perpetually to another benefice or to some other ecclesiastical entity. In this case no new benefice is set up, and the act in question is in reality simply an alienation of church property, and is therefore governed by the rules applicable to alienation. Dismembration is also used at times to signify the separation of a certain territory with its inhabitants from one parish and its incorporation in another, which may be effected for sufficient reason. The extinction of benefices occurs when both the benefice and the church to which it is attached are utterly destroyed or cease completely to have any connexion with Catholic worship, as happened in the past when certain countries were overrun by infidels or heretics, and in more recent times on the occasion of acts of usurpation by the civil power. Suppression differs from extinction in that it simply terminates the existence of a benefice, leaving intact the church and any other benefices which may be connected with it. Suppression involves a diminution of religious service, and is consequently regarded as odious in law. Nevertheless a bishop may for good reasons and with the consent of his chapter proceed to suppression, and at times such action is rendered necessary by a considerable depreciation in the value of the beneficiary property or by the departure of the population to whose spiritual needs the benefice was intended to minister. Suppression is not infrequently requested by patrons. In such cases the practice is not to consent to absolute suppression, at least of the religious service depending on the benefice, but simply to the exoneration of the patron and his renunciation of the jus patronatus.

Collation

The collation or granting of benefices may be ordinary or extraordinary, free or necessary. The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary collation is based upon the fact that while, ordinarily major benefices are disposed of by the pope and minor benefices by bishops, it may occasionally happen that this rule suffers an exception in so far as it relates to bishops, either because of a special provision of the law in favour of the pope or of some other authority, or because, on the failure of the bishop to act, the right to appoint devolves on his superior. These exceptions are known as extraordinary collations. From the eleventh century, extraordinary collations by the pope became more and more common, usually taking the form of mandata de providendo, literœ expectativœ, and reservations. The mandata de providendo were intended to give to the cleric named therein a right to a benefice already vacant in the diocese of the bishop to whom the mandate was directed. Literœ expectativœ were similar papal interventions in regard to diocesan benefices, but affected benefices not yet vacant, the recipient of the letter being given a claim on a benefice as soon as it should be at the disposal of the bishop. These two methods of extraordinary collation were not productive of happy results; they proved to be prejudicial to episcopal authority; they were taken advantage of by unworthy aspirants for ecclesiastical offices; and at times they were fraudulently obtained and offered for sale. Hence their reprobation by the Council of Trent (Sess. XXIV, cap. xix De ref). This animadversion of Trent was not, it is needless to say, a limitation of any papal prerogative; its sole purpose being to forestall possible abuses on time part of petitioners for favours from the Holy See. Reservations are still in operation, and consist in this, that the pope reserves to himself in specified cases the collation of certain diocesan benefices. After serving for centuries as a cause of much controversy, they were finally regulated by laws defining accurately the instances in which collation was to be reserved to the pope. One of the most important reservations which may serve as an example is contained in the ninth rule of the Apostolic Chancery (see CHANCERY, APOSTOLIC), which provides that those diocesan benefices which fall vacant during eight months of the year are to be at the disposal of the pope, but that bishops who observe the law of residence may freely dispose of all benefices vacated during the six alternate months beginning with February. To-day reservations are in effect to some extent throughout the Church; for example, they affect the first dignities in chapters in the Province of Quebec and canonries in England; but Italy is the only country in which they are in full operation. Apart from cases provided for in reservations, the pope rarely, if ever, exercises his right of extraordinary collation. A collation, whether made by the pope or by a bishop, is said to be free when it is not conditioned by any act of an elector or of a patron; necessary when it follows election or nomination by competent persons or presentation by patrons. In many countries, concordats have secured to the representatives of civil authority an important part in appointments to benefices. Thus in Bavaria the king nominates to all archiepiscopal and episcopal sees; and a similar right has been granted to the Emperor of Austria and to the King of Portugal; in Hanover the chapter, before proceeding to the election of a bishop, must allow the Government to cancel the names of those candidates whom it judges unacceptable. Secular intervention in the collation of minor benefices varies from the royal nomination of the King of Portugal to the governmental exequatur required by Italian law. The interests of religion are safeguarded by the canonical requirement that in every case the candidate must be confirmed by ecclesiastical authority before he can lawfully begin his incumbency. (For abuses in the collation of benefices, see PATRONAGE, COMMENDATORY ABBOTS, INVESTITURES.)

