Between the years 879 and 909, the same bishop gave forty hides to Ælfred, for his life. Upon these he reserved a rent of three pounds, cyricsceats, cyricsceat-work, and the services of Ælfred’s men when required at the bishop’s hunting and reaping[[1000]]. In like manner Oswald reserved, in all the grants he made out of the church property at Worcester, the church rights, that is to say, cyricsceat, toll, tax and pannage, and also the services of the tenants at his hunting[[1001]]. Lastly between the years 871 and 877, bishop Ealhfrið granting eight hides for three lives to duke Cúðred, reserved bridge-work, military service, eight cyricsceats, the mass-priest’s rights and soulsceats[[1002]].
This cyricsceat then appears to have been originally a recognitory service due to the lord from the tenant on church-lands. But it is very clear that in process of time a new character was assumed for it, and it was claimed of all men alike, as a due to the clergy. Here, again, the Levitical legislation was taken to be applicable to the Christian ministry. The Jews had been commanded to give first-fruits[[1003]], as well as tithes; and if tithes belonged to the clergy by virtue of God’s commandment, so did first-fruits also. These appear also to have been called cyricsceat, and after a time became an established charge upon the land of the freeman as well as the unfree. The earliest legislation which we can discover, bearing unquestionably upon this point, is that of Eádmund toward the middle of the tenth century[[1004]]; he strictly commands payment of tithe, cyricsceat, and almsfee, and declares that he who will not do it shall be excommunicated. By the time of Eádgár however the matter seems to have been quite settled, and cyricsceat is directed to be paid from the hearth of every freeman to the old minster,—most likely to prevent a course similar to the arbitrary consecration of tithes. And this remained a fixed charge upon the land till the time of the Conquest, when it ceased to be generally paid, as we may judge from the expressions of Fleta and other jurists[[1005]]; it had passed in some cases into the hands of secular lords, with lands alienated by the clergy, or taken from them. But in the time of Cnut it was still paid as primitiae seminum, and it is not probable that his successors altered his arrangements in this respect.
The liberality of the Anglosaxons was by no means confined to the grants of land which they conferred upon the several churches, although it is impossible to deny that these were most extravagant[[1006]]. At the same time it is to be borne in mind that the clergy were always certain to command a more than adequate supply of free and unfree labour; and that, if their landed possessions thus increased their wealth to an extraordinary degree, they also were the greatest contributors to the general well-being through the superior excellence of their cultivation. But the piety or the fears of the laity did not stop short at gifts of land and serfs: jewels, cups, rings, crosses and caskets, money, tapestry, and vestments, annual foundations of bread, wine, beer, honey, and flesh, sometimes to enormous amounts, were devised by the will of wealthy and penitent sinners: houses and curtilages, tolls and markets, forests, harbours, fisheries, mines, commons of pasture and mast, flocks and herds of swine, horses and oxen, testified to the liberality of ealdormen and kings. Nor was the opportunity of investing their surplus profitably always wanting: more than one mortgage is recorded, on terms sufficiently favourable to the mortgagors; and loans on excellent security, show that if the nobles knew where to find capitalists in their need, the capitalist also knew very well how to turn his facilities to good account. The necessity of providing out of these large funds for the proper maintenance of the churches and the due celebration of religious rites, can hardly be looked upon as a great hardship; and although the demands of charity and the duties of hospitality, may have seemed a heavy charge to the avaricious or the selfish, we cannot but conclude, that no class of the community occupied so dignified or so easy a position as the Anglosaxon clergy. The State, fully aware of the value of their services, was not niggardly in rewarding them. There was a ready acquiescence on the part of the laity in the claims of the clergy to respect and trust; and, while these continued to maintain a decent conformity to the duties of their calling, we find a perfectly harmonious co-operation of all classes in the church. Nor, amongst all the writings which the clergy—the only writers—have left us, do we find any of those complaints and grievances, which are apt to be made prominent enough when the members of that powerful body believe their pretensions to be treated with less than due consideration. The devoted partizan of Rome might choose to declare the English church subject to such bondage as no other suffered; but, except from quarrels of their own, the clergy never were exposed here to those inconveniences which are unavoidable, upon any attempt on their part to separate themselves from their fellow-members in the Christian communion.
