rity, as the rule of sacred oblation to the temples among the customs of many Heathen nations. The perpetual claim to tithes was urged by Councils and by Popes in the sixth century. Charlemagne throughout his empire, King Ethelwolf, and, later, Edward the Confessor in England, either overawed by the declared authority of the Old Testament, or thinking it but a fair contribution to the maintenance of public worship and for other religious uses, gave the force of civil law to this presumed sacred obligation. During several centuries it was urged by the preachers, not merely as an indispensable part of Christian duty, but as a test of Christian perfection.

Tithe was first received by the Bishop, and distributed by him in three or in four portions; to himself, to the clergy, for the fabric of the churches, for the poor. But all kinds of irregularities crept into the simple and stately uniformity of this universal tax and its administration. It was retained by the Bishop; the impoverished clergy murmured at their meagre and disproportionate share. As the parochial divisions became slowly and irregularly distinct and settled, it was in many cases, but by no means universally, attached to the cure of souls. The share of the fabric became uncertain and fluctuating, till at length other means were found for the erection and the maintenance of the Church buildings. The more splendid Prelates and Chapters, aided by the piety of Kings, Barons, and rich men, disdained this fund, so

d In the controversy which arose on the publication of Selden's book on Tithes, the High Church writers, Montague and Tildesley, were diffuse and triumphant in their quotations from Heathen writers, as though, by show

ing the concurrence of universal religion with the Mosaic institutes, to make out tithes to be a part of Natural Religion. See abstract of their arguments in Collier,

• Paolo Sarpi, quoted by Mr. Hallam.

insufficient for their magnificent designs; the building of churches was exacted from the devotion or the superstition of the laity in general, conjointly with the munificence of the ecclesiastics. So, too, the right of the poor to their portion became a freewill contribution, measured by the generosity or the wealth of the Clergy; here a splendid, ever-flowing largess; there a parsimonious, hardly-extracted dole.

The tithe suffered the fate of other Church property; it was at times seized, alienated, appropriated by violence or by fraud. It was retained by the Bishops or wealthy clergy, who assigned a miserable stipend to a poor Vicar; it fell into the hands of lay impropriators, who had either seized it, or, on pretence of farming it, provided in the cheapest manner for the performance of the service; the Monasteries got possession of it in large portions, and served the cures from their Abbey or Cloister. In England it was largely received by foreign Beneficiaries, who never saw the land from which they received this tribute.

Still, however levied, however expended, however invaded by what were by some held to be sacrilegious hands, much the larger part of this tenth of all the produce of the land throughout Christendom, with no deduction, except the moderate expense of collection, remained in the hands of the Hierarchy. It was. gradually extended from the produce of land to all other produce, cattle, poultry, even fish.

The High Aristocracy of the Church, from the Pope to the member of the capitular body, might not disdain to participate in this, which ought to have been the exclusive patrimony of the parochial and labouring clergy; but their estates, which were Lordships, Baronages, Princedoms, in the Pope a kingdom, were what

placed them on a level with, or superior to, the Knights, Barons, Princes, Kings of the world.

These possessions throughout Latin Christendom, both of the Seculars and of the Monasteries, if only calculated from their less clerical expenditure, on their personal pomp and luxury, on their wars, on their palaces, and from their more honourable prodigality on their cathedrals, churches, monastic buildings, must have been enormous; and for some period were absolutely exempt from contribution to the burthens of the State. We have seen the first throes and struggles of Papal nepotism; we have seen bold attempts to quarter the kinsmen of Popes on the territories of the Papacy, to create noble patrimonies, or even principalities, in their favour; but there is no Papal family of the time preceding Nicolas V. which boasts its hereditary opulence or magnificent palace, like the Riarios, Farneses, Barberinis, Corsinis, of later times. The Orsinis and Colonnas were Princes created Popes, not descendants of Popes. The vast wealth of the Archbishopric of Milan has shone before us; an Archbishop was the founder of the Ducal House of Visconti. In Italy, however, in general, the Prelates either never possessed or were despoiled of the vast wealth which distinguished the Ultramontane Prelates. Romagna had become the Papal domain; Ravenna had been compelled to yield up her rival territory. The Crusades had not thrown the lands into their hands by the desertion of their lords. In the commercial wealth of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, they had no share. At Constance, as it has appeared, the Ultramontanes feared that the poverty of the Italian Bishops would

f Some estates of the Church were held on the tenure of military service, most in Francalmoigne.-Hallam.

