During the Middle Ages, a proprietary church (Latin ecclesia propria, German Eigenkirche) was a church, abbey or cloister built on private ground by a feudal lord, over which he retained proprietary interests, especially the right of what in English law is "advowson", that of nominating the ecclesiastic personnel.
In the later Roman Empire the church had been centrally organized: all monasteries and churches within a diocese, including their personnel and their properties, were under the jurisdiction of the local bishop. As early as the late 5th century, Pope Gelasius I listed conditions under which bishops could consecrate new churches within the metropolitan see of Rome. One of the conditions was that the new establishment be endowed with sufficient means to provide for vestments, lights, and the support of the priest serving there. [1] Sometimes the church was part of a large estate; others were themselves vast landed estates.
The development of proprietary churches was a product of feudalism. [2] The founding lord or seigneur might be a layman, bishop, or abbot, but only the diocesan bishop had the authority to consecrate the church or ordain the priest to serve there. The Council of Trosly (909) defined such churches as the dominium of the seigneur, but the gubernatio of the bishop. It was the responsibility of the bishop to ensure that the building was kept in good repair and appropriately lighted, and to determine the parochial boundaries. [3]
Within the Carolingian empire, the rules concerning proprietary churches had been expressly formulated in the ninth century, at the reforming councils of 808, under Charlemagne and of 818/9, under Louis the Pious. Then proprietary churches had been officially recognized, but the capitulations identify some of the associated excesses, for it was agreed that the proprietor should not appoint nor depose priests without the assent of the bishop, nor appoint unfree persons. Every church was to be provided with a manse and its garden that were free of seigneurial dues, where the priest could support himself, providing spiritual services. The rights of proprietarial founders were also delimited and protected, for the bishop could not refuse to ordain a suitable candidate; the legislation also protected the founder's right over proprietary abbeys to appoint a member of the founding family. [4]
A practice developed in 8th-century Germany of donating a proprietary church to a larger church or cathedral with certain [1] conditions, such as reserving the usufruct to a member of the family, sometimes for more than one generation. Sometimes the donation was revocable upon the possible return of a distant heir. Other conditions might preclude it as ever being awarded as a benefice, on penalty of reverting to the family. The usufruct might be reserved to a female (ancilla dei) or a male as yet unborn, let alone not yet in Holy Orders, and allowed the donor to make provision for the support of family members. [1] A donation couched in such terms to a third party, served to provide some protection against subsequent challenges by other family members.
Ulrich Stutz argued that the institution of the proprietary church existed particularly in areas that had never been Roman, among the Irish and the Slavs, and in the Eastern Roman Empire, but the proprietary church is best known in Germany, where the Grundherr, the landlord who had founded the church on his property and endowed it from his lands, maintained the right of investiture, as he was the advocatus (German Vogt ) of the fief, and responsible for its security and good order. In the 9th and 10th centuries the establishment of proprietary churches in Germany swelled to their maximum. The layman who held the position was a lay abbot. The altar was the legal anchor to which the structures, the land, the rights and ties were attached. [4] The proprietor and his heirs retained unabated legal rights to the ground on behalf of the saint whose relics lay beneath the altar. "He could sell, lend or lease the altar, leave it to his heirs, use it for dower, or mortgage it, provided that a church, once dedicated, continued to be used as a church." [4] However, the founder could not alienate any of the land or appurtenances designated for the maintenance of the church and support of the priest. Dedicating land for a religious use was one way to preserve it from being partitioned into parcels too small for effective economic use.
According to George W.O. Addleshaw, French historians attribute the development of proprietary churches to the decentralization that ensued with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West and the increased authority of late Roman and Merovingian landowners, who assumed responsibility for rural churches in lieu of bishops in their urban sees. [3]
The proprietary right could be granted away or otherwise alienated, even for a sum of money, which compromised the position of the spiritual community that it served. In a small parish church this right may be trivial, but in the German territories of Otto the Great it was an essential check and control on the church, through which the Holy Roman Emperor largely ruled.
Simony, the outright purchase of an ecclesiastic position through payment or barter, was an ever-present problem, one that was attacked over and over in all the synods of the 11th- and early 12th-century Gregorian reforms, and fuelled the Investiture Controversy. The benefice system grew out of the proprietary churches. [2]
The royal peculiars have remained proprietary churches until today.
A Medieval example is the church of Littleham, Devon, mentioned in 1422. [5]
An example of a proprietary church is Lorsch Abbey, founded in 764 by the Frankish Count Cancor and his widowed mother Williswinda as a church and monastery on their estate, Laurissa. They entrusted its administration to Cancor's nephew Chrodegang, Archbishop of Metz, who became its first abbot. In 766 Chrodegang resigned the office of abbot, in favour of his brother Gundeland. [6]
The First Council of the Lateran was the 9th ecumenical council recognised by the Catholic Church. It was convoked by Pope Callixtus II in December 1122, immediately after the Concordat of Worms. The council sought to bring an end to the practice of the conferring of ecclesiastical benefices by people who were laymen, free the election of bishops and abbots from secular influence, clarify the separation of spiritual and temporal affairs, re-establish the principle that spiritual authority resides solely in the Church and abolish the claim of the Holy Roman Emperor to influence papal elections.
Einsiedeln Abbey is a Catholic monastery administered by the Benedictine Order in the village of Einsiedeln, Switzerland.
Lorsch Abbey, otherwise the Imperial Abbey of Lorsch, is a former Imperial abbey in Lorsch, Germany, about 10 km (6.2 mi) east of Worms. It was one of the most important monasteries of the Carolingian Empire. Even in its ruined state, its remains are among the most important pre-Romanesque–Carolingian style buildings in Germany.
