On the other hand, the law of George II applies to bequests to any persons, corporate or incorporate, in trust for any religious or charitable purposes, Catholic or Protestant.

Another result is, that while the Protestants deplore the awful need that exists for spiritual instruction and charitable ministrations, and the enormously increasing mass of misery and depravity, all efforts to meet the exigency are repressed by law, and the exertions of the Catholic Church, which alone, by her religious orders, could effectually grapple with it, are especially exposed to legal proscription, and her property liable to legal confiscation. Surely it is time that a policy so suicidal should be reversed, and such is the scope, the object, and the aim of the present work-a plea for piety and charity.

Temple, 1852.

HISTORY

OF

THE LAWS

OF

MORTMAIN.

THE Church had virtually acquired property long before the time of Constantine, for the emperor ordained that all things which had been unjustly taken from the Church, whether houses or lands, should be restored to her; and, at the same time, made it lawful for all persons to leave property to her by will.* Property given to the Church was, in reality, given for the erection and reparation of churches, the necessary maintenance of the clergy, and the relief of the poor. At the very origin and rise of Christianity, it was a "counsel of perfection" that those who had property should share it with those who had none :† and so soon as peace succeeded persecution,+ Christians formed commu

* Thomassinus de vet. et nov. Dis. Eccl. pars iii, lib. i, cited by Digby. + In the Acts of the Apostles we read that those who had lands, etc., shared the proceeds with their fellow-Christians.

A religious order is a society of Christians living together under certain rules, for the purpose of practising the Gospel precepts. Whatever may be the form of their institutions, they have for their object more than the mere observance of the precepts: the idea of perfection is always included. Having heard from the lips of their Divine Master the words "If you would be perfect, sell all you have and give to the poor", they have embraced the precept with courage. In the cradle of Christianity we find the faithful, under the direction of the apostles, united, and had all their property in common. According to Cassian, this kind of life was never wholly interrupted: there were always some fervent Christians who continued it; thus attaching, by a continued chain, the existence of the monks to the primitive associations of apostolic times. And from the time that peace was given to the Church, she was never without religious communites.-Balmez, Protestantism compared with Catholicism, c. 31.

nities for this purpose, who were called emphatically "religious," because appearing to be so in perfection. In favour of such religious communities the pagan laws, prohibiting the bequests of property to communities or corporate bodies, were formally abrogated by Constantine, and important privileges were conferred upon them by Charlemagne.* And, as the pagans had spent their surplus wealth in erecting baths, colosseums, pyramids, and arches; Christianity raised monasteries, hospitals, colleges, and cathedrals. These religious foundations were the first institutions of charity; and what was given to the Church, especially to these orders, was invariably given to the poor.† But the material advantages they imparted to a country ‡ were

* See Dollinger's Church History, part ii, c. 10.

It was one and the same thing to give to the poor and to give to the Church; for all the substance of the Church was the patrimony of the poor, and the money intended for the poor was therefore committed to the Church: and this will partly explain why Constantine decreed that the clergy should be exempt from paying taxes. In the primitive times, the bishop was the sole dispenser of the goods of the Church by the hands of the deacons. Thus we read in the Apostolical Constitutions, which are of great antiquity: “It is for you laymen to contribute liberally; it is for the bishop or the administrator of ecclesiastical matters to dispense. Beware, however, lest you wish to call the bishop to account, for he has God to call him to account." But the bishop was bound to follow the canonical law of dispensation; and if he swerved from it was amenable to the metropolitan.

This law divided the goods of the Church into four parts; one for the poor, one for the clergy, one for the bishop, to enable him to exercise hospitality, and one for the repair of churches. Under Charlemagne, two parts out of every three of all the alms conferred upon the clergy and the monks should be given to the poor. The charge of Pope St. Gregory to St. Augustine, the apostle of England, respecting the distribution of ecclesiastical goods was, "that they should be dispensed to the poor, and for the purpose of educating youth in schools to the glory of God, and the utility of man". In 1134, a general chapter of the Cistercian order decreed that the goods of the Church were to be expended upon the poor. The Council of Trent recognized and renewed all the old canons to the same effect. And the last archbishop whom England possessed after the Reformation, Cardinal Pole, legate of the Apostolic See, reminded the clergy in 1566 of the charge of Pope Gregory to St. Augustine, and declared that the ministers of holy Church ought to be ever the fathers of the poor.-Mores Catholici, b. i, c. iii.

