CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST PUBLIC LAY LAW FOR THE PAYMENT OF TITHES.
The first law making the payment of tithes legally imperative was enacted in 779 by Charles, King of France, in a general assembly of his estates, spiritual and temporal, viz., “Concerning tithes, it is ordained that every man give his tithe, and that they be distributed by the bishop’s command.” [De decimis, ut unusquisque suam decimam donet, atque per jussionem pontificis dispensentur.][49]
Charles’s civil law had only enforced by coercion the existing ecclesiastical law or custom of payment of tithes; and the ecclesiastical law was founded upon the Levitical law; but I hold that the Levitical law, as regards tithes, was not binding on Christians. In the New Testament there is no reference whatever to tithes to be given to the Christian priesthood. None of the apostles claimed tithes from their followers.
“The growing habit,” says Kemble, “of looking upon the clergy as the successors and representatives of the Levites under the old law may very likely have given the impulse to that claim which they set up to the payment of tithes by the laity.”[50]
The establishment of the right in England followed the same course as that in France.
It is important to give Milman’s observations on the working of the above law.
“On the whole body,” he says, “of the clergy, Charlemagne bestowed the legal claim to tithes. Already, under the Merovingians, the clergy had given significant hints that the law of Leviticus was the perpetual law of God. Pepin had commanded the payment of tithes for the celebration of peculiar litanies during a period of famine. Charlemagne made it a law of the empire; he enacted it in its most strict and comprehensive form as investing the clergy in a right to the tenth of the substance and of the labour alike of freemen and serf.”
“The collection of tithes was regulated by compulsory statutes; the clergy took note of all who paid or refused to pay; four or eight, or more, jurymen were summoned from each parish as witnesses for the claims disputed; the contumacious were three times summoned; if still obstinate, they were excluded from the Church; if they still refused to pay, they were fined over and above the whole tithe, six solidi; if further contumacious, the recusant’s house was shut up; if he attempted to enter it, he was cast into prison to await the judgment of the next plea of the Crown. The tithe was due on all produce, even on animals. The tithe was usually divided into three portions, one for the maintenance of the Church, the second for the poor, the third for the clergy; the bishop sometimes claimed a fourth. He was the arbiter of the distribution; he assigned the necessary portion for the Church, and appointed that of the clergy. This tithe was by no means a spontaneous votive offering of the whole Christian people. It was a tax imposed by imperial authority and enforced by imperial power. It had caused one, if not more than one, sanguinary insurrection among the Saxons. It was submitted to in other parts of the empire, not without strong reluctance. Even Alcuin ventured to suggest that if the apostles of Christ had demanded tithes, they would not have been so successful in the propagation of the Gospel.”[51]