Benefices Sentence Examples

By a decree of the Lateran council of 1215, which was enforced in England, no clerk can hold two benefices with cure of souls, and if a beneficed clerk shall take a second benefice with cure of souls, he vacates ipso facto his first benefice.

The great number of benefices which he held left room for some doubt as to his disinterestedness.

It is his duty also to induct the clergy of his archdeaconry into the temporalities of their benefices after they have been instituted into the spiritualities by the bishop or his vicar-general.

Destined from his birth for the church, he received the tonsure at the age of seven and was soon loaded with rich benefices and preferments.

The pope had repeatedly used the rich northern benefices to reward members of the Roman curia, and towards the close of the year 1516 he sent the grasping and impolitic Arcimboldi as papal nuncio to Denmark to collect money for St Peter's.

In Germany the concessions made to the pope and the reservations maintained by him in the matter of taxes and benefices were deemed excessive, and the prolonged discontent which resulted was one of the causes of the success of the Lutheran Reformation.

The pope preserved the right to nominate to vacant benefices in curia and to certain benefices of the chapters, but all the others were in the nomination of the bishops or other inferior collators.

Save in the provisions relating to ecclesiastical benefices, all the property of which had been confiscated, it reproduced the concordat of 1516.

The origin of such unendowed curacies is traceable to the fact that benefices were sometimes granted to religious houses pleno jure, and with liberty for them to provide for the cure; and when such appropriations were transferred to lay persons, being unable to serve themselves, the impropriators were required to nominate a clerk in full orders to the.

Boiamund proposed to assess the tax, not according to the old conventional valuation but on the true value of the benefices at the time of assessment.

It gives the real values in one column and tenth parts in another column of each of the benefices in the archdeaconry of Lothian.

By Article 15 the government relinquished its rights to apostolic legation in Sicily, and to theap. pointment of its own nominees to the chief benefices throughout the kingdom.

In the same way earls and barons must only be fined by their peers, and a similar privilege is extended to the clergy, who, moreover, were not to be fined in accordance with the value of their benefices, but only of their other property.

But jurisdiction which was not necessarily incident to the office of the official principal, that is to say voluntary jurisdiction, such as the granting of licences and institution to benefices, and criminal jurisdiction over clerks (and probably over laymen), the bishop could reserve to himself.

As to the title to present to benefices, the courts Christian at one time had concurrent jurisdiction with the temporal courts.

But he resigned his benefices, and, in conjunction with Cajetan, founded the order of the Theatines (1524) with the object of promoting personal piety and of combating heresy by preaching.

In 1843 he brought forward a similar measure "to remove doubts respecting the admission of ministers to benefices."

The Benefices Act 1898, however, now prohibits the grant of a lease of an advowson.

His functions were those of a secretary; and, though he profited by benefices conferred on him in lieu of salary, he remained a layman to the end of his life.

Thus annates were abolished, the abuse of "reservation" of the patronage of benefices by the pope was much limited, and the right claimed by the pope of "next presentation" to benefices not yet vacant (known as gratiae expectativae) was done away with altogether.

The clergy, thus deprived of its wealth, privileges and jurisdiction, is further to be deprived of independence, for the civil power is to have the right of appointing to benefices, &c. The supreme authority in the church is to be the council, but a council summoned by the emperor.

The pope, no longer possessing any more power than other bishops (though Marsilius recognizes that the supremacy of the Church of Rome goes back to the earliest times of Christianity), is to content himself with a pre-eminence mainly of an honorary kind, without claiming to interpret the Holy Scriptures, define dogmas or distribute benefices; moreover, he is to be elected by the Christian people, or by the delegates of the people, i.e.

The penalty is forfeiture by the offender of any advantage from the simoniacal transaction, of his patronage by the patron, of his benefice by the presentee; and now by the Benefices Act 1892, a person guilty of simony is guilty of an offence for which he may be proceeded against under the Clergy Discipline Act 1892.

The Benefices Act 1898 substitutes and makes obligatory on every person about to be instituted to a benefice a simpler and more stringent form of declaration against simony.

In 1879 a royal commission reported on the law and existing practice as to the sale, exchange and resignation of benefices.

