Church Properties and the Propertied Church: Donors, the Clergy and the Church in Medieval Western Europe from the Fourth Century to the Twelfth
Janet L. Nelson
BEFORE Christianity, all over the Roman world, whatever law said about ‘holy things’ being non-ownable, in real life family tombs were owned by families and their maintenance was funded from property. Land-holding, basis of social institutionalised power Latin Europe, transformed between fourth century twelfth transfer landed property to churches on a massive scale. The religious beliefs sentiments that drove this Christian, but had pagan antecedents, as example tombs. Historians late antiquity date significant proportion period, earlier medieval historians bulk it theirs—that is, eighth twelfth. But these transfers qualified persistence sense continuing ownership rights part lay donors heirs. These enduring substantially modified reforms eleventh centuries; yet an important residue remained. friars’ advocacy alternative funding-streams limited effects. Even after drastic changes brought Reformation, Anglican variety reformed religion stuck with form benefices, or right appoint clergy, ‘preferments’, which devout laymen could regard c.1800 ‘temporalities attached holy evoked Making Middle Ages Richard Southern, neatly placed quotation Mansfield Park.1
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