Folia Canonica 4. (2001)
STUDIES - George Nedungatt: Who is to Administer Church Property? - The Answer of the Ecumenical Councils
WHO IS TO ADMINISTER CHURCH PROPERTY? 127 In monasteries of men, it was usual for a monk to be appointed as economus. In convents of women, the office was entrusted either to a priest or to a layman, but in each case he had to be a eunuch.25 26 Certain monasteries with vast possessions had one or more assistant economi. All of them had the duty to protect, preserve and increase the yield of the temporal goods. Flanking the economus there was often a treasurer to keep the cash-box or treasury and function as a cashier. Canon 12 of Nicea II forbade the bishop or a monastic superior to alienate any part of the Church’s suburban properties. The canon resonates with several former canons. Ifit is discovered that a bishop or a monastic superior is transferring episcopal or monastic farmland to the control of the ruler, or has been conceding it to another person, the transaction is null and void in accordance with the canon of the holy Apostles, which stipulates: “Let the bishop take care of all ecclesiastical affairs and let him administer them as if under God’s inspection. It is not permitted him to appropriate any of these things, nor to make a present of the things of God to his own relatives. Should the latter be poor, let him care for them as for other poor people, but let him not use them as an excuse for selling off the church ’s possessions. ” However, if he pretends that the land is a loss and brings in no profit at all, let him make a present of the place to clerics or landworkers, but even in these circumstances it should not be given to the local rulers. If they use evil cunning and the ruler buys up the land from the landworker or the cleric in question, this sale shall also be null and void in such circumstances, and the land should be restored to the bishopric or monastery. And the bishop or monastic superior who acts thus should be expelled, the bishop from the episcopal house and the monastic superior from the monastery, because they wickedly waste what they have not gathered? The Fourth Council of Constantinople (869), which is regarded as the eighth ecumenical council in the West, but is not recognized as an ecumenical council in Byzantine Orthodoxy, forbade, in canon 15, the sale of precious objects and the lease of endowments of Churches by emphyteusis. We cite the entire long canon: This holy and universal synod, in renewing the canons of the Apostles and Fathers, has decreed that no bishop may sell or in any way dispose of precious objects or consecrated vessels except for the reason laid down long ago by the ancient canons, that is to say, objects received for the redemption of captives. They must not hand over endowments of Churches by emphyteutic leases nor put on sale other agricultural properties, thereby damaging ecclesiastical revenues. We decree that such revenues are for Church purposes, the feeding of the poor and the assistance of pilgrims. However, bishops have full powers to improve and enlarge, as opportunity offers, the ecclesiastical properties which produce 25 A. Ferradou, Des biens des monastères a Byzance, Bordeaux 1896, 194—195. 26 Tanner (ed.), Decrees (nt. 3), 147-148; cf. Joannou, Discipline (nt. 21), 266-268.
