Folia Theologica et Canonica 9. 31/23 (2020)

Ius canonicum

THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF PARISHES

85

For churches to be built and their continued functioning ensured, financial guarantees were always required. Byzantine legislation recognised the necessity of finding the resources needed for a church’s ongoing operation before it was built.81 The rule of the Council of Toledo in 693 which forbids the appointment of a priest to a church that does not own at least ten mancipia (slaves or slave families) can be understood in the same light.82 During the christianisation of Saxony spearheaded by Charlemagne, each church was to be endowed with two mansos, i.e. fields or farmsteads, along with male and female slaves.83 At the beginning of the eleventh century in Hungary, groups of ten villages were required to combine to build a church and provide it with two fields, two slaves, horses, and livestock. Vestments and altar furnishings were supplied by the king, while the bishop had to provide the priest and the necessary books.84 Thus it was a common model in large parts of the European continent for a church to be built and endowed by the population of a territory comprising more than a single village. The presbyter of this kind of church was sent by the bishop: it was a very different model from that of proprietary churches. It is not always clear how much freedom or independent initiative these communities of peasants or herdsmen had regarding the foundation of their baptismal church. It seems that it was often forced on them by the ruling authorities.

On the question of the relation between parish and village, it should be emphasised that the model of one village-one parish (i.e. each village having its own parish) was not typical in the early Middle Ages. Although by the later Middle Ages some subordinate rural communities with their own daughter church had fought to obtain their independence as a parish, this process could not be considered complete even at the end of the Middle Ages.85 Nonetheless, there was a network of parishes and similar structures across the whole of the West by the thirteenth century.

81 Cf.e.g „Nov. 131,7.

82 Conc. Tolet. XVI (693) c.5, Vives, J. (ed.), Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos (Espana Cristiana, Textos I), Barcelona-Madrid 1963. 502: (...) ecclesia quae usque ad decern habuerit mancipia super se habeat sacerdotem; quae vero minus habuerit mancipia, aliis coniugatur ecclesiis (...).

83 Carol. Magn., Capit, de partibus Saxoniae, c. 15: Boretius, A. (ed.), Capitularia regum /rancorum, I (Momumenta Germaniae Historica Cap. I), Hannover 1883. 69: Ad unamquamque ecclesiam curte et duos mansos terrae pagenses ad ecclesiam recurrentes condonant, et inter centum viginti homines, nobiles et ingenuis similiter et litos, servum et ancillam eidem ecclesiae tribuant.

84 Stephanus, S., Decretorum liber secundus, c. 1: Závodszky, L. (ed.), A Szent István, Szent László és Kálmán korabeli törvények és zsinati határozatok forrásai, Budapest 1904. 45: Decem ville ecclesiam edificent, quam duobus mansis totidemque mancipiis dotent, equo et iumento, sex bubus et duabus vaccis, XXX minutis bestiis. Vestimenta vero et coopertoria rex prevideat, presbiterum et libros episcopi.

85 Cf. Bader, K. S., Dorfgenossenschaft und Dorfgemeinde, Weimar 1962. 183-190.