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Taxation Taylor THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 280 15). For the Greek and Roman periods, see TAxES,TAX-GATHERERS (PUBLICANS).

VICTOR RYSSELt.

II. Ecclesiastical: The cost of maintaining the ecclesiastical organization is defrayed partly from the endowments which it possesses in land and capital, partly by subsidies from the State, and partly by the contributions of its members.

I. The In primitive times the Church dePrimitive frayed its expenses from the voluntary

Custom. oblations of its members, consisting of oil, wine, bread, incense, and the fruits of the earth. The Jewish custom of present ing the first-fruits was early adopted; and by the time of Tertullian (d. 215) contributions of money are mentioned. Gradually the custom grew up of paying tithes, partly as a substitute for the obla tions in kind; but before the end of the sixth cen tury only scattered notices of it are found. The clergy, as they became a distinct class, were ex empted from these payments, though from the end of the fourth century they were not at liberty to alienate from the Church the property they acquired.

The first traces of a real taxation of the clergy occur at the end of the sixth century. First, an annual tax was paid by all the churches in a diocese to the cathedral. It is first met in

2. Rise of Spain (council of Braga, 572; of To- Taxation ledo, 646), where it was paid in money. of Clergy. In the Frankish empire, where it was paid in kind, it is mentioned in a ca, pitulary of Charles the Bald, 844; in Italy it appears as an almost universal custom under Innocent III. (d. 1216) and Honorius III. (d. 1227). According to the Council of Trent, its payment is regulated by the diocesan synod. Next, a fee was paid by one appointed to a benefice to the bishop who installed or ordained him. In the East this is mentioned as a custom in 546; the amount can not have been small, since it is stipulated that it shall not exceed a year's income of the benefice. In the West, a Roman council declared in 595 that voluntary gifts to the ordaining bishop and his assistants were not simoniacal; but a synod at Paris in 829 and No of Chartres (q.v.) in one of his letters complain of the magnitude of the gifts which the Curia expected from prelates consecrated in Rome. When in the ninth century metropolitans were compelled to ap ply to Rome for their pallium, a somewhat similar tax was attached, which had become so heavy by 1027 that Canute requested a remission of it for the English archbishops. Similar objections were later raised elsewhere, especially in Germany. Finally, it was considered (again first in Spain, 589 and 646) the duty of the clergy to entertain the bishop on his visitations. This obligation (called procuration) was afterward commuted for a money payment. The eighth century witnessed a further develop-, went. The task of church-building was systemat ically regulated; and dispensations were granted by popes and bishops on payment of a contribution for some pious end. Regular fees to the pope ap pear first under John XXII. (d. 1334), and they were systematized under Alexander VI. Fees, vol untary, indeed, but fixed by custom, paid to the clergy for certain sacraments and sacramentals

must have arisen about the same time, since the fourth Lateran Council (1215) speaks of them as a laudable custom (see STOLE FEES).

As the constitution of the Church more and more assumed the character of a feudal monarchy, ecclesiastical taxation developed in the same direction.

Secular rulers paid tribute to the pope 3. Feudal in token of feudal allegiance; the

Principles " Peter's Pence " collected from every Applied. household seems to have had a similar

character. The same may be said of the protection-money paid by monasteries and exempt bishoprics from the reign of Alexander III. (d. 1181). With the decay of the secular importance of the Church, most of these have disappeared. Two, however, are still worth mentioning-the sub sidium charitativum and the jus departuum. The former is a tax which the bishop was empowered to levy, in case of extraordinary need, on all the beneficed clergy of his diocese; it is first mentioned at the beginning of the thirteenth century. A variant form is the ingressus or entrata, which the bishop might levy on entering his see city; this is still preserved in Bavaria. Allied to it also is the tithe of all ecclesiastical incomes which the pope asserted his right to take in case of great need. The jus deportuum (annates), mentioned under Honvrius III. (d. 1227) and Boniface VIII. (d. 1305), was the right by which the bishop was entitled to collect the first year's income of every benefice in his diocese from a new incumbent. Sometimes it appears as a special privilege accorded by the pope for extraordinary needs of a certain year, sometimes as a fixed and permanent right. Both bishops and popes at times claimed this right. Sometimes the popes exacted it only from the benefices to which they had reserved the right to present. Out of this right developed the later papal annates strictly so called. To the class of feudal payments belong those which were levied on the estate of a deceased cleric, when in the fourteenth century the clergy gained liberty to dispose of their property by will. Sometimes the clergy were required to leave a fixed proportion to the Church; in other cases to submit their wills to the rural dean for probate and pay a fee to him.

The decay of church life after the fourteenth century gave rise to a number of new forms of payment or modifications of existing ones. To this

period belongs the absence-money, 4. Develop- paid to the bishop for dispensation ment from from the obligation of residence, gen-

the Four- erally by clerics who possessed more teenth than one benefice. The pope, whenCentury. ever as metropolitan or patriarch he

consecrated a bishop, claimed the oblatio spoken of above. In fourteenth-century documents such payments occur under various titles, of servitia camerce papce, seruitia communia, and by the end of that century they are fixed at a maximum of a year's income. From this time, in addition, the popes claimed (at first occasionally and then definitely) the jus deportuum to the extent of half the first year's income from all benefices the appointment to which was reserved. As this class of benefices was always increasing, opposition to this payment developed in more than one national