Church patronage

Use in the book

Burton’s imagined commonwealth replaces patronal influence with personal merit and examined qualifications. One provision excludes deputies and advowsons, promising immediate possession to a person able and willing to do the work himself. The later arrangement assigns church discipline to bishops, rejects impropriations and individual patrons, and places patronage in collective societies and corporations. Candidates are to come from the universities and be examined like Chinese learned officials; congregations are limited to a thousand hearers. The proposals reorganize nomination and income rather than simply abolishing all institutional oversight. Burton immediately admits that perfectly virtuous officeholders cannot be obtained and that he must take the people available.

The satire explains the pressures behind the reform. In his defence of discussing medicine, Burton imagines a clergyman who can obtain nothing except through simony and asks why he may not practise medicine instead. This is not a confession that Burton bought a living. Elsewhere a household chaplain’s reward may be a Living to the halves, an office whose income he must share, or a rectory entangled with a marriage arranged through his patron’s household. The reward remains uncertain, and offending the household can bring dismissal. The example, invoking Barclay’s Euphormio, makes appointment a form of personal dependence.

In the account taken from John Howson’s sermon, years of costly education still leave the clergyman paying for a worn-out lifetime’s access to a living. The payment threatens spiritual standing and present and future appointments as well as finances. Burton then hears an objection: perhaps the scholars themselves are to blame. He concedes that without buyers there would be no sellers and that both sides are guilty, though at this point he assigns patrons the greater fault. His own disappointed advancement is treated more hesitantly, as misfortune or personal negligence, and he acknowledges contentment with what he has. The separate praise of worthy patrons prevents the accusation from covering everyone who supports scholars.

Covetousness supplies Burton’s moral explanation of simony. His catalogue places it beside fraud and oppression; the extended attack connects the sale of livings with withholding clerical income and church dues. Tithes are payments for church support, traditionally a tenth of produce or income. The patrons he attacks deny either the sin or the claim that the dues are owed by divine authority. Burton answers with religious invective and predictions of ruin, even admitting the coldness of his own charity. The eagle carrying stolen sacrificial meat and a live coal to its nest becomes the emblem of church-chopping: the alleged gain destroys its possessor. This is a fable and a theological warning, not an independently established account of what happened to every dealer’s family.

Patrons hold an inherited right in trust to grant livings for the Church’s good. To present a clergyman is to nominate him to a living. Burton’s satire turns the candidate’s greatest gifts into the cash he offers and describes appointments made conditional on surrendering income and preaching as the patron wishes. His assurance that the pastoral charge is well supplied is sarcastic: he has just described the minister’s enforced conformity. Alongside this indictment, Burton’s original Seagrave margin records that Lord Berkly presented him to its rectory. It records the nomination without specifying its terms.

Appointment does not end insecurity. A minister may inherit a ruined house, disputes over dilapidations, and arrears. First fruits are based on the first year’s income; tenths are an annual tenth; procurations are visitation fees. These dues are not interchangeable with a bribe. A crackt title, a defective claim to the living, may lead to litigation, as in the reported Clenardus episode. Fear of a prior lapse concerns the right of appointment itself. Burton adds hostile parishioners and officials, but then expressly allows that a parish may contain peaceable, honest people; even that better case leaves the scholar feeling isolated from university life. His religious and social insults remain his account of the grievance.

The ensuing Latin passage turns the charge inward more sharply. Nundinationes means trafficking: Burton now attributes the Church’s shameful dealings to the fault, negligence and greed of his own community, especially university men. He attacks careless degree conferrals and dependent preachers, while expressly praising the many learned, upright members of the Church and universities. Nor does he confine the problem to low rank: the accusation reaches bishops, and he suggests that corruption may have spread from the highest downwards before declining to decide its ultimate origin. The Simoniacus, or simoniac, appears in a theological argument attributed to Leo: one who has not received grace cannot enjoy God’s favour. In Burton’s institutional application, some corrupt leaders obstruct others’ advancement. The article’s movement from grievance to shared responsibility is essential to its account of patronage.

The later tale of a Prebend, an endowed cathedral position, tests the hope of appointment by merit. Burton initially says that deserving candidates sometimes succeed, though seldom. In his tale, a lucrative vacancy attracts claims based on money, connections, promises, service and merit. A bishop freely chooses a deserving university scholar who has not applied and whom he knows only by reputation. The apparent consolation is then withdrawn: Burton calls the outcome pure fiction, something that never happened and is never likely to happen. This imagined award exposes his frustration rather than documenting a benevolent appointment.