Condition of Collation

In order that benefices may the more effectually fulfill the purposes for which they were instituted, various laws have been enacted governing the act of collation. Whether the collation be free or necessary it must always be gratuitous, to avoid simony; free, that is without coaction; unconditional; public, so that it may be readily proved; and granted within six months from the date of vacancy. Moreover no benefice can be conferred before it is vacant, nor can seculars receive the benefices of regulars, nor regulars those which are secular in character. Plurality of benefices also is forbidden. This last regulation was introduced very early in the history of benefices to assure the faithful execution of the trust attached to ecclesiastical foundations, as well as to guard against the evils which follow luxury; but in the course of time its effectiveness was considerably diminished by a distinction drawn between compatible and incompatible benefices. It was claimed that a benefice which does not require residence is perfectly compatible with one which does, and also that several simple benefices might very properly be held at the same time. This view held sway down to the time of the Council of Trent, which ordained that the possession of more than one benefice is lawful only when the first benefice obtained does not suffice for the support of the incumbent, and that in no case should both be residential. The Holy See alone can dispense from the observance of this law. The act of collation is further conditioned by canons requiring certain qualities in the appointee:

(a) The clerical state and celibacy

Tonsure is necessary for all benefices, and higher orders must be received by aspirants to important charges; thus cardinals are obliged to receive within the year the order corresponding to their rank in the sacred college; archbishops and bishops must have been subdeacons for at least six months; parish priests must receive the priesthood within a year.

(b) Age

Before the Council of Trent a simple benefice could lawfully be conferred on a cleric as early as his seventh year, but since that council the recipient of a simple benefice must be in his fourteenth year, and for double benefices the age of twenty-four years completed is always required. A greater maturity is demanded for certain offices, e. g. thirty years completed for the episcopate, and forty years for the post of canon penitentiary.

(c) Character

The appointee must be of legitimate birth and of good reputation, and free from censure and irregularity.

(d) Relative worthiness

In the case of a choice between several candidates for a bishopric or for a parish, the collator must appoint the most worthy, i. e. the one who possesses in the highest degree the qualities necessary for a successful discharge of the duties connected with the benefice in question. The same rule applies to prelacies with quasiepiscopal jurisdiction, to the canon theologian and to the canon penitentiary. As to other benefices authorities differ, the preferable opinion maintaining that in all cases the most worthy is to be chosen.

(e) Science

According to a law of Trent (Sess. VII, c. xiii, De ref.) no one can be collated to a benefice unless his fitness has been demonstrated in an examination conducted by the ordinary. In the case of parochial benefices, this examination must take the form of a concursus. (See CONCURSUS.) For some appointments the possession of a degree in theology or in canon law is demanded, as evidence of requisite learning; a bishop must be a doctor or a licentiate in canon law or in theology, or have the public testimony of a university as to his fitness to teach others; an archdeacon also must be a doctor or a licentiate in canon law or in theology; and similar qualifications are demanded for other offices. The Holy See, is, at the present time, insisting that the law concerning degrees be faithfully observed.