Chrodegang was the Frankish Bishop of Metz from 742 or 748 until his death. He served as chancellor for his kinsman, Charles Martel. Chrodegang is claimed to be a progenitor of the Frankish dynasty of the Robertians. He is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church.
Lorsch is a town in the Bergstraße district in Hessen, Germany, 60 km south of Frankfurt. Lorsch is well known for the Lorsch Abbey, which has been named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Alpirsbach Abbey is a former Benedictine monastery and later Protestant seminary located at Alpirsbach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The monastery was established in the late 11th century and possessed considerable freedoms for an ecclesiastical property at that time, but in the 13th century it became a de facto possession of the Dukes of Teck and then the County of Württemberg. In the 15th century, the monastery enjoyed economic prosperity and was expanded but was dissolved with the conversion of the by-then Duchy of Württemberg to Lutheranism in the 16th century. The monastery became a seminary and boarding school until the 17th century and was physically reduced over the 19th century by land sales and demolition. Over the second half of the 20th century, the monastery was turned into a cultural fixture with annual concerts of Classical music and a museum of its history.
Amorbach Abbey was a Benedictine imperial abbey of the Holy Roman Empire located at Amorbach. It was later the residence of the rulers of the short-lived Principality of Leiningen, before that became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria, and its historic buildings still belong to the princely family.
Ottobeuren is a Benedictine abbey, located in Ottobeuren, near Memmingen in the Bavarian Allgäu, Germany.
William of Hirsau was a Benedictine abbot and monastic reformer. He was abbot of Hirsau Abbey, for whom he created the Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, based on the uses of Cluny, and was the father of the Hirsau Reforms, which influenced many Benedictine monasteries in Germany. He supported the papacy in the Investiture Controversy. In the Roman Catholic Church, he is a Blessed, the second of three steps toward recognition as a saint.
Hirsau Abbey, formerly known as Hirschau Abbey, was once one of the most important Benedictine abbeys of Germany. It is located in the Hirsau borough of Calw on the northern slopes of the Black Forest mountain range, in the present-day state of Baden-Württemberg. In the 11th and 12th century, the monastery was a centre of the Cluniac Reforms, implemented as "Hirsau Reforms" in the German lands by William of Hirsau. The complex was devastated during the War of the Palatine Succession in 1692 and not rebuilt. The ruins served as a quarry for a period of time.
Saint Emmeram's Abbey was a Benedictine monastery founded around 739 at Regensburg in Bavaria at the grave of the itinerant Frankish bishop Saint Emmeram. The original abbey church is now a parish church named St. Emmeram's Basilica. The other buildings on the site form a large complex known as Schloss Thurn und Taxis or Schloss St. Emmeram, which has served as the main residence of the Thurn und Taxis princely family since the early 19th century.
Göttweig Abbey is a Benedictine monastery near Krems in Lower Austria. It was founded in 1083 by Altmann, Bishop of Passau.
Saint Paul's Abbey in Lavanttal is a Benedictine monastery established in 1091 near the present-day market town of Sankt Paul im Lavanttal in the Austrian state of Carinthia. The premises centered on the Romanesque monastery church were largely rebuilt in a Baroque style in the 17th century.
Ellwangen Abbey was the earliest Benedictine monastery established in the Duchy of Swabia, at the present-day town of Ellwangen an der Jagst, Baden-Württemberg, about 100 km (60 mi) north-east of Stuttgart.
Carolingian architecture is the style of north European Pre-Romanesque architecture belonging to the period of the Carolingian Renaissance of the late 8th and 9th centuries, when the Carolingian dynasty dominated west European politics. It was a conscious attempt to emulate Roman architecture and to that end it borrowed heavily from Early Christian and Byzantine architecture, though there are nonetheless innovations of its own, resulting in a unique character.
Weissenau Abbey was an Imperial abbey (Reichsabtei) of the Holy Roman Empire located near Ravensburg in the Swabian Circle. The abbey, a Premonstratensian monastery, was an Imperial Estate and therefore its abbot had seat and vote in the Reichstag as a prelate of the Swabian Bench. The abbey existed from 1145 until the secularisation of 1802-1803.
The Great Saint Martin Church is a Romanesque Catholic church in Cologne, Germany. Its foundations rest on remnants of a Roman chapel, built on what was then an island in the Rhine. The church was later transformed into a Benedictine monastery. The current buildings, including a soaring crossing tower that is a landmark of Cologne's Old Town, were erected between 1150-1250. The architecture of its eastern end forms a triconch or trefoil plan, consisting of three apses around the crossing, similar to that at St. Maria im Kapitol. The church was badly damaged in World War II; restoration work was completed in 1985.
Cancor was a Frankish count associated with Lorsch Abbey. He was son of a noble lady Williswinda. As her only known husband before she was widowed was named Robert, it has been proposed that Cancor was son to Robert I, Count of Hesbaye, who was also alive in the 8th century.
Michaelsberg Abbey or Michelsberg Abbey, also St. Michael's Abbey, Bamberg is a former Benedictine monastery in Bamberg in Bavaria, Germany. After its dissolution in 1803 the buildings were used for the almshouse Vereinigtes Katharinen- und Elisabethen-Spital, which is still there as a retirement home. The former abbey church remains in use as the Michaelskirche.
Ulrich Stutz was a Swiss-German jurist and historian and pioneering scholar in the academic study of canon law. He is associated in particular with the theory of the proprietary church (Eigenkirche) and its role in the development of Christianity in medieval Europe.
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