Related entries

Living and preferment: The office, income and broader pursuit of advancement.

Cure: The pastoral charge entrusted to the officeholder.

Covetousness: Burton’s moral explanation of traffic in appointments.

Utopia: The setting of the proposed institutional reform.

Commonwealth: The public consequences of appointment and education.

Legal evidence: Documents and claims supporting title.

Abdicate: Giving up office and its rights.

Hospital: Other endowed forms of care and institutional support.

Mortmain: The historical holding of property by perpetual institutions.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 16–18simonie expanded as buying an appointment; the rhetorical defence of medical practice and the pressure on poor vicars.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 40–41merit, personal performance, and the exclusion of deputies and advowsons in the imagined commonwealth.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 26–28episcopal discipline, collective patronage, university selection and examination, and the limitation imposed by available people.
4. Subsection 12. Love of Money. Covetousness as a Cause · paragraphs 33–35simony among the alleged offspring of covetousness.
5. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 12–17dependent employment, the half-income living, the marriage condition and threatened dismissal.
6. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 1–15Howson’s sermon as introduced by Burton, the expense and risk of buying a living, the objection about buyers, and Burton’s personal qualification.
7. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 16–31simoniacal bargains, withheld revenues and tithes, divine-right dispute, the eagle exemplum and the value of generous patrons.
8. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 1–4; Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 18–20scholars’ failures in dealing with patrons and the explicit recognition of worthy benefactors.
9. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 21–34; Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 24–33entrusted patronal rights, gifts recast as cash, dependent preachers and present as nomination to church livings.
10. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 35–39the burdens after appointment, disrepair, first fruits, tenths, visitation fees, defective title, lapse, and the concession about peaceable parishioners.
11. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 1–13; Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraphs 14–22the Latin accusation against universities and clergy, the explicit exception for good members, corruption at high rank, simony and the qualified discussion of its origins. note 3631 distinguishes the printed negative at Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on the Misery of Scholars and Why the Muses Are Melancholy · paragraph 13 from the modern contextual interpretation.
12. Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air · paragraphs 2–4; note 5641Burton’s own nomination to the Seagrave rectory by Lord Berkly, recorded beside the account of its air.
13. Member 7 Against Rejection, Abuse, Injuries, Contempt, Disgrace, Insults, Slander, Mockery and the Like · paragraphs 17–24the lucrative prebend, a scholar rewarded without applying, and the explicit withdrawal of that happy ending as fiction.

In this edition

The institutional expansions preserve the inherited pairs: “advousons” → “rights of patronage over appointments”; “impropriations” → “church revenues appropriated to lay ownership”; “Simony” → “simony”; “Church-chopping Patrons” → “patrons who trade in church livings”; and “precedent Lapse” → “prior lapse of the right of appointment.” The last phrase makes the affected right explicit, while precedent itself means prior. Church-chopping expands into the trading clause; patrons is already present in the original.

Other expansions also require exact scope. In “sue for dilapidations” → “sue for the cost of the dilapidations,” the cost of is supplied to explain the object of the lawsuit. The rendering of crackt title specifies the living as the title’s object. The Latin nundinationes is plural, while the modern text uses the mass noun trafficking. The rendering of gratus concerns enjoying God’s favour, not an ability to give grace; the exact Leo passage remains unlocated.

The scholarly sermon is reported through Burton, not quoted here as an independently collated Howson text. The supplied note corrects Burton’s November 1597 date and printer Hartfield to the printed sermon’s December date and Hatfield. Clenardus’s ten-year lawsuit and the exact eagle fable likewise remain uncollated. The later Latin pages retain their sequence labels, including 145 [sequence; printed 141]; these should not be silently converted into ordinary printed-page references.

Advowson

Printed “advousons” (English; phrase).

Rights of patronage by which a patron presents a candidate to a church living.

Here: Burton excludes deputies and advowsons from his imagined appointment scheme, requiring personal qualification and performance.

Context: Burton’s proposal for his invented commonwealth, following the promise of appointments without bribes or intercession.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: advousons

Modern rendering: rights of patronage over appointments

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern phrase expands the institutional noun rather than translating it as the appointments themselves.

Church living; benefice

Printed “church livings” (English; phrase).

Ecclesiastical offices carrying an income.

Here: Collective societies and corporations replace individual patrons, and university candidates are to be examined and approved.

Context: Burton’s institutional proposal; the following admission that ideal personnel are impossible qualifies its implementation.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: church livings

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The established phrase is retained; living denotes the endowed office, not merely a dwelling.

