Church Property Research Articles

Moral restraints on wealth accumulation on papal estates in the long sixth century: revisiting Pope Gregory’s policies on alienating and ceding church property

Moral restraints on wealth accumulation on papal estates in the long sixth century: revisiting Pope Gregory’s policies on alienating and ceding church property

Conducting the census of 1701–1703 in monasteries: from revision to management

The article considers the question of how specifically the work on the state census of church property was organized in 1701-1703. The importance of this study is explained by the fact that the scribes sent by the Monastery Order (primarily the clerks) often remained in charge of the described monasteries after the census was completed. The author shows how the scribes obtained an exhaustive picture of the state of the entire monastic property, as well as accumulated data on the financial and economic documentation maintained in the monasteries, its accuracy and reliability, the people responsible for this or that property, estimated current income from various tangible assets, i.e. got acquainted with the entire system of organization of the monastic economy. This allowed them to manage church property at the next stage of the reform and effectively control the movement of financial flows

The Separation of Church and State as an Imperial Project in the Philippines during the Early American Colonial Period

This paper examines the separation of church and state in the Philippines during the early American colonial period, contextualizing it within the process of American overseas expansion and considering it as one of the projects of imperial hegemony construction. After the Spanish–American War, the United States substituted Spain as the new colonial ruler of the Philippines, legitimizing its regime as the spread of ‘civilization’ to the Filipinos. On this basis, the Americans enacted laws guaranteeing religious freedom and introduced an American-style institution dealing with church–state relations. Beyond the legal and administrative initiatives, the new regime also constructed an official narrative of the transformation of political–religious relations in the Philippine that emphasized the absolute ‘difference’ between the American human rights principle, which guaranteed freedom of worship, and the Spanish theocracy, which was dedicated to the consolidation of privileges. By legislating the separation of church and state, buying up church properties, recognizing the equality of denominations, and constructing the official imperial narrative of church–state relations, the Americans hoped to ‘teach’ Filipinos that the ‘true’ belief was rooted in the inner convictions of individual Christians, not in the authority and coercion of the hierarchical church. By disciplining the construction of ‘difference’ under tutelary colonialism, the separation of church and state movement initiated by the American colonial government in the Philippines became an important source of imperial self-endowed legitimacy.

Historical and legal aspects of the formation of the academic environment in Ukraine in the X-XII centuries (economic and legal aspect)

The article examines the historical and legal aspects of the formation and development of the oldest scientific centers of Kyivan Rus at the end of the 10th and beginning of the 12th centuries. Art., as well as the economic and legal regime of their property. It has been studied that in Kyivan Rus, as one of the powerful states of Europe in the IX–XII centuries. starting from the 10th century a significant development of education, literature and science was observed, which is connected with the Baptism of Vladimir the Great of Russia, the introduction of Byzantine, canonical law and the formation of the original ancient Russian state and legal thought. It has been established that education and science gained special development under Grand Duke Yaroslav the Wise at the end of the 10th century. and the formation of the first national science center in Ukraine – the academic center «Yaroslav Academy», which was established at Sophia Cathedral in 1037. It was found that the activities of the «Yaroslav Academy» were based on both national traditions and the use of ancient and Bulgarian-Byzantine experience. It was noted that the activities of the «Yaroslav Academy» were characterized by the presence of a spectrum of scientific directions: translation activities, creation of own literary works and the first legal monuments («Pravda Ruska»). It has been established that the «Yaroslav Academy» should be considered the first scientific academic environment on the territory of medieval Ukraine, which operated in the format of reviving and spreading scientific knowledge and creating its own scientific works. It is noted that one of the important issues of the Yaroslav Academy’s activities is the study of the economic and legal regime of its property. The article analyzes the legal regulation of land ownership, including the land ownership of the church (Kyiv Metropolis). It was found that the institution of the metropolis provided for the right to independent church-administrative activity in the internal affairs of its diocese. It was established that the management of church property was carried out in accordance with the church statutes. It was concluded that the economic management of the property of the «Yaroslav Academy» was carried out by the Kyiv Metropolitanate, which had the right to manage church property, which was formed at the expense of the «princely tithe», which was deducted in favor of the Church (Kyiv Metropolis) and profits from «church courts».

The Counts of Cilli and the Tools of Church Politics: patronage, advocacy and benefaction

The Counts of Cilli engaged in both secular and church politics. Two of the most important tools that they used to wield their influence on church politics were the right of patronage and advocacy over church institutions. Patronage enabled them to fill vacant ecclesiastic offices with priests from the ranks of their clientele, and advocacy allowed them to administer church property as well as exercise patrimonial rights and draw revenues arising therefrom. They further strengthened their reputation and influence in the Church or, rather, its institutions through generous service as benefactors of the Church, which earned them numerous benefits, not least being buried in monasteries.

