BENEFICE (from the Latin Bene ficium), a term applied both by the canon law and the law of England to a pro vision for an ecclesiastical person. In its most comprehensive sense it includes the temporalities as well of archbishops, bishops, deans and chapters, abbots and priors, as of parsons, vicars, monks, and other inferior spiritual persons. But a distinction is made between benefices at tached to communities under the monastic rule (sub regula), which are called regular benefices, and those the possessors of which live in the world (in sseculo), which are thence called secular benefices. The writers on the canon law distinguish moreover between simple or sinecure be nefices, which do not require residence, and to which no spiritual duty is attached but that of reading prayers and singing (as chaplainries, canonries, and chantries), and sacerdotal benefices, which are at tended with cure of souls.
Lord Coke says, " Beneficium is a large word, and is taken for any ecclesi astical promotion whatsoever." (2 lest. 29.) But in modern English law trea tises the term is generally confined to the temporalities of parsons, vicars, and per petual curates, which in popular lan guage are called livings. The legal pos sessor of a benefice attended with cure of souls is called the incumbent. The his tory of the origin of benefices is involved in great obscurity. The property of the Christian church appears, for some cen turies after the apostolic ages, to have been strictly enjoyed in common. It was the duty of the officers called deacons (whose first appointment is mentioned in Acts, cap. vi.) to receive the rents of the real estates, or patrimonies, as they were called, of every church. Of these, as well as of the voluntary gifts in the shape of alms and oblations, a sufficient portion was set apart, under the superintendence of the bishop, for the maintenance of the bishop and clergy of the diocese; another portion was appropriated to the expenses of public worship (in which were in cluded the charge for the repairs of the church), and the remainder was bestowed upon the poor. This division was ex pressly inculcated by a canon of Gelasius, pope, or rather bishop, of Rome, A.D. 470. (See Father Paul's Treatise on Eccle siastical Benefices, cap. 7.) After the payment of tithes had become universal m the west of Europe, as a means of sup port to the clergy, it was enacted by one of the capitularies of Charlemagne, that they should be distributed according is this division. When the bishoprics be gan to be endowed with lands and other firm possessions, the bishops, to encourage thefoundation of churches, and to esta ffish a provision for the resident clergy, cave up their portion of the tithes, and were afterwards by the canons forbidden to demand it, if they could live without it. Although the revenues of the church
were thus divided, the fund from which they were derived remained for a long time entirely under the same administra tion as before. But by degrees every minister, instead of carrying the offerings made in his own church to the bishop, for the purpose of division, began to retain them for his own use. The lands also were apportioned in severalty among the resident clergy of each diocese. But these changes were not made in all places or all at one time, or by any general order, but by insensible degrees, as all other customs are introduced. (See Father Paul's Treatise on Benefices,' cap. 9 and 0.) "Some writers have attributed the origin of parochial divisions to a period as early as the fourth century ; and it is not improbable that this change took place in some parts of the Eastern Empire, either in that or the succeeding age. Some of the Constitutions of Justinian seem to imply that in his time (the be ginning of the sixth century) the system of ecclesiastical property, as it existed in the East, was very similar to that which has prevailed in Catholic countries in modern times." The churches, mons& teries, and other pious foundations pos sessed landed and other property (slaves among the rest), which, by the Constitu tions of Justinian, they were restrained from alienating, as they had been in the habit of doing to the detriment of their successors. (Authentica, Const. vii. " On not alienating ecclesiastical things, &,c.") The general obscurity that hangs over the history of the Middle Ages prevents us from ascertaining, with precision, at what period the changes we have alluded to were introduced into the west of Europe. This, however, seems clear, that after the feudal system had acquired a firm footing in the west of Europe, during the ninth and tenth centuries, its principles were soon applied to ecclesiastical as well as lay property. Hence, as the estates dis tributed in fief by the kings of France and Germany among their favoured nobles were originally termed beneficia [BENEzICIIIMS, this name was conferred, by a kind of doubtful analogy, upon the temporal possessions of the church. Thus, the bishoprics were supposed to be held by the bounty of the kings (who had by degrees usurped the right originally vested iu the clergy and people of filling them up when vacant), while the temporalities of the inferior ecclesiastical offices were held of the bishops, in whose patronage and dis posal they for the most part then were. The manner of investiture of benefices in those early times was probably the same as that of lay property, by the delivery of actual possession, or of some symbols of possession, as the ring and crozier, which were the symbols of investiture appropriated to bishoprics.