§ 22.
Although monks and canons were bound to
individual poverty and all who attempted to accumulate
a private store of money were liable to punishment,
the greater monasteries were large landowning corporations.
Their early benefactors bestowed gifts of
manors and churches upon them for which they were
bound in return to the sole service of praying for the
souls of the donors. Such alienations were regulated
by the statute of mortmain (1279). Benefactions
continued under the procedure established by this
act, and the monasteries thus became owners of a
very large number of parish churches. The custom
of appropriation and its effects on the fabrics of parish
churches has been stated in another volume of this
series
[4]. The constant plea for appropriation was
founded on the insufficiency of the funds of a monastery
to fulfil its duty of hospitality to wayfarers and
of relief to the poor. In churches of which monks
were proprietors, the vicar was a resident secular
priest. Monks were not allowed, save in very exceptional
cases, to serve the cures of parishes, which
would have interfered with their duties in quire and
cloister. Wherever we find it stated in print that an
incumbent of a parish church or chantry was a monk,
we should hesitate to believe it without consulting
the original record of his institution. Canons, on the
other hand, whose orders began in the association of
secular priests under a rule, were given more licence
in this respect. Premonstratensian canons were
generally allowed to serve the parish churches belonging
to their houses; and bishops granted similar
licences, though not without demur, to Austin canons.
It is sometimes stated that the object of the Augustinian
order was to supply parochial clergy to
churches on their estates. If this was so, the custom
was severely checked in the thirteenth century; and,
when in the later middle ages the number of appropriated
churches served by Austin canons considerably
increased, the quire services in their monastic
churches suffered to an extent which was never
contemplated by their founders.
