Monastic Tithes: From their Origins to the Twelfth Century

by Giles Constable

• ISBN13: 9780521072762
• ISBN10: 052107276X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-04
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

No tax in Europe can compare with tithes in its duration, the extent of its application and the economic burden it imposed. In this study Professor Constable considers the tithes paid to and by monks in the Middle Ages. In particular he examines why, by the twelfth century, most monks received tithes and many of them were freed from payment, in spite of earlier theory and practice by which monks, as distinct from the clergy, were usually forbidden to receive tithes and required to pay them. In the early Middle Ages monastic tithes were a matter not only of economics, but of doctrine, canon law and monastic theory. Their history lies in the borderland between theory and practice and Professor Constable studies them against a background of changes in property relationships, in the theory of tithing and in the nature of the monastic order.

Table of Contents

Tithes in the Early Middle Ages

The Christian theory of tithes

The early practice of tithing

Carolingian legislation on tithes

Monastic possession of tithes

From the seventh to the eleventh century

The policy of the reformed papacy

Monastic possession of tithes in the twelfth century

Opposition to monastic possession of tithes

The defence of monastic possession of tithes

The end of the opposition

Monastic Payment of tithes

Monastic payment of tithes before the twelfth century

The growth of monastic freedom from tithes in the first half of the twelfth century

The crisis of monastic freedom from tithes

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