By the Act of 1584, c. 5, ministers, readers and others guilty of simony provided to benefices were to be deprived.

In the 10th century the counts were permitted by the kings to divide their benefices and rights among their sons, the rule being established that countships (Grafschaften) were hereditary, that they might be held by boys, that they were heritable by females and might even be administered by females.

He came to court in 1617 with an income of 25,000 livres from his ecclesiastical benefices.

The terms were, among other things, his appointment to the rich abbacy of St Denis and his restoration to his other benefices with the payment of arrears.

Map's career was an active and varied one; he was clerk of the royal household and justice itinerant; in 1179 he was present at the Lateran council at Rome, on his way thither being enter tained by the count of Champagne; at this time he apparentm held a plurality of ecclesiastical benefices, being a prebend of St Paul's, canon and precentor of Lincoln and parson of Westbury, Gloucestershire.

The latter became law in 1892, and the former was merged in the Benefices Bill, which passed in 1898, after his death.

Thus a bishop of the English Church appoints examining chaplains who conduct the examination of candidates for holy orders; such officials generally hold ordinary benefices also.

It proved to be easier to hold the lord responsible for the public duties of all his dependants because he was the king's vassal and by attaching them as conditions to the benefices which he held, than to enforce them directly upon every subject.

The Concordat brought the clergy into subjection, and enabled him to distribute benefices at his pleasure among the most docile of his courtiers.

The archbishop of Canterbury exercises the twofold jurisdiction of a metropolitan and a diocesan bishop. As metropolitan he is the guardian of the spiritualities of every vacant see within the province, he presents to all benefices which fall vacant during the vacancy of the see, and through his special commissary exercises the ordinary jurisdiction of a bishop within the vacant diocese.

The vicar-general, however, exercises jurisdiction in matters of ordinary marriage licences and of institutions to benefices.

By keeping these distinctions in view, the right of patronage in the case of secular benefices becomes intelligible, being in fact the right, which was originally vested in the donor of the temporalities, to present to the bishop a clerk to be admitted, if found fit by the bishop, to the office to which those temporalities are annexed.

Dispensations, however, could be easily obtained from Rome, before the reformation of the Church of England, to enable a clerk to hold several ecclesiastical dignities or benefices at the same time, and by the Peterpence, Dispensations, &c. Act 1534, the power to grant such dispensations, which had been exercised previously by the court of Rome, was transferred to the archbishop of Canterbury, certain ecclesiastical persons having been declared by a previous statute (1529) to be entitled to such dispensations.

The evils attendant on this system were found to be so great that the Pluralities Act 1838 was passed to abridge the holding of benefices in plurality, and it was enacted that no person should hold under any circumstances more than two benefices, and this privilege was made subject to the restriction that his benefices were within ten statute miles of each other.

By the Pluralities Act 1850, the restriction was further narrowed, so that no spiritual person could hold two benefices except the churches of such benefices were within three miles of each other by the nearest road, and the annual value of one of such benefices did not exceed £loo.

The Pluralities Acts Amendment Act 1885, however, enacted that, by dispensation from the archbishop, two benefices could be held together, the churches of which are within four miles of each other, and the annual value of one of which does not exceed £200.

All benefices except those under the clear annual value of £50 pay their first fruits (one year's profits) and tenths (of yearly profits) to Queen Anne's Bounty for the augmentation of the maintenance of the poorer clergy.

Benefices may be exchanged by agreement between incumbents with the consent of the ordinary, and they may, with the consent of the patron and ordinary, be united or dissolved after being united.

The bishop was a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, while his diocese was one of the largest in Germany, including (shortly before the Reformation) most of Baden and Wurttemberg, and 12 out of the 22 Swiss cantons (all the region on the right bank of the Aar, save the portions included in the diocese of Coire) - in it were comprised 350 monasteries, 1760 benefices and 17,000 priests.

First, the growth of the practice of " reservation " and " provision," by which the popes assumed the right to appoint their own nominees to vacant sees and other benefices, in defiance of the claims of the crown, the chapters and private patrons.

