deciding who were and who were not brews. Notwithstanding the universalsubject to pay tithes ; as even the princes ity of such a decree, payment was not who had been the means of its promul- introduced entirely over the Peninsula; gation supported many noblemen of as we find in the 17th law, 20 tit., part Galicia in the possession of the right of I., that there were many towns which receiving them in the towns of their did not pay personal tithes in the reign own territories. Don Juan I., when he jof Alfonso the Wise. The tithe upon declared in the Cortes of Guadalagara industry was not decided, as each gave that the tithes of Guipurcoa, Vircaga, what he thought proper; therefore, and Alara, did not belong to the bishops though the council of Peñafiel says that of Calahorra and Burgos, founded his all the faithful ought to pay it, perhaps decision only upon custom. Charles I., the custom has not passed the limits 1548, upon the same ground, prohibited of the bishoprics of the prelates then by law any innovation in the custom of present. receiving them, which law was after- 30. This tithe is now unknown with wards extended to the Indies. The same us, and if any conjecture is allowable in is observed in the other Catholic coun- a matter of so little historical informatries, whose princes have prohibited tion, we may say, that it was extinthat any other tithes should be exacted guished at the end of the fourteenth or from their subjects than those which the beginning of the fifteenth centuries. were already customary. The council of Salamanca of 1335, 27. In the same manner as predial informs us that even then personal were the personal tithes introduced into tithes were paid, but they also complain Spain. They were known in the king-of the impropriety and covetousness of dom of Arragon in the 11th century, our progenitors, and of the frauds they but their payment was not so general in committed to avoid payment. Navarre, as Don Sancho the Eldest 31. Neither in the records of the council made a vow to the monastery of St. of Aranda, 1473, nor in those of after Salvador de Legre of the tenth of the synods, can be found any inforination spoils that should be taken from the respecting personal tithes, although the Moors, in the expedition against Tunis. subject of the predials was agitated, and Had the duty of payment been recog-measures were taken concerning it. nised at that time, Don Sancho would Thus it seems that in the intermediate not have made such a vow, because period, personal tithes were abolished, the law of the Partidas says that only but we positively know that in the those actions which man performs of sixteenth century, in Spain their pay-' his own free will can be objects for ment had long ceased.

YOWS.

28. From this doctrine it follows, that in the 12th century, the custom of paying personal tithes was not general in Leon and Castille; for we see that, in the year 1142, the troops commanded by the brave Galician Don Muño Alfonso made a vow to give St. Mary of Toledo the tenth of the spoils which | they should take from the combined armies of Cordova and Seville: this they did after gaining the battle.

32. Our church receives also new tithes. Some pretended that they were exempt from this tax, but as in those matters rule is formed by custom, and this being general, the Spanish rectors received them in their own parishes. A custom which has been approved by our own kings, among whom Charles I., Philip V., and Ferdinand VI., obtained apostolic bulls to receive the tithes, increased in Arragon and Valencia by the waters of the imperial canal and the pool of Alicant.

29. In 1199, Celestine III. declared that all Christians should pay personal 33. We have already observed that tithes, and as all Europe at that time tithes in Spain were originally volunreceived the law from Rome, it appears tary offerings for maintaining the worthat this was the epoch of the intro-ship and the priests, and to succour the duction of a tax unknown to the He- unfortunate. When they are once es