Church-chopping patrons

Printed “Church-chopping Patrons” (English; phrase).

Patrons who deal or traffic in church appointments; chopping here means trading.

Here: The accusation treats benefices as merchandise and compares sacrilegious dealers to the eagle destroyed by the sacrificial fire it stole.

Context: Burton’s moral exemplum and denunciation; the predicted ruin is his theological claim, not an independently verified consequence.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Church-chopping Patrons

Modern rendering: patrons who trade in church livings

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Patrons supplies patrons, while Church-chopping expands into the relative clause who trade in church livings. The preceding Symoniacal has its own modern counterpart outside this selected pair.

Uncertainty: The precise Aesopic version behind the eagle story remains unidentified.

Cracked title

Printed “crackt title” (English; phrase).

A defective legal claim to a living or appointment.

Here: Even after obtaining a benefice, the incumbent may face litigation over whether he holds it lawfully.

Context: Burton introduces Clenardus’s reported rectorship dispute as an example; its precise duration remains unverified.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: we light upon a crackt title

Modern rendering: we may find that our title to the living is defective

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Crackt contributes defective, title the legal claim; to the living supplies its contextual object. The modern may expresses the risk in the surrounding account.

Translator-supplied words: to the living, specifying the title’s contextual object

Dilapidations

Printed “dilapidations” (English; phrase).

Disrepair of church property for which its holder might be liable.

Here: A new incumbent must repair a ruined house and may sue or be sued over the cost.

Context: Burton’s account of the burdens attached to a living.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: sue for dilapidations

Modern rendering: sue for the cost of the dilapidations

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern phrase makes explicit that the action seeks the cost; dilapidations itself names the disrepair.

Translator-supplied words: the cost of, supplied to explain what the suit seeks

First fruits

Printed “first fruits” (English; phrase).

A payment based on the first year’s income from a church living.

Here: First fruits enter the list of immediate financial burdens on the newly established incumbent.

Context: Burton lists these dues separately from the illicit purchase of an appointment.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: first fruits

Modern rendering: First fruits

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The historical name is retained; capitalization reflects its new sentence position.

Impropriation

Printed “impropriations” (English; phrase).

Church revenues appropriated to lay ownership.

Here: This concerns income, whereas the adjacent patronage provision concerns nomination to office.

Context: Burton prohibits impropriations in his imagined commonwealth while providing collective patronage.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: impropriations

Modern rendering: church revenues appropriated to lay ownership

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The expanded modern phrase explains the institutional arrangement.

Lapse of appointment

Printed “precedent Lapse” (English; phrase).

An earlier lapse of the right of nomination, potentially transferring that right after failure to appoint in time.

Here: The new incumbent fears a prior lapse that may threaten the validity of his own appointment.

Context: Burton’s catalogue of the continuing insecurities of clergy after obtaining a living.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: precedent Lapse

Modern rendering: prior lapse of the right of appointment

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Precedent contributes prior; the modern text expands Lapse by specifying the institutional right affected.

Qualification: The passage gives no statutory deadline or complete procedure; this is historical terminology, not present legal advice.

Living to the halves

Printed “to the halves” (English; phrase).

With only half the income retained.

Here: The dependent chaplain may receive a living on terms that surrender half its revenue, or a rectory tied to a marriage chosen through the household.

Context: Burton’s satirical example invokes Euphormio; may perchance marks the uncertain reward after years of service.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a Living to the halves

Modern rendering: a living with only half its income

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: To the halves supplies the condition with only half its income; Living supplies the endowed office.

Uncertainty: The precise Barclay episode remains uncollated; the marriage example includes Burton’s disparagement of a woman’s sexual reputation.

Nundinatio; trafficking in appointments

Printed “nundinationes” (Latin; lemma).

Dealings or trading; here shameful trafficking in church offices.

Here: The Latin turn accuses scholars and universities themselves of enabling the traffic through negligence and greed.

Context: Burton now says the same, perhaps greater, guilt can be charged against his own community, after earlier blaming patrons more heavily.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: quod tam frequentes, fœdæque fiant in Ecclesiâ nundinationes

Modern rendering: that such frequent and shameful trafficking goes on in the Church

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Nundinationes contributes trafficking; frequentes and fœdæ frequent and shameful; in Ecclesiâ in the Church; fiant goes on in the singular English construction.

Grammar: Nundinationes is nominative plural, the subject of fiant; the English uses the singular mass noun trafficking.

Prebend

Printed “Prebend” (English; lemma).

An endowed cathedral position or its income.

Here: A lucrative prebend becomes vacant in a tale about competing claims and appointment by merit.