From 1343 onward, statutes were passed by parliament forbidding any one to accept a papal provision, and cutting off all appeals to the papal curia or ecclesias tical courts in cases involving benefices.

The schism extended down to the bishoprics, and even to the monasteries and parishes, where partisans of the rival popes struggled to obtain possession of sees and benefices.

In practice it restored the former range of papal reservations, and extended the papal right of appointment to all benefices (except the higher offices in cathedrals and collegiate churches) which fell vacant during the odd months.

In 1453 a crusading bull was issued imposing a tenth on all benefices of the earth to equip an expedition against the infidel.

All Church property was to be restored, and, perhaps most important of all, the jurisdiction of the Imperial court (Reichskammergericht), which was naturally Catholic in its sympathies, was extended to appeals involving the seizure of ecclesiastical benefices, contempt of episcopal decisions and other matters deeply affecting the Protestants.

A case was preferred against him in the Star Chamber of revealing state secrets, to which was added in 1635 a charge of subornation of perjury, of which he had undoubtedly been guilty and for which he was condemned in 1637 to pay a fine of io,000, to be deprived of the temporalities of all his benefices, and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure.

The crime of "plurality," the holding by one cleric of two or more benefices, was especially attacked, as also clerical absenteeism and ignorance, and laxity in the monastic life.

At the enfeoffments of 1072 and 1002 no great undivided fiefs were created, and the mixed Norman, French and Italian vassals owed their benefices to the count.

In the 9th century the interpretation was extended to include all acquisition of ecclesiastical offices or benefices for money or money's worth.

The PseudoIsidorian idea being that all lay control over things ecclesiastical is wrong, all transferences by laymen of ecclesiastical offices or benefices, even though no money changed hands in the process, were now classed as simony (Humbert, Adversus Simoniacos, 1057-1058).

Appointments to benefices are in the hands of the state (sometimes with consent of parishes), of private patrons and of local parish councils.

The number of these benefices is always increasing; and in 1897 they amounted to 16,400, or 300 more than in 1890.

Rich as he was through the benefices conferred on him by his patron, he was liberal to men of letters.

His private life was lax; he had at least two sons, for whom he purchased benefices before they had entered on their teens; and scandalous tales are told of the entertainments with which he enlivened his seclusion.

In 1231 Henry lent an ear to those who asserted that the justiciar had secretly encouraged armed attacks upon the aliens to whom the pope had given English benefices.

Henry Stuart likewise held sinecure benefices in France, Spain and Spanish America, so that he became one of the wealthiest churchmen of the period, his annual revenue being said to amount to £30,000 sterling.

Their general tendency was distinctly in a Catholic as opposed to a Puritan direction, and the two thousand Puritan incumbents who vacated their benefices on St Bartholomew's Day rather than accept the altered Prayer Book bear eloquent testimony to that fact.

He was deprived by Henry of the English protectorate; and when sentence was finally given against the divorce, Campeggio was deprived of the see of Salisbury as a non-resident alien, by act of parliament (11th of March 1535); but his rich benefices in the Spanish dominions made ample amends.

Though not in orders, he held two benefices.

The practice of the nomination of bishops by the Curia and of papal recommendation to prebends and benefices of every kind grew daily more general, and the number of appeals to Rome and exemptions granted to abbeys and even to simple churches increased continually.

Further, Pope Pius confined the functions of the chancery to the sending out of bulls under the leaden seal (sub plumbo), for the erection of dioceses, the provision of bishoprics and consistorial benefices, and other affairs of importance, these bulls being sent out by order of the Consistorial Congregation.

The knights were one hundred in number, and possessed the right of marrying and receiving pensions charged on ecclesiastical benefices.

Before 1898 there were also donative advowsons, but the Benefices Act 1898 made all donations with cure of souls presentative.

The Benefices Act of 1898 did not make any substantial change in the legal character of advowsons, which remain practically the same as before the act.

Under the Benefices Act, advowsons may not be sold by public auction except in conjunction with landed property adjacent to the benefice; transfers of patronage must be registered in the registry of the diocese, and no such transfers can be made within twelve months after the last admission or institution to the benefice.

