Other honorary rights gradually followed. Having established their right of selection, it was then a short step for landowners to think about their financial privileges. It seemed to them that their position was straightforward: they owned the land on which the church stood, they, or their forebears, had erected the building, its funding came from their produce — even the priest was now theirs to appoint, remove, and generally “use (and abuse) . . . like any other serf serving on their estates.”2 It therefore appeared logical that when the living was vacant, they should receive back the revenues that had been set aside for it. With the Empire continuing to collapse, the Church was not in a position to resist, and a further swing in favor of a patron’s privileges unfolded. Indeed, by the eleventh century, there was little to prevent him not only regarding his church as his private property, but, with suitable management, a source of income little different from that of his bake house or mill.
As might be expected, when the early Middle Ages gave way to the comparative stability of the new millennium, the Church began to turn its attention to the task of regaining some of the initiative it had surrendered into lay hands. Probably the most effective counter-measures were achieved under the pontificate of Alexander III (1159–81), who adopted a two-pronged approach to clawing back some of the advantage patrons now held. The first element of his strategy was to introduce a spiritual dimension into the right of patronage. Up until then, its basis and character had been entirely temporal - that is to say, a patron’s ecclesiastical rights simply derived from his holding of property. Alexander now insisted that these were only legitimate if a patron exercised them along with the Church as part of a joint responsibility for the management of the benefice, and thus designated in the papal decretals as a jus temporale spirituali annexum (a temporal right, tacked on to the spiritual). In other words, patronage was now defined as having an identity of which there were two necessary parts, a temporal and a spiritual. The effect of the latter’s introduction was, naturally, to place the Church in a far stronger position for regulating both the exercise of the jus patronatus (right of patronage) and its passage from one holder to another. Thus, for example, although it could be inherited or bought as part of a property, its spiritual component made its sale as a separate entity theoretically impossible, “both because it was a right the value of which was inestimable, and therefore irreconcilable with the contract of sale, and also because such a transaction was simoniacal.”3
Alexander’s other important achievement was to establish the issue of whose privileges ultimately took precedence, was it the Church’s or the patron’s? He did this by reaffirming the jus patronatus to be a jus temporale spirituali annexum, so that the right of patronage becomes explicitly subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction and assessment. The practical implications of this were that a patron still had the right of selection in a vacancy, but he had to “present” his choice to the bishop for scrutiny and admission. Thus the right of presentation (jus praesentandi) meant the right of proposing, not simply a right to nominate or impose a candidate. The patron’s role was now auxiliary to the bishop’s, so that it was, for example, possible for a bishop to plant a church without a lay presentation,4 but no presentee could be installed without episcopal collation.5 With this development, an important landmark had been reached in clergy–laity relations. However much a proprietor might dominate the residents on his estates, the priest was no longer “his” in the way he had been previously. Whoever might initiate the steps to a settlement, in vetting candidates and giving them legal title to their livings, as far as the Church was concerned, its position as ultimate authority was considered to be settled. Theoretically, this reflected the outcome of the Investiture Controversy of the Western Church. In time however, property rights, civil law, and “state building” were to have their effect.
Moreover, as will be seen below in a Scottish context, for the Church to declare an issue settled, was not necessarily to render it non–negotiable for everyone concerned.
Scotland
For the medieval Scottish Church, the marriage of King Malcolm III to the Anglo–Saxon princess, Margaret, in 1069, was a momentous landmark. From then on, the influence and institutions of the Roman Church began increasingly to permeate and dominate the Scottish ecclesiastical landscape. One result was that, early in the twelfth century, a Roman civil parish structure began to emerge, and laymen who had provided churches within their areas of territorial authority, equated themselves with the role of patron of that church and its evolving parish. The foundation of the church at Ednam, in the borders, is an example of how, around 1100, such a relationship developed. The charter describes how a Saxon named Thor Longus, was granted some moor-land near Kelso, by King Edgar (1097–1107). After cultivating the land and erecting a church, dedicated to St Cuthbert, he established the material needs of the foundation by giving the priest a ploughgate of land [c.104 acres] and, afterwards, the tithes of his manor [i.e., the tenth part of its fruits and profits].6
By such means,7 Scots landowners came to have the same proprietorial attitude towards the places wherein they worshipped as their Continental counterparts. Both considered the churches on their land to be “owned”, that is, everything about them—the patronage, the building, the income from the glebe, tithes and offerings—was to be as much at their disposal as any other asset. However, as shown above, change was in the air and, in Scotland, the bishops were well aware of the patronage reforms taking place on the continent, having been represented at Pope Alexander’s ground-breaking Lateran Council of 1179.8 They too began to establish the principle of the Church’s joint role in vacancy-filling, and reinforced it by making a valid transfer of the spiritualities conditional upon their consent.9
At this point, an important development unfolded which was particularly to affect the history of lay patronage in Scotland. This was that, from the twelfth century, a remarkable proportion of the nation’s parish churches came to be appropriated by religious houses as a result of gifts by the Crown and other laymen. The process itself was not new, but rather something which, as Ian Cowan remarks, “had already developed elsewhere and was now to be speeded up in England and Scotland by the advent of the Normans.”10 The commonest motives for such conferments were piety (for the health of one’s soul), convenience (divesting liability for upkeep) or generosity (to assist the finances of the monastery). Whatever the reason, however, by the mid-thirteenth century, larger abbeys like Kelso had 37 annexed churches, Holyrood 27, Paisley 29 and Arbroath 33.11 As time went by, parochial benefices were also annexed to cathedrals and collegiate churches to found or finance prebends [pensions granted to canons or chapter members].12 All in all, the tide of change was such that, by the eve of the Reformation in 1560, only 14 percent of all parochial benefices remained outwith ecclesiastical control. The magnitude of the trend becomes apparent when compared with England: by this date, 86 percent of Scotland’s 1028 parishes had seen their revenues appropriated in some way. In England, the corresponding figure was 37 percent.13
Although the Church continued to hold the greater amount of parochial patronage up until the Reformation, this fact does not appear to have been the cause of particular concern among royal or noble circles. Matters were about to change, however, and the catalyst was the contentious issue of papal provisions.
Papal provisions were instances where the pontiff reserved the right to intervene in a vacancy and appoint