place them at the command of the Pope. In Germany the Prince-Archbishops, the Electors, were not scrupulous in extending the wide pale of their ecclesiastical principalities. The grant of estates, of territories, was too common a bribe or a reward from a doubtful aspirant to the Imperial throne. How many fiefs held by Mentz, by Trèves, and by Cologne, dated from the eve of, or from the coronation of an Emperor, raised to the throne after a severe contest! Among the other PrincePrelates of the Empire, distracted as Germany was for centuries by wars between the Popes and the Emperors, wars between the Emperor and his refractory subjects, their power was perpetually increasing their wealth, their wealth aggrandising their power. They were too useful allies not to be subsidised by the contending parties; and those subsidies, being mostly in grants of lands, enhanced the value of their alliance.

In France, the prodigality of the weaker Kings of each race, and each race successively, from the fainéant Merovingians, seemed to dwindle down into inevitable weakness, had vied with each other in heaping estates upon the clergy, and in founding and endowing monasteries. If the later Kings, less under strong religious impulses, and under heavier financial embarrassments, were less prodigal,—if the mass of secular ecclesiastical property is of earlier date,

The Abbe Maury, in the debate on the confiscation of church property, asserted that the tenure of some of their estates was older than Clovis. (Lamartine, Les Constituants, iii. p. 113.) In the debates on the confiscation of church property in the National Assembly in 1789, 1790, M. Talleyrand estimated the income of the

few reigns passed without

clergy from tithes at eighty millions of francs, from the lands at seventy millions; total one hundred and fifty millions. This, I presume, did not include the lands, at least not the houses of the monasteries. (Buchon et Roux, Hist. Parlementaire de la Rev. Française, iii. p. 156.) In the proposal for the suppression of the

the foundation of some religious houses. The Mendicant Orders had their spacious and splendid convents in Paris," and in the other great cities of France.'

In England the Statute of Mortmain had been the National Protest against the perpetual encroachment of the Church on the landed property of the realm. At length the subtlety of the Lawyers baffled the subtlety of the Churchmen; the strong, stern Law could be neither infringed nor eluded. But it left the Church in possession of all which had been heaped at her feet by the prodigal Anglo-Saxon Kings, and the Normans hardly less prodigal. If it had not passed down absolutely undiminished, it had probably on the whole been constantly enlarging its borders; if usurped, or its usufruct, if not the fee, fraudulently made away, it had in many cases widely extended itself by purchase, as well as by donation and bequest.1

There are four periods at which public documents

religious houses, M. Treilhard declared that four hundred millions might be produced by the sale of the monastic houses, which might be secularised. Those in Paris alone might be sold for one hundred and fifty millions. A calculation was produced, made in 1775, that at 150 livres the toise, they would yield 217,309,000 livres. In another report it was stated that the clergy held one-fifth of the net revenue from land in France, amounting to two hundred millions, exclusive of the tithe. (T. v. p. 328.)

h See Dulaure, Hist. de Paris, a book with much valuable information, but hostile to the clergy.

i At the Revolution six Orders had three houses in Paris, some others two. They must have amounted to between

forty and fifty.

k Churches were leased to laymen, and without doubt became their actual property; as such were bought and sold. 1 The Church bought largely. The statute "Quia Emptores" shows abundantly that the possessions of the Church were greatly increased by purchase as well as by donation and bequest. It was a very common practice to purchase an estate in reversion, or to purchase and grant the estate to the former Lord for his life: on his death (si obire contigerit) it fell to the Church. Few rich men entered a monastery without bringing some estate or provision with them, which became the inalienable property of the Community. See instances in Taylor's Index Monasticus.