Certain owners of advowsons are temporarily or permanently disabled from exercising the right which devolves upon other persons; and the crown as patron paramount of all benefices can fill all churches not regularly filled by other patrons.

It thus presents to all vacancies caused by simoniacal presentations, or by the incumbent having been presented to a bishopric or in benefices belonging to a bishopric when the see is vacant by the bishop's death, translation or deprivation.

Besides the qualifications required of a presentee by canon law, such as being of the canonical age, and in priest's orders before admission, sufficient learning and proper orthodoxy or morals, the Benefices Act requires that a year shall have elapsed since a transfer of the right of patronage, unless it can be shown that such transfer was not made in view of a probable vacancy; that the presentee has been a deacon for three years; and that he is not unfit for the discharge of his duties by reason of physical or mental infirmity or incapacity, grave pecuniary embarrassment, grave misconduct or neglect of duty in an ecclesiastical office, evil life, or conduct causing grave scandal concerning his moral character since his ordination, or being party to an illegal agreement with regard to the presentation; that notice of the presentation has been given to the parish of the benefice.

He was destined for the church and studied theology at the university of Bourges, but although he received several benefices he did not take orders.

The benefices are almost without exception provided with good residences and glebes, and the tithes, &c., generally afford a comfortable income.

At peace with England, and allied with France, he quarrelled with the church, and it was decreed that the clergy who obtained benefices from Rome were guilty of treason.

The greater benefices were being conferred on young men of high birth but of little learning.

The kirk was robbed afresh, benefices were given to such villainous cadets of great families as Archibald Douglas, an agent in Darnley's murder; and though, under the scholarly but fierce Andrew Melville, the kirk purified herself afresh and successfully opposed the bishops, James VI.

Such a vicar possesses an ordinary and not a delegated jurisdiction, which he exercises like the bishop. He cannot, however, exercise functions which concern the episcopal order, or confer benefices without express and particular commission.

Alban's, Holborn, for contumacy, the archbishop, then on his deathbed at Addington, took steps which resulted in the carrying out of an exchange of benefices (which had already been projected), which removed him from the jurisdiction of the .court.

Eventually, however, he resigned some of his many benefices, the holding of which had made him unpopular, and through the good offices of the regent, John Stewart, duke of Albany, obtained the coveted archbishopric and the primacy of Scotland.

In the same year he brought to an end the investiture struggle in England, in which Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, had been engaged with King Henry I., by retaining himself exclusive right to invest with the ring and crozier, but recognizing the royal nomination .to vacate benefices and oath of fealty for temporal domains.

The Scottish Benefices Act of Lord Aberdeen, 1843, gave the people power to state objections personal to a presentee, and bearing on his fitness for the particular charge to which he was presented, and also authorized the presbytery in dealing with the objections to look to the number and character of the objectors.

As a strong supporter of the Whigs, he gained the favour of Philip Yorke, afterwards lord chancellor and first earl of Hardwicke, and his subsequent preferments were largely due to this friendship. He held successively a number of benefices in different counties, and finally in London.

At the Restoration all the ejected clergy who survived were reinstated in their old benefices under the Act of Uniformity of 1662, whilst certain Puritan incumbents were in their turn dismissed for refusing to comply with various requirements of that act.

These benefices are filled by appointments from lists of three prepared by the council of state and sent to Rome by the president, and in the case of an archbishop or bishop the appointment must also receive the approval of the Senate.

Four years before, Fenelon had been appointed archbishop of Cambrai, one of the richest benefices in France.

Ecclesiastical benefices were the chief means by which, before the Reformation, the civil servants of the crown were paid for services which, being clerical, were also ecclesiastical, and for which the settled stipends were wholly inadequate.

In his accumulation of benefices Wykeham seems to have distanced all his predecessors and successors, except perhaps John Maunsell, the chancellor of Henry III., and Thomas Wolsey, the chancellor of Henry VIII., the latter being a pluralist not in canonries and livings but in bishoprics.

A bishop, then, cannot enter into the enjoyment of the temporalities of his see, including his rights of presentation to benefices, before doing homage to the king.

Various small benefices were conferred upon him; and repeated offers of a papal secretaryship, which would have raised him to the highest dignities, were made and rejected.