tablished, and the custom of payment to the ministers of religion part of its authorised, they are legitimate debts property, it formed a real and effectual and not merely alms, as they were patrimony for the assistance of the called by Wickliffe, whose error was unfortunate, who for want of the necescondemned in the council of Constance sities of life, might disturb the peace of in the eighth session. The improper its citizens. use that some of the clergy may make 36. It appears that civil society can - of them does not exempt the faithful find no better or more attentive ministers from paying them, for as Alfonso the for the poor, than ecclesiastics, as from Wise says, tithes are not paid for the sake the commencement of the church, we the clergy but for the sake of God, who find them employed in this office as one will reward the offerers in this world or of their principal charges. Spain owes in the next. The pious are not excused to her clergy the erection of so many the payment of tithes on account of the hospitals and pious foundations for the church possessing landed property, be- relief of the poor. The Christian relicause the riches of the creditor do not gion is the only one, which, without exempt the debtor from his just debts. disturbing the order of the government, Further, there are so many orphans, or without attacking the inviolable right widows, clergymen and other destitute of property, provides sufficient funds to individuals who are maintained with the help the distressed of every kind; teachpatrimony of the church, as we shall seeing men, that, as sons of the same presently, that it will not be found too large for the support of so many claimants. For this reason it was said in the sixth council of Paris, that there was no cause for complaint of excess in the ecclesiastical revenues: there is none if properly distributed, the only thing to be regretted is, the covetousness of some of the administrators, not that the church possesses so much.

father, they ought to succour each other as brethren. She it is, who, by threatening them with the most terrible pains, and offering them the best rewards, incites them to acts of charity. This religion it is, who also prescribes to all Christians the exercise of industrious habits for the increase of the produce of the earth; with sobriety and temperance to expend as little as possible, that they may have more to relieve the unfor tunate.

34. The complaint of many politicians is groundless, when they suppose that the riches of the church are prejudicial to 37. Upon these principles the clergy the state. No civil society can be found possess their revenues. The rich, poswithout poor, nor government that does sessing larger property, put in the sanot consider one of its principal duties cred deposit of the church a greater to be the relief of the distress of its proportion of tithes than the poor; but subjects. Sensibility teaches man to while the rich receive only the spiritual commiserate the distress of his fellow-rewards promised by Christ, the poor man; and as the state requires magistrates for the preservation of civil order, so it should have ministers to succour the poor and needy.

receive from the ecclesiastics, in case of need, more than they at first deposited.

38. Politicians who declaim against the riches of the clergy, have not formed their calculations upon such principles; dazzled with the abuses of some of the churchmen, they would wish to annihilate the patrimony of the poor of Christ, which is administered by the majority of the clergy with probity and exactness. They would alter their opinion, if they would compare the amount of the property of the church, her expenses and economy, that they may have more to give the poor and needy, with the im

mense patrimony of our grandees, their be the materials of the vases employed dissipation and their alms. Allow the for the celebration of the holy mysteries, clergy to be despoiled of their revenues, and Easter and Christmas festivities and the streets will be filled with ghastly began to assume a pompous and magobjects, houses will resound with the nificent show. The Christians, who, mournful cries of orphans and widows frightened at first by the cruelty of their famishing with hunger, and the roads persecutors, used to assemble for the infested with miserable workmen, who, divine service in humble houses or in receiving no wages in winter, will seize dark caves, began to erect splendid by violence what the inhumanity of their temples for the performance of their fellow-citizens denies to their necessi-religious duties. ties; for, surrounded with luxury and the most criminal passions, they expend impiously what they should spare for the poor.

These temples, from the first centuries, were considered by the faithful as true houses of the Almighty; and they never went over their thresholds without ostensible marks of sincere humility and deep respect. They even washed their heads and hands before they came into them; and the Ethiopian Christians, even at the present time, enter their temples barefooted. The princes themselves, before they came into them, took their crowns off from their heads, and left their escorts behind them out of doors.

39. I do not pretend by this that politicians should not raise their voices in favour of the poor; what I wish is, that they should speak with the prudence which characterised the holy fathers in all ages. This is the language of the council of Milan, 1565, that in order to awaken some ecclesiastics from their lethargy, says, the patrimony of the church is of such a nature, that its fruits cannot be employed, excepting in pious Constantine, with a view to ensure uses. Therefore, the income beyond the splendour of the house of God, what is necessary for living with de-enacted that it should be lawful for any cency, is for maintaining divine wor-person to bequeath his property to the ship, and to remedy the distress of the poor; so we ask these ecclesiastics, through Jesus Christ, not to forget that this property was given them, not to be consumed in vanities, or to enrich their families, but to live with the decency necessary for a Christian minister and a teacher of Christian piety. But if they do not divide with the poor the residue, they will be guilty of as many homicides as they have given refusals of succour ; and farther, they stand con- There was, through the whole Rovicted of a mortal sin, for having vio-man empire, a sort of taxation called by lated the most holy law of charity, treasuring for themselves anger against the day of anger.

