Word Finder - benefice

definition

Land granted to a priest in a church that has a source of income attached to it.

definition

A favour or benefit.

definition

(feudal law) An estate in lands; a fief.

definition

To bestow a benefice upon

It was from the precarium, or ecclesiastical benefice, that the feudal fief originated.

The less deprived of participation in the sacraments, and made a clerk incapable of taking a benefice.

He immediately began to complain to Hyde, earl of Clarendon, of the poverty of the see, and based claims for a better benefice on a certain secret service, which he explained on the 20th of January 1661 to be the sole invention of the Eikon Basilike, The Pourtraicture of his sacred Majestic in his Solitudes and Sufferings put forth within a few hours after the execution of Charles I.

The offender, whether simoniacus (one who had bought his orders) or simoniace promotus (one who had bought his promotion), was liable to deprivation of his benefice and deposition from orders if a secular priest, - to confinement in a stricter monastery if a regular.

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.

That line of descent can be made out with convincing clearness and with no particular difficulty from epoch to epoch, from the precarium and the patrocinium, through the benefice and commendation, to the fief and vassalage.

The act it will be observed applies only to clergymen, and the punishment is strictly limited to deprivation of benefice.

Under this statute the archbishop continues to grant special licences to marry, which are valid in both provinces; he appoints notaries public, who may practise in both provinces; and he grants dispensations to clerks to hold more than one benefice, subject to certain restrictions which have been imposed by later statutes.

C. Gorham to the benefice of Brampford Speke in spite of the latter's acknowledged disbelief in the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, brought to a crisis the position within the Church of England of those who believed in that Church as a legitimate part of the infallible Ecclesia docens.

The term benefice, according to the canon law, implies always an ecclesiastical office, propter quod beneficium datur, but it does not always imply a cure of souls.

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.

In cases where the patron is himself a clerk in orders, and wishes to be admitted to the benefice, 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 proceeds to institute him to the spiritual office to which the benefice is annexed, but before such institution can take place, the clerk is required to make a declaration of assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book of Common Prayer according to a form prescribed in the Clerical Subscription Act 1865, to make a declaration against simony in accordance with that act, and to take and subscribe the oath of allegiance according to the form in the Promissory Oaths Act 1868.

The bishop, by the act of institution, commits to the clerk 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.

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.

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.

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.

Moreover English and not Breton law was to be employed, and no Irishman could legally be receivd into a religious house, nor presented to a benefice.

Consequently where the right of patronage (the right of the patron to present to the bishop the person whom he has nominated to become rector or vicar of the parish to the benefice of which he claims the right of advowson) remains attached to the manor, it is called an advowson appendant, and passes with the estate by inheritance The distinction between nomination to a living and presentation is to be noted.

Nomination is the power, by virtue of a manor or otherwise, to appoint a clerk to the patron of a benefice, to be by him presented to the ordinary.

Presentation is the act of a patron in offering his clerk to the bishop, to be instituted in a benefice of his gift.

No petition is necessary in this case, and the bishop is said to collate to the benefice.

In a donative advowson, the sovereign, or any subject by special licence from the sovereign, conferred a benefice by a simple letter of gift, without any reference to the bishop, and without presentation and institution.

Under the previously existing law, simony, or "the corrupt presentation of any person to an ecclesiastical benefice for gift, money or reward," renders the presentation void, and subjects the persons privy or party to it to penalties; a presentation to a vacant benefice cannot be sold, and no clerk in holy orders can purchase for himself a next presentation.

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.

Where it belongs to a Roman Catholic the right is exercised in his behalf by the university of Oxford if the benefice be situate south of the river Trent, and by that of Cambridge if it be north of that river.

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.

Except by leave of the bishop or sequestrator, the incumbent of a sequestered benefice cannot be presented.

Upon institution the church is full against everybody except the crown, and after six months' peaceable possession the clerk is secured in possession of the benefice, even though he may have been presented by a person who is not the proper patron.

Possession of the benefice is completed by induction, which makes the church full against any one, including the crown.

If a bishopric becomes vacant after a lapse has accrued to it, it goes to the metropolitan; but in case of a vacancy of a benefice during the vacancy of the see the crown presents.

A trial was held before Coke in which one of the counsel denied the validity of a grant made by the king to the bishop of Lichfield of a benefice to be held in commendam.

Tithe rent charge under these acts is subject to the same liabilities and incidents as tithes, such as parliamentary, parochial, county and other rates, especially the poor rate and highway rate; but the owner of tithe rent charge attached to a benefice has been exempted by an act of 1899 from payment of half the amount of any rate which he would be liable to pay under the Agricultural Rates Act 1896, the other half being borne by the Inland Revenue Commissioners.

Moreover, every appointment to an ecclesiastical benefice was to be notified to the president of the province, and the confirmation could be refused on the ground that there were facts which could support the assumption that the appointment would be dangerous to public order.

Mackonochie was on the point of being deprived of his benefice of St.

On assuming this benefice he resigned, with rare disinterestedness, that of the abbey of Loc-Dieu.

Under the date of 14th July 1527, we find a "grant to Maister Hector" of an annual pension of £50, to be paid by the sheriff of Aberdeen out of the king's casualties; and on the 26th of July 1529 was issued a "precept for a lettre to Mr Hector Boys, professor of theology, of a pension of £50 Scots yearly, until the king promote him to a benefice of loo marks Scots of yearly value; the said pension to be paid him by the custumars of Aberdeen."

In 1533 and 1534, one-half of his pension was, however, paid by the king's treasurer, and the other half by the comptroller; and as no payment subsequent to that of Whitsuntide 1534 has been traced in the treasurer's accounts, he is supposed to have obtained the benefice soon after that period.

This benefice was the rectorship of Tyrie.

The papal letter when translated referred to the imperial crown as a benefice conferred by the pope, and its reading aroused great indignation.

Wykeham's first benefice was the rectory of Pulham, the richest in Norfolk, worth X53 a year, or some £1600 of our money, to which he was presented on the 30th of November 1357.

Where the bishop himself is patron of a benefice within his own diocese he is empowered to collate a clerk to it, - in other words, to confer it on the clerk without the latter being presented to him.

He certainly held the living but two years, resigning it in January 1552 along with his other benefice, and it is noteworthy that at the episcopal visitation of 1551 he was not present.

Even the incumbent of a parish is in law a " corporation sole," his benefice a freehold; and until the establishment in 1836, by act of parliament, of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners nothing could be done to adjust the inequalities in the emoluments of the clergy resulting from the natural rise and fall of the value of property in various parts of the country.

In 1538 he obtained a dispensation permitting him to hold a benefice, notwithstanding his being a natural son, and in June 1546 he was made an acolyte in the cathedral church of Aberdeen, of which he was afterwards appointed a canon and prebendary.

He now maintained not only that it was a sin that kings should invest prelates with their spiritual insignia, the pallium, the staff, the ring, but claimed that no clerk ought to do homage to the king for the lands of his benefice, though he himself seven years before had not scrupled to make his oath to his earlier master.

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.