True to his conception of independent intellectual activity, he abstained from a legal career, refused important ecclesiastical office, and contented himself with paltry benefices which implied no spiritual or administrative duties, because he was resolved to follow the one purpose of his lifeself-culture.

The patronage of the remaining benefices belongs in the main to the crown, the bishops and cathedral chapters, the lord chancellor, and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

In the latter year he was appointed to the vicarage of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, and three years later was instituted to the rectory of Wilby in the same county, benefices which he retained until 1782.

One of the first cares of the new prelate was the restitution to his metropolitan see of the domains that had been alienated under Ebbo and given as benefices to laymen.

In feudal law the term is applied to the practice of a freeman placing himself under the protection of a lord (see Feudalism), and in ecclesiastical law to the granting of benefices in commendam.

An act of 1836 prohibited the holding of benefices in commendam in England.

He was educated at Rotherham grammar school and at Lincoln College, Oxford, took orders in 1611, and was promoted successively to several benefices.

In 1610 appeared his History of Ecclesiastical Benefices, " in which," says Ricci, "he purged the church of the defilement introduced by spurious decretals."

The chief thing to note is the existence, for these countries, of a civil-ecclesiastical to law, that is to say, a body of regulations made by the - civil authority, with the consent, more or less explicit, co of the Church, about ecclesiastical matters, other than spiritual; these dispositions are chiefly concerned with the nomination or confirmation by the state of ecclesiastics to the most important benefices, and with the administration of the property of the Church; sometimes also with questions of jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, concerning the persons or property of the Church.

During the Carolingian epoch the custom grew up of granting these as regular heritable fiefs or benefices, and by the 10th century, before the great Cluniac reform, the system was firmly established.

In those cases the rights of the bishops were frankly usurped by the Holy See, now regarded as the ultimate source of the episcopal jurisdiction; the more usual custom was for the pope to claim the first-fruits only of those benefices of which he had reserved the patronage to himself.

Disagreements and disputes were continual, and the easy expedient of rewarding the officials of the Curia and increasing the papal revenue by "reserving" more and more benefices was met by repeated protests, such as that of the bishops and barons of England (the chief sufferers), headed by Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, at the council of Lyons in 1245.2 The subject, indeed, frequently became one of national interest, on account of the alarming amount of specie which was thus drained away, and hence numerous enactments exist in regard to it by the various national governments.

Those reserved benefices only were to pay the annalia which were rated above twentyfour gold florins; and as none were so rated, whatever their annual value may have been, the annalia fell into disuse.

He would permit free election to all benefices, and free legislation by ecclesiastical synods, and would surrender any claims of the royal courts to have jurisdiction over clerks or the property of clerks.

Not only did he agree to receive Stephen Langton as archbishop, to restore all the exiled clergy to their benefices, and to pay them handsome compensation for all their losses during the last five years, but be took the strange and ignominious step of declaring that he ceded his whole kingdom to the pope, to hold as his vassal.

Under the Benefices Act 1898 the official principal of the archbishop is required to institute a presentee to a benefice if the tribunal constituted under that act decides that there is no valid ground for refusing institution and the bishop of the diocese notwithstanding fails to institute him.

His petition against the new dean was considered; and early in 1641 Cosin was sequestered from his benefices.

At the Restoration he returned to England, was reinstated in the mastership, restored to all his benefices, and in a few months raised to the see of Durham (December 1660).

Thus in various ways ecclesiastical benefices were gradually transformed into fiefs, and lay suzerains claimed the same rights over ecclesiastics as over other vassals from whom they received homage, and whom they invested with lands.

Again, benefices were kept vacant for long periods in order to ensure to the lord as long as possible the exercise of his regalian rights.

The emperor, on the one hand, preserved feudal suzerainty over ecclesiastical benefices; but, on the other, he ceased to confer ring and crozier, and thereby not only lost the right of refusing the elect on the grounds of unworthiness, but also was deprived of an efficacious means of maintaining vacancies in ecclesiastical offices.

