Will and Testament of Clerics

Roman law allowed clerics to dispose of their property by will or otherwise. Bishops, however, were incapable of bequeathing goods acquired in the episcopate, these going to pious purposes in the diocese of the deceased. Goods possessed by bishops before entering the episcopate, as well as the property of all clerics dying intestate, passed on to their lawful heirs, or, when these were wanting, to the churches to which the decedents were attached (Cod. Just., lib. I, titt. iii, xli, sections 5,6; Novel., cxxiii, 19; cxxxi 13). Clerics succeeded to the property of intestates in the same manner as laymen [Cod., lib. I, titt. iii, liv (lxvi), sect. 6], and their ecclesiastical earnings were not brought into computation (Cod., lib. I, tit. xxxiii). The same law applied to regulars also (Cod., lib. I, tit. liv, sect. 7), but this was afterwards altered, the community succeeding to the rights of regulars (Novel., v, 5; xcciii, 38). While it is not easy in the mass of legislation of the first eight centuries to determine just what is of ecclesiastical origin, we may conclude that ancient canons forbade the inferior clergy as well as bishops to bequeath property that they had acquired through the church. Early ecclesiastical law gave to bishops the right of ownership and the disposition of property by will, while it was not licit for the clergy of lower grades to own anything, all goods being possessed in common. Property, too, of bishops acquired in the episcopate with funds accruing from the church reverted at death to the diocese [cf. Canon, Apostolorum, nn. 39 (40), 75; Gratian., P. II, Cau. XII, q. 1]. Inventories of private an ecclesiastical goods possessed by bishops were prescribed, and the later were not to be bequeathed with the former (Counc. Antioch, A.D. 341, xxiv-v; Counc. Epaon, A.D. 517, xvii). +