Property Development, Management and Appraisal as a Panacea to Church Growth Branding and Remodeling in Nigeria

Abstract: This study is focused on examining the property development and management strategy that can lead to Church Growth, identifying both natural and human resources that can resuscitate the state of church properties at the urban, suburban and rural levels respectively for a healthy and sustainable environment through employing modern approaches that reveals and explore latent property values imbedded in church properties. The paper adopted both primary and secondary source for data collection. The findings show that lack of some professional skill in modern real estate practice has really affected church properties. The study recommends joint collaboration within the church and professional team, and a routine appraisal of church properties will always restore, preserve and improve God’s property the church.

The Impact of Sustainable Housing Infrastructure and Church Growth: The Unexplored Potentials and the Way Forward (Real Estate Approach)

Abstract: This study is basically targeted towards examining the impact of Sustainable Housing Infrastructure and Church Growth, identifying both internalities and externalities that makes for revamping and rebranding church properties for a healthy and sustainable environment through employing modern technicalities and framework that reveals and explore latent property values imbedded in church properties (housing). The input should touché across the basic dimensions of sustainability which is environment, economy, social and cultural. These considerations will go through a process, if well harness will deliver a desired output that encompasses availability, affordability, durability and harmony. The paper relied on literature review for textual data in support of sustainable infrastructural development. The findings reveal that the church can be remodel using some technological techniques which are environmental friendly, economically accessible, socially accommodating and culturally harmonious. The paper solicits for a more committed Christian efforts and inclusive review and participation in providing sustainable housing infrastructure in the church.

Церковь и ее епископы в остготской Италии: правоимущественный аспект

This article is an attempt to address a range of problems related to the study of church property in Italy during the Ostrogothic domination (493–554). For a long time, these problems were on the periphery of scientific relevance and found their researchers only in the 20th century. This is largely due to the yet unresolved issues of our main source on the history of Ostrogothic Italy — Cassiodorus' «Variae». The lack of unanimity as to the time and place of its creation, intended audience, genre and overall representativeness of the material compels the researcher to resort to other sources, in particular to the Ravenna papyri, which largely supplement the data of the «Variae». The author focuses on three main aspects that define the structure of the article. The first part is devoted to the problem of the geographical distribution of ecclesiastical lands, as well as to the possibilities of estimating the size of the land plots belonging to the Church. The second section deals with the system of church property management. It demonstrates the general continuity in its structure from the beginning of the 5th century, and also reveals some peculiarities of this system, connected with the increased role of bishops and the functioning of the institution of defensores ecclesiae. The third part is dedicated to the legal status of ecclesiastical land. It is based on the critique of J. Durliat’s theory of subordination of the Church to the state in the matter of handling its land property and finance. The analysis of the vocabulary of ownership rights characteristic of the Roman law and reflected in the sources under study leads to the assertion that the Church had full ownership over its estates, and that ecclesiastical land plots were not part of the public land.

Public justifications in differentiated symbolic spheres: Czech restitution of church property

ABSTRACT This article analyses the media statements by Czech church representatives on the restitution of church property. It traces the debate from the fall of communism in 1990 until 2019 via two centre-left and centre-right newspapers and the official periodicals of the two largest Czech churches, the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. At the theoretical and methodological level, I show the advantages of combining pragmatic and cultural sociology approaches, specifically Boltanski and Thévenot’s modes of justification and Alexander and Smith’s civil and non-civil spheres. This analytical approach allows for a better understanding of the dynamics of symbolic discursive dominance in public disputes. The churches’ efforts to achieve public credibility have primarily relied on emphasising efficiency, expertise and transparency. Surprisingly, these attributes, typical of the Czech civil sphere, were also prevalent arguments within intra-church discourses.

Fighting over Churches: Augsburg and Multiconfessional Cities in the Thirty Years War

Abstract The religious overtones of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) resonated in particular in multiconfessional towns and cities like Augsburg. Not only were churches destroyed, desecrated or reassigned in deliberate acts of war, but the military supremacy of one side or the other could mean a permanent end to the ability of a portion of the city’s inhabitants to practise their religion. In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia recognized the existence of multiple confessions and clarified ownership of church properties, allowing minority confessions to rebuild their churches and schools. In some multiconfessional towns such as Heidelberg and Hanau, Lutheran congregations took advantage of the provisions of the peace to build elaborate churches where none had existed before. Lingering fear of confessional annihilation drove postwar fundraising efforts for the building or rebuilding of churches. The memory of the trauma of war was expressed in confessionally specific ways until the significance of religious coexistence in German history was reassessed after the Second World War.