[973]. “Till toward the end of the first four hundred [years] no payment of them [i. e. tithes] can be proved to have been in use. Some opinion is of their being due, and constitutions also, but such as are of no credit. For the first, ’tis best declared by showing the course of the church-maintenance in that time. So liberal in the beginning of Christianity was the devotion of the believers, that their bounty to the evangelical priesthood far exceeded what the tenth could have been. For if you look to the first of the Apostles’ times, then the unity of heart among them about Jerusalem, was such that all was in common and none wanted, ‘and as many as were possessors of lands or houses, sold them and brought the price of the things that were sold, and laid it down at the Apostles’ feet, and it was distributed unto every man, according as he had need[[a]].’And the whole church, both lay and clergy, then lived in common as the monks did afterward about the end of the first four hundred years as St. Chrysostome notes[] οὕτως, says he, οἱ ἐν τοῖς μοναστηρίοις ζῶσι νῦν ὥσπερ τότε οἱ πιστοὶ, that is, ‘So they live now in monasteries as then the believers lived.’ But this kind of having all things in common scarce at all continued. For we see not long after in the church of Antiochia (where Christianity was first of all by that name professed) every one of the disciples had a special ability or estate of his own[[c]]. So in Galatia and in Corinth where St. Paul ordained that weekly offerings for the Saints should be given by every man as he had thrived in his estate[[d]]. By example of these, the course of monthly offerings succeeded in the next ages. These monthly offerings given by devout and able Christians, the bishops or officers appointed in the church received[[e]]; and carefully and charitably disposed them on Christian worship, the maintenance of the clergy, feeding, clothing, and burying their poor brethren, widows, orphans, persons tyrannically condemned to the mines, to prison, or punished by deportation into isles. They were called Stipes (which is a word borrowed from the use of the heathens in their collections made for their temples and deities), neither were they exacted by canon or otherwise, but arbitrarily given; as by testimony of most learned Tertullian[[f]], that lived about CC years after Christ, is apparent: ‘Neque pretio (are his words) ulla res Dei constat. Etiam si quod arcae genus est, non de oneraria summa quasi redemptae religionis congregatur, modicam unusquisque Stipem, menstruâ die, vel cum velit, et si modo velit, et si modo possit, apponit. Nam nemo compellitur, sed sponte confert. Haec quasi deposita pietatis sunt.’ And then he shewes the employment of them in those charitable uses. Some authority is[[g]], that about this time lands began also to be given to the church. If they were so, out of the profits of them, and this kind of offerings, was made a treasure; and out of that, which was increased so monthly, was a monthly pay given to the priests and ministers of the Gospel (as a salarie for their service), and that either by the hand or care of the bishop, or of some elders appointed as Oeconomi or Wardens. These monthly pays they called Mensurnae divisiones, as you may see in St. Cyprian[[h]], who wrote, being bishop of Carthage, about the year CCL, and, speaking familiarly of this use, calls the brethren that cast in their monthly offerings, fratres sportulantes, understanding the offerings under the word Sportulae, which at first in Rome denoted a kind of running banquets distributed at great men’s houses to such as visited for salutation, which being ofttimes also given in money, the word came at length to signify both those salaries, wages or fees which either judges[] or ministers of courts of justice received as due to their places, as also to denote the oblations given to make a treasure for the salaries and maintenance of the ministers of the church in this primitive age, and to this purpose was it also used in later times[[j]]. But because that passage of St. Cyprian, where he uses this phrase, well shows also the course of the maintenance of the church in his time, take it here transcribed: but first know the drift of his Epistle to be a reprehension of Geminius Faustinus a priest his being troubled with the care of a wardship, whereas such as take that dignity upon them, should, he says, be free from all secular troubles like the Levites, who were provided for in tithes. ‘Ut qui (as he writes[[k]]) operationibus divinis insistebant, in nulla re avocarentur, nec cogitare aut agere saecularia cogerentur.’ And then he adds: ‘Quae nunc ratio et forma in Clero tenetur, ut qui in ecclesia Domini ad ordinationem clericalem promoventur, nullo modo ab administratione divina avocentur, sed in honore sportulantium fratrum, tanquam Decimas ex fructibus accipientes, ab Altari et Sacrificiis non recedant, et die ac nocte coelestibus rebus et spiritualibus serviant;’ which plainly agrees with that course of monthly pay, made out of the oblations brought into the Treasury; which kind of means he compares to that of the Levites, as being proportionable. But hence also ’tis manifest, that no payment of tithes was in St. Cyprian’s time in use, although some, too rashly, from this very place would infer so much, those words tanquam Decimas accipientes (which continues the comparing of ministers of the Gospel with the Levites) plainly exclude them. And elsewhere also the same Father, finding fault with a coldness of devotion that then possest many, in regard of what was in use in the Apostles’ times, and seeing that the Oblations given were less than usually before, expresses[[l]] their neglect to the church with, ‘ac nunc de patrimonio nec Decimas damus:’ whence, as you may gather, that no usual payment was of them, so withall observe in his expression, that the liberality formerly used had been such, that, in respect thereof, Tenths were but a small part: understand it as if he had said, ‘but now we give not so much as any part worth speaking of.’ Neither for aught appears in old monuments of credit, till near the end of this first four hundred years, was any payment to the Church of any tenth part, as a Tenth, at all in use.” Selden on Tithes, cap. iv. p. 35 seq..
[a]. Acts iv. 34.
[b]. Hom. 11. in Acta.
[c]. Acts xi. 29.
[d]. 1 Cor. xvi. 2. Ockam, in Oper. xc dierum, cap. 107.
[e]. Synod. Gangr. can. lxvi.