Editing Benefice (section)

==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 language|Latin]] noun ''beneficium'', meaning "benefit".

=== Carolingian era ===
[[File:Detail coronation Charles the Great (Francis 1st of France) by Pope Leo III (Leo X) Vatican 11.jpg|thumb|350px|right|Raphael's ''[[The Coronation of Charlemagne]]'' (1514–15). The 800&nbsp;AD coronation led to disputes over an emperor's ability to hand out benefices.]]
In the 8th century, using their position as Mayor of the Palace, [[Charles Martel]], [[Carloman (mayor of the palace)|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.<ref>Gasthof, p. 157</ref> [[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)<ref>Hollister, pp. 120–121.</ref> (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&nbsp;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

{{blockquote|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.<ref>Ganshof, p. 151</ref>}}

In the year 800 [[Pope Leo III]] placed the crown of [[Holy Roman Emperor]] on the head of [[Charlemagne]].<ref>Tierney, pp. 22–23.</ref>  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 [[Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor|Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV]] and furthered the friction caused in the [[Investiture Conflict]].<ref>Tierney, pp. 45–50</ref>

===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 [[Financial endowment|endowment]], given by believers, be they monarch, lord of the manor or vassal, and later also upon [[tithe]]s 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, [[Glebe|grants of land]] and greater and/or lesser tithes for life but the land was not alienated from the [[diocese]]s. 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''.
[[File:Tizian 109.jpg|thumb|250px|Girolamo and cardinal [[Marco Cornaro (cardinal)|Marco Corner]] investing Marco, abbot of Carrara, with his benefice. [[Titian]], {{circa|1520}}]]
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 [[Patronage#Ecclesiastical|patron]]{{refn|A patron would typically be a Lord of the Manor, noble or monarch as they would have initially have granted the land.|group= n}} 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]]).

[[Image:Cardinal Farnese.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Cardinal [[Alessandro Farnese (cardinal)|Alessandro Farnese]], grandson and [[cardinal-nephew]] of [[Pope Paul III]], held sixty-four benefices simultaneously.]]
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.<ref>{{CathEncy|wstitle=Mortmain}}</ref>

=== Pluralism ===
{{Catholic canon law}}
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 [[Fourth Council of the Lateran|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 [[prelate]]s occasionally held multiple major benefices. The holding of more than one benefice is termed ''pluralism'' (unrelated to the [[Pluralism (political theory)|political theory of the same name]]). An English example was [[Stigand]], Archbishop of Canterbury (1052–72).

After the [[Protestant Reformation|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".<ref name="odccben">''ODCC'' art '''Benefice'''</ref>

===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 [[Financial endowment|endowment]]s 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.<ref>"Histoire apologétique du Comité ecclésiastique de l'Assemblée Nationale", by Durand de Maillane, in French, 1791.</ref> 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.<ref>Constitution Civile du Clergé (Statute in French) Titre II, art. 19.</ref>

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