Boulevards, Festivities, and Earthquakes: The Making of Guatemala City, 1880–1920

This article examines the socio-political and urban-cultural transformation of space in Guatemala City between 1871 and 1920, spearheaded by the rise of a new political regime known as the liberal reform period. By focusing on the social construction of the new public spaces of power, this study explores how the transformation of the capital city was one of the key instruments of the authoritarian regimes to legitimise their authority, power and new secular values in the urban space. The urban transformation redefined the use of land for capitalist development (expropriation of church properties and privatisation of communal lands), setting up new boundaries and reorganizing the capital in a new dynamic of urban segregation. It also meant the exclusion of the Indigenous population from living in the city. This study pays special attention to the role of three figures as the main protagonists and promoters of the localized urban transformations in Guatemala City during their respective reigns: Justo Rufino Barrios (1873–1885), José María Reyna Barrios (1892–1898) and Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920). Lefebvre’s conception of the social production of space is mobilized to analyze the creation of the material setting and the construction of those new spaces of power carefully planned and embedded with political meaning during the first period of modern urban growth in Guatemala City. Drawing on a variety of primary sources such as official records (Laws and Decrees, Memoirs of Public Works, Municipal records), newspapers, commercial guides, illustrated journals, city plans, postcards and photo albums, the article demonstrate how the new modern urban space was reorganized with clear political and economic interests, setting up a new process of urban segregation. The study also highlights the limitations and contradictions of the selected urban transformations, which ended abruptly with the earthquakes of 1917–18.

Between Politicisation and Depoliticisation: Restitution of Church Property in Czech Republic

Between Politicisation and Depoliticisation: Restitution of Church Property in Czech Republic

Dva notářské instrumenty z roku 1419 k dějinám řeholních kanovníků sv. Augustina v Kladsku. Pramenná edice

During the 14th century, canon law gained considerable influence. All cases which related to clergy and Church property were dealt with solely by the ecclesiastical courts. During the preparatory phases of court proceedings, public notaries were very important. They were mainly involved in appointing legal representatives and producing verified copies of important documents. The objective of this article is to present two notarial instruments produced by public notaries: Materna, the son of Doctor Martin of Kladsko, and Nicolas, called Naso, the son of Henry of Chojnów. Both instruments were produced in 1419 and relate to the monastery of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine in Kladsko. The documents are kept in the Kladsko parish archive under numbers A 4 b and A 12 i. Attached is a critical edition of both notarial instruments. The first instrument incorporates documents of Wenceslas IV, King of Bohemia, Charles IV, King of Bohemia, and Arnošt of Pardubice, Archbishop of Prague, which show the ownership of properties in the Kladsko region and outside it. The second instrument records the appointment of legal representatives of the convent at the ecclesiastical courts. We do not have any direct evidence of the subject of the monastery’s dispute, but one can assume that it related to long-term disputes with the holders of fiefs in the Kladsko region. These disagreements related to economic immunity (unauthorised attempts to collect royal taxes for the monastery’s properties) and, to a lesser extent, other matters.

Dutch Reformed Church in inner city Pretoria: forming a new church space in South Africa: 1856–2020

The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, over time, became a state church and aligned with the Apartheid regime and in some corners supported separate development. Moreover, the church would, working with colonial and apartheid cultural powers granted to it, gain numerous landholdings across South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church property ownership, revealed in a 1998 inventory (which was said to be incomplete), sat at 600 properties and covering over fourteen thousand hectares. This article will discuss the church’s rise in the colony and in South Africa’s northern areas. It will also explain its historical landholding in South Africa in general as well as in the capital, Pretoria. Moreover, it will detail interviews with church leaders in a presbytery in Pretoria and explain learnings from history and spatial changes and what these may mean for the church at large.

Погромы и грабежи церковной собственности в начальный период Гражданской войны

The article explores the looting and pogroms of church property during the first year of the Russian Civil War. At that time, not only were monasteries plundered, but also some temples connected in one way or another with property owners became objects of pogroms. Witnesses of these events were often bewildered by the cruelty and indifference to their shrines that were demonstrated by Orthodox laity during these robberies and defeats. The perpetrators were mainly local peasants, often accompanied by soldiers. While sacrilegious acts sometimes occurred during these attacks, it is inaccurate to attribute them solely to the influence of Bolshevik agitation or anti-religious attitudes of the rioters. Peasants who committed a pogrom against a monastery or parish church could demand from a terrified priest to take less money for fulfilling their demands. Moreover, many of the clergy and the monk were local residents and the attackers knew them. Both wealthy and impoverished monasteries suffered significant losses during these attacks. At the same time, especially in urban areas, the broad masses of the people could stop the actions of the authorities directed against church property. For example, a huge number of the capital's population came to the defense of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, but pogrom sentiments still prevailed. Many, including church leaders, considered the events to be the collapse of the Slavophile doctrine of the “God-bearing people”б interpreting the population’s actions as a rebellion against the Church and a resurgence of pagan influences.