CHAPTER XIV.

Of the Immunity of Taxes granted to

the Ecclesiastical Property.

The church, illustrious of herself, on account of her own sanctity and the holiness of her ministers during the period of the persecutions, received an additional splendour, after the emperors embraced Christianity. Gold and silver began to

church, and that the property thus left should be exempted from taxation. No great inconvenience was derived from this privilege during his reign, because the revenues of the church were then rather small; but when the extravagant liberality of the faithful began to bestow property on the church, it was thought more advisable to repeal those privileges which had become rather burdensome to the state.

ancient writers inlatio carionica, or capitatio terrena: it affected the land property, and was commonly paid in kind, on account of which it was also called specierum collatio. The churches were subject to this tax, as it appears from the fact, that those of Thessalonica, Alexandria, and Constantinople, were specially exempted by the emperor Theodosius the Young.

Although under any well regulated government nobody is exempted from paying those taxes which are raised

for the repairings and works of public utility, the church, nevertheless, got among the Romans such an exemption: this, however, did not last long, because as soon as the church got a considerable accession of wealth, it was repealed. Great many holy bishops, besides, voluntarily applied a part from the ecclesiastical revenues towards the expense of works of public utility.

4

The emperors, under particular emergencies, used to levy some extraordinary taxes upon the landed property: the church was always exempted from paying them, as well as from paying that commonly called denarismus, which affected those persons who by donations cor any other lucrative contracts got any -estate from an officer of the court.

It may be generally asserted that as soon as the church was wealthy, she began to contribute to the state for her landed property, in the same way that the other subjects of the empire. The emperors observed in this respect that prudent policy which becomes zealous princes: they granted privileges and exemptions to the church, as far as no injury was derived from them to the state; but they hastened to repeal them as soon as experience proved the contrary; as it must be acknowledged that the church herself has approved of this conduct. By the same general reason it was enacted by the emperors, that any property conveyed to the church should remain affected by the same taxes and obligations as it was before.

carried on without great expenses, it appears most probable they they whose entire subsistence chiefly depended on the taxes levied upon the Spaniards, did not choose to diminish the number of their contributors.

Count Campomanes, in his learned treatise entitled " Regalia de Amortizacion," asserts that the appropriations of the Spanish church were subject to taxation, even in the times of Recared. At all events, it is most likely, since we cannot suppose that the church in Spain got such an immunity before that of asylum; and we learn from Don Diego de Saavidra Fajardo, upon the authority of some ecclesiastical historians, that King Gundemar was the first who granted that privilege of asylum to the Spanish church. We know, to a certainty, that the property of the church in Spain, till the reign of Chindasvint, was subject to the payment of all sort of taxes and pensions affecting the said property before it was conveyed to the church, and this too, even if it pro ceeded from royal gifts. On the other hand, we plainly see that in 693, the fathers in the sixteenth council of Toledo prohibited the bishops to distribute among the parishes of their dioceses the amount of what was called “Regias inquisiciones," which were, no doubt, a sort of taxation raised by the king upon the churches in cases of extraordinary emergencies.

