Originally a benefice was a gift of land for life as a reward (Latin beneficium, 'means to do well') for services rendered.

Under canon law it came to mean an income enjoyed -often linked to some land administered- by a priest in chief of an acclesistical office, such as a parish or monastic establishment, or a post of canon in a chapter. Each benefice had a number of "spiritualities", or spiritual duties, attached to it. For providing these spiritualities, a priest would receive "temporalities", or pay. From the medieval period onward, priests administered sacraments to their flock of faithfull and provided other services as well, under normal conditions. The pastorally served community was to provide for the priest as necessary, often in the form of tithes (a land based tax; in many cases this was in time partially or wholly lost to a temporal lord), while the elite provided patronage and made significant donations, in time concentrating enormous wealth in the 'dead hand' (i.e. exempt from succesion – and often of some other taxes) of the church. In Western culture, canon law is the law of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. ... Roman Catholic priest LCDR Allen R. Kuss (USN) aboard USS Enterprise A priest or priestess is a holy man or woman who takes an officiating role in worship of any religion, with the distinguishing characteristic of offering sacrifices. ... A sacrament is a Christian rite that mediates divine grace. ... A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a voluntary contribution or as a tax or levy, usually to support a religious organization. ...

Over time, the benefice system was abused throughout Europe, with some nations and times being worse than others. As benefices came to priests through feudal patronage and for political considerations, priests occasionally held more than one benefice, called pluralism. This pluralism quite often resulted in absenteeism, where the priest would not take care of his benefice. A really juice income often meant that a benefice was a good investment for a (usually noble) rich and influential family to buy trough simony for a younger son (not the heir, as an alternative to crusades etcetera) or other protégé, especially if he could also be their man in the powerfull clerical hierarchy. Other 'fat' benefices -even abbotships- were sometimes held in a perverse system were the elite held the nominal benefice with rich income, but (almost) never did any pastoral work, delegating this to far less payed priests of lower background. Furthermore, the lack of proper training untill the invention of seminars meant no quality guarantee: some priests were illiterate and a few even found to preach -ignorantly- heretical nonsense. World map showing location of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation. ... Simony is the ecclesiastical crime and personal sin of paying for offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church, named after Simon Magus, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles 8:18-24. ...

Such corruption later called for ecclesiastical reform in the church in the 15th and 16th centuries. Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, started as a significant leader in this drive for internal resourcing, but ended up starting the great Western Schisma (creating Protestantism, soon divided itself) in stead. After the Reformation, the new churches generally adopted systems of ecclesiastical polity that did not entail benefices, with the exception of the Church of England, whose founder, Tudor-king Henry VIII, confiscated most church lands (largely distributed amongst loyal nobles, however, otherwise the monarchy might have been financially independent from parliament) and abolished all monasteries. On the continent the French Revolution broke the back of the system by the Constitution civile du clergé, confiscating the vast capital of the church (mainly land; needed for the war effort) and paying for it by awarding the clergy that had lived from its proceeds a state salary (also a great means to get some grip on them), still in force in several countries including Belgium. At the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church called for the abolition of benefices in that church altogether. Martin Luther (originally Martin Luder or Martinus Luther) (November 10, 1483–February 18, 1546) was a German theologian and an Augustinian monk whose teachings inspired the Protestant Reformation and deeply influenced the doctrines of Protestant and other Christian traditions (a broad movement composed of many congregations and church bodies). ... The Protestant Reformation was a movement which began in the 16th century as a series of attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church, but ended in division and the establishment of new institutions, most importantly Lutheranism, Reformed churches, and Anabaptists. ... The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and acts as the mother and senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion as well as a founding member of the Porvoo Communion. ... The Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, was an Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI in 1965. ... The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian body in the world. ...

Sources and References

[Catholic Encyclopaedia]