Parish life in mediaeval England / by His Eminence Cardinal Gasquet, with numerous illustrations.

  • Francis Aidan Gasquet
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Parish life in mediaeval England / by His Eminence Cardinal Gasquet, with numerous illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/362 (page 11)
    particular the less obvious needs of the faithful poor, required some more regular and certain resources than the irregular and voluntary alms of its richer members. So in the Council of Macon in A.D. 585 is found the first express declaration of the Christian obligation of paying tithes, not indeed as a new law, but as the assertion of an admitted Christian principle. In the eighth century these payments began to be regularly made throughout the Western Church, and in England, according to the Saxon Chronicle, in A.D. 855 the father of King Alfred, Ethelwulf of Wessex, is said to have “ assigned to the Church the tenth part of his land all over his-kingdom for the love of God and his own everlasting weal.” In this it is almost certain that the Chronicle is wrong in the form of expression, and that what Ethelwulf did was to decree the payment of a tithe of the produce, and not hand over a tenth of the land as an endowment of the Church. And here it may be well to remark that there was obviously nothing sacro-sanct about the tenth portion payable for Church purposes. It is merely a portion that is taken to represent what is generally a fair offering to God, and one not too burdensome on those who had to pay. In some cases it might be and indeed, according to custom, was greater or less in different places. Tithes were usually divided into two kinds—predial and personal; “some coming of the earth,” says the author of Dives and Pauper, “ as corn, wine, bestayle, that is brought forth by the land, and such thyngs be clepyd predyales in latyn. Some thyngs comyth oonly of the person, as be merchandy and werkmanschyp, and such bene clepyd per- sonales in latyn.” In these a man is to account his expenses,