The ecclesiastical appropriations in Spain were subject to taxation not only Till the irruption of the Goths, Spain in the Gothic time, but even after the being a province of the empire, was irruption of the Saracens. It appears entirely governed by the Roman laws, that in the reign of Don Ferdinand II., and the property of the Spanish church and even in that of Don Alfonso IX:, was accordingly subject to the same the appropriations adjacent to the system of taxation, which was gene-church, which are called mansor in the rally established in the other Roman capitularia of Charlemagne, and Diesprovinces. We do not know whether the church in Spain enjoyed any immunity from taxation during the period elapsed since the Gothic conquest till the conversion of the Goths, although it is most likely that the church did not enjoy such privileges, the Goths being then Arians, and inimical to the Catholics. They were on the other hand a warlike people, and since war cannot be

tros in the records of the council of Compostelan, were the only ones exempted from taxation. The extent of each of these appropriations, at the time of the council of Coyanza, was only thirty feet: this measurement was augmented to seventy-two feet in the council of Compostella, 1056, and finally to eighty feet in the council of Palencia 1129.

The kings of Spain used to receive diocese, and Don Alfonso VI. granted a several tributes, from which churches similar privilege to the church of Aswere not exempted, at least not till a torga. very late period. One of their tributes was called yantar, by which the inhabitants of any town were bound to entertain the king and his royal family, whenever they travelled through their country in time of peace. The cortes of Valladolid in 1351, with a view to prevent the extortions made under this head, enacted several regulations, minutely describing the prices of victuals afforded for their entertainments: eight maravedis are designed as the price for a sheep forty-eight maravedis for a Some of them, nevertheless, though cow: twenty maravedis for a pig possessed of feudal tenures, were exthree maravedis for a cantara (four empted from their attendance: such gallons) of wine: three maravedis for a was the Bishop of Astorga, who, notbushel of barley, &c. ; the amount of withstanding his privilege, attended the expenditure for an entertainment spontaneously King Alfonso IX. The being 1,200 maravedis (about fourteen military policy being different in the maravedis make one penny). The en- present times, the ecclesiastics are actertainment given by the prelates and cordingly exempted from such obliganoblemen was not so expensive, amount- tions; but when it is required for the ing only to SOO maravedi). This regu- defence of the country, they contribute lation, however, does not appear to have of their own will towards the expenses been enforced, because in the reign of of war, as it has been the case in recent Don Juan II. the yantar of the king instances. amounted only to 600 maravedis, that of the queen to 400, and that of the prince royal to 300.

The immunities granted to the church decreased in proportion as the church became opulent. The royal munificence endowed the church with many fiefs, and she was accordingly bound to perform the services inherent to feudal tenants. These attended the king in the wars, and headed the troops which they were obliged to raise for the defence of their country. Hence we see many bishops in the field of battle, amidst the confusion of military license.

The churches were bound to pay this tribute as well as laymen; the inha bitants of towns, the population of which did not consist of thirty housekeepers, were the only ones exempted. Don Alfonso the Wise granted a similar exemption in after times to the churches of Seville, Salamanca, and Toledo; and the church of Tuy was also favoured with the same privilege.

The churches contributed, likewise, towards the expenses of works of public utility: the servants or bondmen of the church were employed on those occasions before the time of Recared, but this prince exempted them from that obligation. As for the expenses incurred in cases of war, there was a tribute called Fonsadera, and the property of the church was not formerly exempted from it. Don Sancho II. granted an exemption to the cathedral of Burgos, and all the churches of that

The prelates had also a voice in the national assemblies, and they were bound, in the Gothic times, to attend the court, particularly those in the province of Toledo. Their attendance was more frequent after the expulsion ot the Saracens; and being on this account rather familiar with the king, they got thereby the confirmation of their former tenures, and the grant of new privileges. The monks also attended the court, and held offices in the royal household. This was the origin of so many appropriations having been granted to monasteries, to the great injury of the royal treasury, and of the subjects of the realm. As a remedy towards that evil, the fidalgos and monasteries were in after times prohibited from getting any appropriation from the king, a regulation confirmed by the cortes of Valladolid, in 1351.

The privileges granted to the church became so burdensome to laymen, that Don Juan II., with a view to stop the evil, prohibited the conveyance of pro