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A benefice () or living is a reward received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services. The Roman Empire used the Latin term as a benefit to an individual from the Empire for services rendered. Its use was adopted by the Western Church in the Carolingian era as a benefit bestowed by the crown or church officials. A benefice specifically from a church is called a precaria (pl. precariae), such as a stipend, and one from a monarch or nobleman is usually called a fief. A benefice is distinct from an allodial title, in that an allod is property owned outright, not bestowed by a higher authority.
In the year 800 Pope Leo III placed the crown of Holy Roman Emperor on the head of Charlemagne.Tierney, pp. 22–23. This act caused great turmoil for future generations, who would afterward argue that the emperor thereby received his position as a benefice from the papacy. In his March 1075 Dictatus Papae, Pope Gregory VII declared that only the pope could depose an emperor, which implied that he could do so just as a lord might take a benefice away from a vassal. This declaration inflamed Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and furthered the friction caused in the Investiture Conflict.Tierney, pp. 45–50
The church's revenue streams came from, amongst other things, rents and profits arising from assets gifted to the church, its endowment, given by believers, be they monarch, lord of the manor or vassal, and later also upon calculated on the sale of the product of the people's personal labour in the entire parish such as cloth or shoes and the people's profits from specific forms of likewise God-given, natural increase such as crops and in livestock.
Initially the Catholic Church granted buildings, Glebe and greater and/or lesser tithes for life but the land was not alienated from the . The Synod of Lyon of 567 annexed these grants to the churches. By the time of the Council of Mainz of 813 these grants were known as beneficia. Holding a benefice did not necessarily imply a cure of souls although each benefice had a number of spiritual duties attached to it. For providing these duties, a priest would receive "temporalities".
Benefices were used for the worldly support of much of its pastoral clergy – clergy gaining rewards for carrying out their duties with rights to certain revenues, the "fruits of their office". The original donor of the temporalities or his nominee, the patron and his successors in title, held the advowson (right to nominate a candidate for the post subject to the approval of the bishop or other prelate as to the candidate's sufficiency for the demands of the post).
Parish priests were charged with the spiritual and temporal care of their congregation. The community provided for the priest as necessary, later, as organisation improved, by tithe (which could be partially or wholly lost to a temporal lord or patron but relief for that oppression could be found under canon law).
Some individual institutions within the church accumulated enormous endowments and, with that, temporal power. These endowments sometimes concentrated great wealth in the mortmain ("dead hand") of the church, so called because it endured beyond any individual's life. The church was exempt from some or all taxes. This was in contrast to feudal practice where the nobility would hold land on grant from the king in return for service, especially service in war. This meant that the church over time gained a large share of land in many feudal states and so was a cause of increasing tension between the church and the Crown.
By a Decree of the Lateran Council of 1215 no clerk could hold two benefices with cure of souls, and if a beneficed clerk took a second benefice with cure of souls, he vacated ipso facto his first benefice. Dispensations could easily be obtained from Rome.
The benefice system was open to abuse. Acquisitive occasionally held multiple major benefices. The holding of more than one benefice is termed pluralism (unrelated to the political theory of the same name). An English example was Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury (1052–72).
After the Reformation, the new denominations generally adopted systems of ecclesiastical polity that did not entail benefices and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) called "for the abandonment or reform of the system of benefices". ODCC art Benefice
Parts of these changes remain such as the abolition of the three historic roles mentioned, and the constitution is still in force in Belgium.
The spiritualities of parochial benefices, whether rectories, or perpetual curate, include due observation of the ordination vows and due solicitude for the moral and spiritual welfare of the parishioners. The temporalities are the revenues of the benefice and assets such as the church properties and possessions within the parish.
By keeping this distinction in mind, the right of patronage in the case of parochial benefices, or advowson, appears logical, being the right originally vested in the donor of the temporalities to present to his bishop a clerk to be admitted, if found fit by the bishop, to the office to which those temporalities are annexed. In other words, the gift of the glebe (a rectory manor or church furlong) was only ever granted subject to receiving an incorporeal hereditament (inheritable and transferable right) for the original donor.
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 the rare cases where the patron happens to be a clergyman ( a clerk in orders) and wishes to be admitted to the benefice of his own advowson, 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 proceeded to institute him to the spiritual office to which the benefice is annexed, but before such institution could take place, the clerk had to make the declaration of assent, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer, take the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience and make a declaration against simony. The first was laid down by the Canons of 1603/04 and modified by the which also prescribed the form of the declaration against simony; the words of the oath of allegiance accorded to the form in the Promissory Oaths Act 1868.Blunt J.H. and Phillimore Sir W.G.F, The Book of Church Law, Rivingtons, 1885, pp. 202–203, 244. Current practice is to make a declaration of assent to the doctrine and liturgical practice of the Church of England, and take the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience as defined by Canons of the Church of England.
The bishop, by the act of institution, commits to the presentee 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. A bishop need not personally institute or collate a clerk; he may issue a fiat to his vicar-general or to a special commissary for that purpose.
After the bishop or his commissary has instituted the presentee, he issues a mandate under seal, addressed to the archdeacon or some other neighbouring clergyman, authorizing him to induct the clerk into his benefice – in other words, to put him into legal possession of the temporalities, which is done by some outward form, and for the most part by delivery of the bell-rope to the presentee, who then tolls the church bell. 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.
A benefice is avoided or vacated
By the (13 & 14 Vict. c. 98) restrictions were further narrowed so that no spiritual person could hold two benefices except the churches of such benefices within of each other by the nearest road, and the annual value of one of such benefices did not exceed £100. 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.
The (48 & 49 Vict. c. 54) superseded these and enacted that by dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, two benefices can be held together, the churches of which are within of each other, and the annual value of one of which does not exceed £200.
The (12 & 13 Geo. 5 No. 2) repealed sections 52 and 53 of the Pluralities Act 1838. These sections required bishops to send annual returns of non-resident clergy to the Privy Council, and this was no longer felt to serve any useful purpose.
The (20 & 21 Geo. 5. No. 7) amended the maximum value of either benefice to £400, and also allowed the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (now the Church Commissioners) to approve the holding of multiple benefices, overriding the limit to two, and the distance and value requirements previously in force.
The term dates from the grant of benefices by bishops to clerks in holy orders as a reward for extraordinary services. The holder of a benefice owns the "freehold" of the post (the church and the parsonage house) for life.
Such a life freehold is now subject to certain constraints. To comply with European Regulations on atypical workers, the parson's freehold is being phased out in favour of new conditions of service called "common tenure".Q&A on Common Tenure http://www.churchofengland.org/clergy-office-holders/common-tenure.aspx
Pluralities Act
Dispensation, enabling a clerk to hold several ecclesiastical dignities or benefices at the same time, was transferred to the Archbishop of Canterbury by the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 (25 Hen. 8. c. 21), certain ecclesiastical persons having been declared by the earlier Clergy Act 1529 (21 Hen. 8. c. 13) to be entitled to such dispensations. The system of pluralities carried with it, as a direct consequence, systematic non-residence on the part of many incumbents, and delegation of their spiritual duties in respect of their cures of souls to assistant curates. The evils attendant on this system were found to be so great that the (1 & 2 Vict. c. 106) was passed to abridge the holding of benefices in plurality, requiring that no person should hold under any circumstances more than two benefices and such privilege was subject to the restriction that both benefices must be within of each other.
Current usage
A benefice or living in the Church of England describes any ecclesiastical parish or group of ecclesiastical parishes under a single minister, as well as its related historical meaning.
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