The king voluntarily abandoned lay investiture and the claim to homage during the pontificate of Paschal II., but continued to interfere with elections, to appropriate the revenues of vacant benefices, and to exact an oath of fealty before admitting the elect to the enjoyment of his temporalities.

He was already the grand distributor of ecclesiastical benefices, pending the time when his successors were to confirm the episcopal elections, and his power began to take on a more and more absolute character.

The treaty of Andelot in 587 had already decided that the benefices or lands granted to them by the kings should be held for life.

He did subdue Aquitaine completely, thanks to his brother Charibert, with whom he had avoided dividing the kingdom, and he tried to restore his own demesne, which had been despoiled by the granting of benefices or by the pious frauds of the Church.

Conformably with the traditions of the administrative monarchy in 1673, the king wanted to extend to the new additions to the kingdom his rights of receiving the revenues of vacant bishoprics and making appointments to their benefices, including taking oaths of fidelity from the new incumbents.

Recipient now of immense ecclesiastical revenues, which, owing to the number of vacant benefices, constituted a powerful engine of government, Louis XIV.

Sometimes they were sent to organize and govern a march, sometimes they were rewarded with benefices, and as, with the growth of feudalism, these developed into hereditary fiefs, the word vassus or vassallus was naturally retained as implying the relation to the king as overlord, and was extended to the holders of all fiefs whether capital or mediate.

One of the first measures adopted by them in Castile, before the union with Aragon, was to stop the nomination of foreigners to Spanish benefices by the pope.

In 1232, after a severe illness, he resigned all his benefices and preferments except one prebend which he held at Lincoln.

In the Anglican Church the bishop is of common right patron of all prebends, and if a prebend is in the gift of a lay patron he must present his candidate to the bishop who institutes as to other benefices.

The largest group of acta arose from the practice, widespread by the end of the fourteenth century, of exchanging benefices.

The ranks of the clergy had been so much depleted that was impossible to find incumbents for the vacant benefices.

We saw earlier that while the parish system worked within small benefices and communities, it was experiencing more problems in Welsh speaking areas.

As regards candidates for ecclesiastical offices, the concordats concluded with Catholic nations regularly give the sovereign the right to nominate or present to bishoprics, often also to other inferior benefices, such as canonries, important parishes and abbeys; or at least the choice of the ecclesiastical authority is submitted to the approval of the civil power.

In Germany the concessions made to the pope and the reservations maintained by him in the matter of taxes and benefices were deemed excessive, and the prolonged di.scontent which resulted was one of the causes of the success of the Lutheran Reformation.

In the last years of the reign of Francis I., cardinal du Bellay was in favour with the duchesse d'Etampes, and received a number of benefices - the bishopric of Limoges (1541), archbishopric of Bordeaux (1544), bishopric of Le Mans (1546); but his influence in the council was supplanted by that of Cardinal de Tournon.

This act resulted in the suppression of 274 monasteries with 3733 friars, of 61 nunneries with 1756 nuns and of 2722 chapters and benefices.

In 1860 and 1861 the royal commissioners (even before the constitution of the new kingdom of Italy had been formally declared) issued decrees by which there were abolished(f) in Umbria, 197 monasteries and 102 convents with 1809 male and 2393 female associates, and 836 chapters or benefices; (2) in the Marches, 292 monasteries and 127 convents with 2950 male and 2728 female associates; (3) in the Neapolitan provinces, 747 monasteries and 275 convents with 8787 male and 7493 female associates.

And at the same time there had been suppressed 11,889 chapters and benefices of the secular clergy, which yielded an annual income of 109,149.

In cases, however, where the title to present was not in question, but the fitness of the clerk presented, or, in cases of election to benefices, the validity of the election, there was jurisdiction in the courts Christian.

Hitherto he had rarely appeared at court; but now the queen entrusted him not only with the care of her conscience, but also with the benefices in the royal patronage.

This Admission to Benefices Act, as it was called, passed into law, but did not reconcile the opposing parties.

The Benefices Act of that year absolutely invalidates any transfer of a right of patronage unless (a) it is registered in the diocesan registry, (b) unless more than twelve months have elapsed since the last institution or admission to the benefice, and (c) unless "it transfers the whole interest of the transferor in the right" with certain reservations; in other words, the act abolished the sale of next presentations, but it expressly reserved from its operation (a) a transmission on marriage, death or bankruptcy or otherwise by operation of law, or (b) a transfer on the appointment of a new trustee where no beneficial interest passes.