IZVEŠTAJ PROTOJEREJA MIHAILA POPOVIĆA O RESTITUCIJI CRKVENE IMOVINE OTUĐENE POD BUGARSKOM OKUPACIJOM U PRVOM SVETSKOM RATU

Under the Bulgarian military, civil and church authorities in the territory of the occupied Kingdom of Serbia in the First World War, in addition to other crimes, the various movable property of the Serbian Orthodox Church was confiscated. In this connection, the paper will analyze in more detail and present t he report of archpriest Mihailo Popović, parish priest of Belgrade, who was entrusted with the mission of returning church property from Bulgaria in 1921. This document is a valuable historical source that testifies not only to the factual consequences of the Bulgarian occupation administration and the attack on Serbian spiritual and cultural heritage, but also to Popović’s personal impressions of the situation in the Bulgarian church and the attitude of its dignitaries towards the past war and Serbian-Bulgarian relations. The document is stored in the fund of the Ministry of Religion Archives of Yugoslavia.

Overview of the Church’s Property Law in the Czech Lands during the Middle Ages

Aim of the study is to provide an overview of the issue of Church property law in Bohemia and Moravia during the Middle Ages. Specifically, we consider the territory of the Prague and Olomouc dioceses. The main founder of churches and ecclesiastical institutions in the early Middle Ages was the duke, while from the 12th century magnates also became involved in founding these institutions. In the early period of founders, the property donated to the Church was treated in the spirit of respecting the rights of the proprietary churches. The law of patronage, which was progressively implemented during the 13th century and first half of the 14th century, brought change. In order to exclude the assets of ecclesiastical institutions, including the serfs who lived there, from the general legal system, immunities were important. Bishoprics and individual monasteries received immunity documents from the mid-12th century, and to a greater extent from the early 13th century.

Вопрос об имуществе Армянской Апостольской церкви на Дону в конце XIX – начале XX века

The article deals with the problems of relations between the Russian government and the Armenian Apostolic Church at the end of the XIX-beginning of the XX centuries. The adoption of the law of June 12, 1903 by Prince G. S. Golitsyn on the seizure of church property of the AAC. The negative consequences of this law on the affairs of the Armenian church in the city of Nakhichevan-on-Don, followed by problems in parochial schools are traced.

Economic Activity in the Church – the Penal Dimension. Comments on the Amendment to Canon 1376 CIC

The 1983 Code of Canon Law does not contain any norms regulating the economic activity of ecclesiastical juridic persons. This does not mean, however, that canon law has no regard for that. The ecclesiastical legislator’s concern for the supervision of economic activity is expressed in the regulation of rather complex ways of managing church property, including the special act of its alienation, and determination of penal sanctions for violating the relevant rules. The penal norm of Canon 1377 that was previously in force, penalizing the alienation of church property without the requisite permission, has now been significantly extended. Pope Francis, reforming Book VI of the Code of Canon Law, expanded the scope and principles of penal liability for economic abuses by redacting Canon 1376 anew. The norm of this provision penalises the offence of misappropriating or preventing the gaining of benefits from church goods (which was previously absent from the Code) and the offence of performing unlawful acts in the administration of church goods (which has been significantly extended). Reflecting on the penal aspect of administration of church property, the article attempts to answer the following questions: What are these offences? What was the legislator’s intention? What is the essence of the penal law reform in the area at hand?

Emphyteusis in a Time of Death

This article explores developments in Justinian’s legislation on church property as evidence of economic strain during the plague of the early 540s. It argues that changes to such laws that have recently featured in scholarly literature, namely the permission introduced by Novel 120 for the sale and emphyteutic lease of church-owned immovable property, were merely incremental and provide evidence for a plague-induced crisis that is at best equivocal. Other features of this same law that have not yet been adduced in scholarly literature on plague, however, potentially shed additional light on the consequences of plague for churches and related institutions. More generally, it is intended that this study make two methodological contributions to current discussions of the so-called Justinianic plague: first by demonstrating the limited utility of calculating rates of new laws per year or per decade, and second by showing the importance of contextualizing Justinian’s Novels not just in light of contemporaneous measures but also in light of the diachronic development of the area of law of which they form part.