A/inl. § o'.M. Tithes began to be urged upon the mem- bers of the Church as early as the :!d century, but to the honor of the < ihurch the offerings and contributions continued to be voluntary on the part of its members. Whatever taxes were imposed in later times for the maintenance of public worship and of the clergy were effected by the relations of the Church to the State
under the Christian emperors. On the rules of the
Church requiring the gratuitous performance of relig- ion- offices the following references may be consulted: Concil Tlliber. c. 48; Gelasius, Epist. 1. al. 9, c 5; Gre- gorius Naz. Orat. 40; Gratian, />"■'-. c I, qu. i. c. 8; Concil Trullan, ii, c. 23; Jerome, Qua si. Hebr. in Gen, 23.
The Council of Braga, in Portugal. \.1>. 563, ordered a tripartite division of the property of the < Ihurch one for the bishop, one for the other clergy, and the third for the lighting and repairs of the church. According to another authority four divisions were made, of which one portion was for the poor.
11./ rndt r the Emp rors. — When < Ihristianity was the religion of the State, various other revenues accrued to the ( hurch and the bishop. Upon the abolition of the heathen rites. under Theodosius the Great and bis sons,
the property of the heathen temples and pric-ts which fell to the State was delivered over to the Christian
clergy, or at least was appropriated to ecclesiastical use- (Cod. Theodos. lib. xvi, tit. 10, leg. 19 21; comp. Sozom. Hist, EccL lib. v. c. 7. 16). < In the same
principle the ecclesiastical property ot heretics was con- fiscate 1 and made over to the Catholic Church, as. for
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instance, in the case of the Novatians (Cod. Theodos. lib. xvi, tit. 5, leg. 52; Socrat. Hist. Eccl. lib. vii, c. 7). It was also enacted that the property of such of the clergy as died without heirs, and of those who had re- linquished their duties without sufficient cause, should lapse to the Church funds (Cod. Theodos. lib. v, tit. 3, leg. 50 ; Cod. Justin, lib. x. tit. 3, leg. 20, 53 ; Cod. Nov. 5, c. 4 ; 123, c. 42). The Church was also made the heir of all martyrs and confessors who died without leaving any near relatives (Euseb. Vit. Const, lib. ii, c. 36). The clergy enjoyed many privileges by which on the one hand they were in a measure shielded from the operations of the law, and on the other were intrusted with civil and judicial authority over the laity. Three particulars are stated by Planck: 1. In certain civil cases they exercised a direct jurisdiction over the laity. 2. The State submitted entirely to them the adjudica- tion of all offences of the laity of a religious nature. 3. Certain other cases, styled ecclesiastical, causce ecclesias- tics, were tried before them exclusively. The practical influence of these arrangements and their effects upon the clergy and the laity are detailed by the same au- thor, to whom we must refer the reader (Gesell.-Vei-fass. i, 308 sq.). The laity were ultimately separated from the control of the revenues which they contributed for the maintenance of the government of the Church and for charitable purposes. All measures of this nature, in- stead of originating with the people, as in all popular governments, began and ended with the priesthood (Cone. Can. Can. 7, 8 ; Bracar. xi, c. 7 ; the canons al- luded to clearly indicate the unjust and oppressive operations of this system). The wealth of the laity was now made to flow in streams into the Church. New expedients were devised to draw money from them. (It was a law of the Church in the 4th century that the laity should every Sabbath partake of the sacrament, the effect of which law was to augment the revenues of the Church, each communicant being required to bring his offering to the altar. Afterwards, when this custom was discontinued, the offering was still claimed [Cong. Agath. A.D. 585. c. 4]). Constantine himself contrib- uted large sums to enrich the coffers of the Church, which he also authorized, A.D. 321, to inherit property by will (Cod. Theodos. 4, 16, tit, 2, leg. 4; Euseb. lib. x, c. 6; Sozomen, lib. i, c. 8; lib. v, c. 5). This permis- sion opened new sources of wealth to the bishops, while it presented equal incentives to their cupidity. With what address they employed their newly acquired rights is apparent from the fact stated by Planck, that " in the space of ten years every man at his decease left a legacy to the Church, and within fifty years the clergy in the several provinces, under the color of the Church, held in their possessions one-tenth part of the entire property of the province. By the end of the 4th century the em- perors themselves were obliged to interpose to check the accumulation of these immense revenues — a measure which Jerome said " he could not regret, but he could only regret that his brethren had made it necessary" (Planck, Gesell.-Yerfass. i, 281; comp. Pertsch, Kir- chengesch. c. 9, § 11).
Prelacy also gained great power from the Church by controlling the elections of the clergy. The sovereign rights of the people in their free elective franchise began at an early period to be invaded. The final result of these changes was a total disfranchisement of the laity and the substitution of an ecclesiastical despotism in the place of the elective government of the primitive Church. Of these changes one of the most effective was the attempt, by means of correspondence and eccle- siastical synods, to consolidate the churches into one Church universal, to impose upon them a uniform code of laws, and establish an ecclesiastical polity adminis- tered by the clergy. The idea of a holy catholic Church and of an ecclesiastical hierarchy for the government of the same was wholly a conception of the priesthood. Whatever may have been the motives with which this doctrine of the unity of the Church was first promul-