Again, his inaction during those memorable twelve years (1401-1413) when the Turkish empire, after the collapse at Angora (1402), seemed about to be swallowed up by " the great wolf " Tamerlane, was due entirely to the malice of the Holy See, which, enraged at his endeavours to maintain the independence of the Magyar church against papal aggression (the diet of 1404, on Sigismund's initiative, had declared bulls bestowing Magyar benefices on foreigners, without the royal consent, pernicious and illegal), saddled him with a fresh rebellion and two wars with Venice, resulting ultimately in the total loss of Dalmatia (c. 1430).

The right claimed by the less, as a statute of 1379 complains, benefices continued to be given " to divers people of another language and of strange lands and nations, and sometimes to actual enemies of the king and of his realm, which never made residence in this same, nor cannot, may not, nor will not in any wise bear and perform the charges of the same benefice in hearing confessions, preaching or teaching the people."

Italy, except Naples, took the side of the Italian pope; France, of the Avignon pope; England, in its hostility to France, pope to fill benefices of all kinds was extended, and the amount contributed to the pope by his nominees amounted to from a third to a half of the first year's revenue (see Annates).

He insisted on the imperative duty of bishops and clergy to reside in their benefices, publishing at Venice (1547) his discourse to the council De necessaria residentia personali, which he treated as juris divini.

In the registers of these popes, which are now being actively investigated and published, dispensations (licences to violate the laws of the Church); indulgences; imposts levied with increasing regularity on universal Christendom and, in particular, on the clerks; the settlement of questions relating to church debts; the granting of lucrative benefices to Roman functionaries; the divers processes by which the Curia acquired the immediate disposal of monastic, capitulary and episcopal revenues - in short, all financial matters are of the first importance.

Yet under Julius steps were taken to abolish plurality of benefices and to restore monastic discipline; the Collegium Germanicum, for the conversion of Germans, was established in Rome, 1552; and England was absolved by the cardinal-legate Pole, and received again into the Roman communion (1554) Julius died on the 23rd of March 1555, and was succeeded by Marcellus II.

Restrictions had also been imposed on the transfer of patronage of churches built under the Church Building Acts and New Parishes Acts, and on that of benefices in the gift of the lord chancellor, and sold by him in order to augment others; but agreements may be made as to the patronage of such churches in favour of persons who have contributed to their building or enlargement without being void for simony.

Charles, while careful to protest against its renewal, supported the anti-papal contentions of the French members of the council of Basel (1431-1449), and in 1438 he promulgated the Pragmatic Sanction at Bourges, by which the patronage of ecclesiastical benefices was removed from the Holy See, while certain interventions of the royal power were admitted.

The bishops of England have also jurisdiction to examine clerks who may be presented to benefices within their respective dioceses, and they are bound in each case by the 95th canon of 1604 to inquire and inform themselves of the sufficiency of each clerk within twenty-eight days, after which time, if they have not rejected him as insufficiently qualified, they are bound to institute him, or to license him, as the case may be, to the benefice, and thereupon to send their mandate to the archdeacon to induct him into the temporalities of the benefice.

The right of presentation to some 850o benefices or " livings " is in the hands of private persons; the right is regarded in law as property and is, under certain restrictions for the avoidance of gross simony, saleable (see Advowson).

This was only a preliminary skirmish; the main battle opened in the following year, when the king, quite aware that he must for the future look on Thomas as his enemy, brought forward the famous Constitutions of Clarendon, of which the main purport was to assert the jurisdiction of the state over clerical offenders by a rather complicated procedure, while other clauses provided that appeals to Rome must not be made without the kings leave, that suits about land or the presentation to benefices, in which clerics were concerned, should be tried before the royal courts, and that bishops should not quit the realmunless they had obtained permission to do so from the king (see CLARENDON, CONSTITUTIONS OF).

Another bull the same day gave him the right to hold all his benefices with the bishopric.