Perhaps it will be said, that the immense properties acquired by the monasteries, were an abundant recompense for their labours, and therefore a

not considered so great a blessing and benefit, as the piety in which works of charity arose,* and at the same time the pious uses to which the property of the Church was devoted, were not deemed so important as the motive which dictated them; and the Church carefully taught, that no duty could be lawfully disregarded on the specious pretext of enriching her. The author of Mores Catholici tells us, "In 813, a council of bishops under Charlemagne, grievously inveighed against those who tempted the faithful to endow the Church, and ordered such gifts to be restored to the heirs or next of kin, beyond what

proof that they were not disinterested. No doubt, if we look at things in the light in which certain writers have represented them, the wealth of the monks will appear as the fruit of unbounded cupidity. But we have the whole of history to refute the calumnies of the enemies of religion. Besides the numerous religious motives which brought property into the hands of the monks, there is another very legitimate one, which has always been regarded as one of the justest titles of acquisition. The monks cultivated waste lands, dried up marshes, constructed roads, restrained rivers, and built bridges. A considerable portion of Europe had never received cultivation from the hands of man; the forests, the lakes, the rivers, the thickets, were as rough as they had been left by the hand of nature. The monasteries which were founded here and there, were centres of action which civilized nations established in new countries, the face of which they purposed to change. Are not those who reclaim a waste country, cultivate it, and fill it with inhabitants, worthy of preserving large possessions there? Who knows how many cities and towns arose under the shadow of the abbeys? These religious foundations joined all the riches and power of feudal lords with the mild and beneficent influence of religious authority. And it is to the existence of monasteries in retired places that we owe the establishment of life in the country, which would have been impossible without the ascendancy and beneficial influence of the powerful abbeys. (Balmez, Protestantism and Catholicism, c. xli.) How accurately all this is applicable to our own country and history from the earliest times, see MacCabe's Catholic History of England.

* And the prayers by which they were accompanied. St. Augustine, himself one of the founders of religious orders, said that those who were excited to a contemplative life, were conducive to the good of the republic by those prayers. The illustrious emperor who ruled Italy, Germany, and France, said, "God can assist us more by the prayers of his saints, than by all the military forces in the world”: and in our own Anglo-Saxon laws it is laid down as the great duty of monks "fervently to intercede for all Christian people."-Laws of King Ethelred.

was just and reasonable'.*

St. Gregory thus laid down the Catholic teaching in his 'Morals', He who gives his external substance to the needy but does not preserve himself free from sin, gives his property to God and himself to the devil."+

This", says Digby, "is not the language of those who thirst for the riches of the laity."

In our own country, the rise of religious houses is coeval with the earliest origin of Christianity. The monastery of Glastonbury existed in the time of the ancient Britons, ages before the invasion of the Saxons. And after the Saxons were converted to Christianity this ancient foundation was restored, and similar ones established all over the country. The Catholic Church, of which these were the first fruits, was thus in active working in this country, ages before there was a crown or realm of England. And, as the Church was the basis of our national,§ so her religious houses were the origin of our municipal system, for the foundation of a monastery was usually followed by the rise of a town around its precincts, to which privileges were accorded by monarchs out of love for the religious houses to which they formed a sort of suburb. Thus arose our borough towns. And there is scarcely an ancient city or town in the kingdom, the foundation of which cannot be traced to the establishment of a religious house.|| The archiepiscopal see of Canterbury exercised her authority over all the Saxon states long before Egbert exercised sovereignty over all England. And long anterior to that era, successive Anglo-Saxon sovereigns

* "Hoc vero quod quisque Deo juste et rationabiliter de rebus suis offert, firmiter ecclesia tenere debet." Cited Mores Catholici, b. i, c. iii, and in Thomassinus, De vet. Eccles. Disciplina, pars iii, lib. i, c. iv.

† A widow left her house to the Church, and her son unprovided for: he complained to this Pope Gregory, who ordered it to be restored.-Thomassinus, iii, i, 4.

See William of Malmesbury's History.

§ Thus the celebrated laws of Edward the Confessor commence thus: "A sancta itaque ecclesia exordium sumentes per quam rex et regnum solide subsistere haberent". (Ang.-Sax. Laws.) And in point of fact, Theodore, as Archbishop of Canterbury under the Holy See, "governed" all England long before Egbert ascended its throne.

|| See numerous instances mentioned in MacCabe's Catholic History; and see an article in the Rambler for November on the subject.