(f) Extraordinary requirements

These may be imposed by the articles of foundation or by secular law. Founders of benefices are given a great deal of liberty in attaching conditions to the act of collation, provided that these conditions be approved by ecclesiastical authority. In consequence, it happens at times that only members of a certain family or citizens of some town or city are eligible, or even, in some few instances, persons of noble birth. More onerous, and not always acceptable to the church, is the interference of civil authorities in the matter of collation. In many places only a person declared acceptable to the Government, or a citizen, or a native, or one who swears fidelity to the Government at the time of appointment, or who receives the royal exequatur, can hope to be collated. In Portugal and in Bavaria, the permission of the Government is necessary for ordination, and without this permission, which is given after an examination by secular authorities, a cleric is incapacitated for benefices in these two kingdoms. The Bavarian law also contains the curious provision that no subject is to enter the German College at Rome so long as it is conducted by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, or by any similar order, and that all who contravene this ordinance are to be considered as personœ non gratœ to the Government and excluded from all benefices and posts at its disposal.

Obligations

All beneficed clerics are bound to make a profession of faith within two months from the date of taking possession, to perform faithfully the duties pertaining to their charge, to recite the canonical hours, and if the benefice held be double, to reside in the place in which their benefice is located. Violation of the law of residence is punished by loss of revenues during the time of absence, and if persisted in, by privation.

Vacancy

The tenure of the incumbent of a benefice is perpetual, in the sense that it can be terminated only by death or for causes specified in the law. It is provided in the law that in the event of certain acts vacancy shall occur ipso facto; as when the incumbent marries or attempts marriage, when he takes solemn vows in a religious order, when he violates the canon forbidding plurality, when he fails to receive within the prescribed time the necessary ordination, when he obtains episcopal consecration, when he is guilty of any crime to which penalty of deprivation is expressly attached. In other cases deprivation follows a judicial process, instituted in virtue of laws authorizing the bishop to punish certain offences in this manner. Moreover a cleric has the right to resign his benefice provided the resignation be offered freely and for just reasons, and be accepted by a competent superior, and he may also, with certain conditions, exchange benefices with another incumbent.

Revenues

The holder of a benefice is not the owner of the foundation from which he derives his support; he occupies in reference to it the position of a tutor or guardian who must defend its interests. His chief duty is to maintain it as a perpetual means of support for ministers of religion. Its fruits or revenues, however, belong to him, but with the obligation of devoting to pious causes, and especially to the relief of the poor, all that is not needed for his own support. Formerly, this superfluous revenue could not be disposed of by will, but a universal custom has long since authorized such testamentary disposal, provided it be made in favour of pious causes or of the poor. In fact, in most places on account of the difficulty of distinguishing a cleric's patrimonial property from his beneficiary revenue, the right is recognized to dispose freely by will of all property. (See JUS SPOLII.)

DUARENE, De Sacris Ministeriis et Beneficiis (Paris, 1564); REBUFFI, Praxis Beneficiorum (Lyons, 1580); GARZIAS, De Beneficiis (Cologne, 1614); CORRADUS, De Praxi Beneficiariâ (Naples, 1656); LOTTERIUS, De Re Beneficiariâ (Lyons, 1659); LEURENIUS, Forum Beneficiale (Cologne, 1674); GOHARD, Traité des Bénéfices (Paris, 1765); SGUANIN, Tractatus Beneficiarius (Rome, 1751); THOMASSINUS, Vetus et Nova Discipline circa Ecclesiœ Beneficia et Beneficiarios (Venice, 1766), the classic historical work on Benefices; GAGLIARDI, Tractatus de Beneficiis (Naples, 1842); ZITELLI, Apparatus Juris Eccl. (Rome, 1907); GROSS, Das Recht an der Pfründe (Graz, 1887); GALANTE, Il Beneficio Ecclesiastico (Milan, 1895); VERING, Lehrbuch des kath. prot. und oriental. Kirchenrechts, etc. (3d ed., Freiburg, 1893), 452 sqq.; ROTH, Geschichte des Beneficialwesens (Erlangen, 1850); STUTZ, Geschichte des Beneficialwesens bis Alexander III (Berlin, 1895); TAUNTON, The Law of the Church (London, 1906).

Bibliography

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