Simony, the crime, in ecclesiastical law, of buy- ing or selling holy orders and offices. The term is de- rived from tlie sin of Simon Magus {(\. v.), who wished to purchase from the apostles for money the power to confer the Holy Ghost (Acts viii, Vi). The ancient Christian Church distinguished simony into three dif- ferent kinds: 1. Puying and selling spiritual gifis; 2. Buying and selling sjiiritual preferments; 3. Am-
bitions usurpation and sacrilegious intrusion into eccle- siastical functions without legal election or ordination. Of course the first sort was that which most properly had the name of simony, resembling most closely the sin of Simon Magus. This crime was thought to be committed when money was offered or received for or- dinations, and it was always punished with the severest censures of the Church. The apostolical canons {Can. Apost. 29) seem to lay a double pimishment, both depo- sition and excommunication, upon such of the clergy as were found guilty of this crime. Among the councils which have condemned simony are Chalcedon ; second of Orleans; second of Constantinople; second of Braga; fourth, eighth, and eleventh of Toledo ; second of Nice ; Kheims; Placentia; and TruUo — the term of the canons being according to the various circumstances and forms of the crime prevalent. T'he ancients also include in this sort of crime the exacting of any reward for administer- ing baptism, the eucharist, confirmation, burying the dead, consecration of churches, or any like spiritual of- fices. The second sort of simony (traffic in spiritual preferments) was denounced i)y both ecclesiastical and secular laws (Concil. Chalced. can. 2; Justinian, Novel. 123, c. 1), the former ordering the deposition of the bishop that "sets grace to sale, and ordains a bishop, etc., for filthy lucre;" the latter ordering every elector to make oath " that he did not choose the party elected either for any gift or promise," etc. The third sort of simony was when men by ambitious arts and undue practices, as by the favor and i)ower of some wealthy or influential person, got themselves invested in any office or preferment to which they had no regular call or legal title ; or when they intruded themselves into other men's places, already legally tilled. Thus Novatian got him- self secretly and simoniacally ordained to the bishopric of Rome, to which Cornelius had been legally ordained before him (Cyprian, Ep. 52, al. 55, ad A ntonian.). Such ordinations were usually vacated and declared null, and both the ordained and their ordaincrs prosecuted as criminals by degradation and reduction to the state and communion of laymen. There were also general impe- rial laws made by Gratian and Honorius {Cod. T/tcod. lib. xvi, tit. 2, " De Episc. Leg. 35 Hononi"), obliging all bishops who were censured and deposed by any synod to submit to the sentence of the synod, under the pen- alty of being banished a hundred miles from the city where they attempted such disturbance. See Bingham, Christian Antiq. bk. xvi, ch. vi, § 28-30.
This crime became quite common in the Church dur- ing the 11th and 12th centuries. Benedict IX, when a boy of twelve years (A.D. 1033), was elected pope "in- tercedente thesauroruin pecunia." Guido, archbishop of Milan (A.D. 1059), lamenting the prevalency of simony in his Church, jiromised fur himself and successors ut- terly to renouiicp it. Hildelirand, afterwards Gregory VII, was a \igorous o|)|ionent of the practice. At a council at Lyons the archbishop and forty-live bishops confessed themselves simoniacal and were deposed. The fortieth of the canons of 1G03 (Church of England) is directed against simony, as being "execrable hefore God," and provides an oath to be taken personally by every one admitted to a benefice that no simoniacal payment, contract, or promise has boon or shall be made. While in (ireat Pritain the cognizance of simony and punishment of simoniacal offences ap|)ear originally to have belonged to the ecclesiastical courts alone, the courts of common law would have held simoniacal con- tracts void, as being contra bonns mores and against sound policy. According to English law (statutes of Eiiz. and 12 Anne, c. 12; 7 and 8 (ieorgc IV, c. 25; 9 (icorge IV, c. 94; also 1 William and Mary, c. 16), it is not simony for a layman or spiritual person, not pur- chasing for himself, to purchase while the church is fidl either an advowson or next presentation, however im- mediate may be the prospect of a vacancy, indess that vacancy is to be occasioned by some agreement or ar- rangement between the parties. Nor is it simony for a
SIMOOM
IQI
SIMPSOX
spiritual person to purchase for himself an advowson, although under similar circumstances. It is, however, simony for any person to purchase the next presenta- tion while the church is vacant; and it is simony for a spiritual person to purchase for himself the next pres- entation, although the church be full. See JMilman, Latin Christianity, iii, 237, 2-14, 370 sq. ; vii, 270 ; Willis, Hist, of Simony (Lond. 18t>5, 2d ed.) ; and the mono- graphs cited by Volbeding, Index Programmatum, p. 75.
Simoom. See Wind.
Simpkins, Solomon G., a minister of the Meth- odist Episcopal Church, South, was born in Maryland in 1811; moved to Yicksburg, Miss., in 1837; was li- censed to preach in 1840, and Ijecame a member of the Mississippi Conference. In 1849 he was appointed to Bayou Pierre Circuit, but died before he could reach it. See Minutes of Annual Conferences of M. E. Church, South, 1849, p. 248.