Context: Burton initially allows that deserving men sometimes succeed, though seldom. His bishop freely chooses an unapplying scholar known only by reputation, but the ending expressly withdraws this award as pure fiction, never actual and never likely.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: fat Prebend

Modern rendering: lucrative prebend

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Fat supplies lucrative; Prebend supplies the endowed cathedral position. The financial adjective does not belong to the noun’s definition.

Present; nomination

Printed “present” (English; family).

Nominate a person to an ecclesiastical living.

Here: The patrons employ compliant clergymen and nominate them to church livings, while university scholars remain unused.

Context: Burton’s satirical account contrasts an entrusted hereditary right exercised for the Church’s good with cash payments and compelled conformity. The patrons nominate; the clergymen are the objects of their action.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: present to Church livings

Modern rendering: nominate to church livings

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Present contributes nominate; to Church livings identifies the appointments to which the clergymen are nominated.

Further local use

Printed “presented” (English; family).

Citation key: Present; nomination.

Here: Burton records his own appointment to the rectory of Seagrave by Lord Berkly.

Context: Burton’s original autobiographical margin names his patron but supplies neither a forename nor terms from which corruption could be inferred.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: presented thereto by my right honorable Patron the Lord Berkly

Modern rendering: presented to it by my right honourable patron, Lord Berkeley

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Presented retains the nomination sense; thereto and to it refer to the rectory. By marks the nominating agent. This is a retained and modernized English margin, not a phrase in the modern body.

Modern container: note

Qualification: Page 261 is supplied from sequence; the scan has no visible printed number, as the accompanying note and the accompanying note explain. The canonical typed source label remains 261.

Sense relation: The same nomination act, now in Burton’s own recorded appointment rather than the satirical general complaint.

Procurations

Printed “procurations” (English; phrase).

Payments associated with ecclesiastical visitations.

Here: These visitation charges add to the newly appointed minister’s immediate obligations.

Context: Burton’s catalogue of dues; the noun alone does not establish that every such fee is corrupt.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: procurations

Modern rendering: visitation fees

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern phrase names the institutional occasion of the payment.

Simoniacus; simoniac

Printed “Simoniacus” (Latin; phrase).

A person involved in simony, the purchase or sale of spiritual office.

Here: The attributed argument says the simoniac has not received grace and cannot enjoy God’s favour; Burton then accuses some leaders of obstructing others’ advancement.

Context: The theological argument is attributed to Leo, whose exact text remains unlocated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Simoniacus

Modern rendering: the simoniac

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The Latin substantive is rendered by its English equivalent with the article required in the modern sentence.

Uncertainty: The supplied edition interprets gratus as enjoying God’s favour, not giving grace; the precise Leo source is unresolved.

Simony

Printed “Simony” (English; phrase).

Buying or selling spiritual offices or privileges.

Here: Simony joins fraud, robbery and oppression as an effect of covetousness in Burton’s catalogue.

Context: Burton expands the question from James 4:1 into his own moral diagnosis.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Simony

Modern rendering: simony

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The historical term is retained with modern capitalization.

Further local use

Printed “simonie” (English; phrase).

Citation key: Simony.

Here: The clergyman unable to obtain a living without purchase is part of Burton’s defence of crossing professional boundaries.

Context: Burton’s rhetorical question; it does not confess that he bought a living himself.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: by simonie

Modern rendering: by buying a church appointment

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The modern phrase expands the noun into the act of buying an appointment.

Sense relation: The same prohibited purchase of office, with a spelling variant and explicit modern expansion.

Further local use

Printed “Simoniam” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: Simonia.

Here: Burton’s Latin accusation describes leaders carrying others toward simony and suggests corruption may spread downward from the highest ranks.

Context: Burton’s polemical account, introduced after expressly exempting good clergy and universities; origin is left unresolved.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: ad Simoniam

Modern rendering: towards simony

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Ad with accusative Simoniam supplies towards simony; the surrounding torch image supplies the leading or encouragement.

Sense relation: The same spiritual-office trafficking, expressed by the Latin noun rather than the English form; language and lemma are explicitly distinct.

Tenths

Printed “tenths” (English; phrase).

An annual tenth paid from a church living’s income.

Here: This recurring levy is distinguished from the first-year basis of first fruits.

Context: Burton’s list of charges on the incumbent.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: tenths

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: The name is retained without a modern equivalent amount.

Tithes

Printed “Tithes” (English; phrase).

Payments for church support, traditionally a tenth of produce or income.

Here: Burton attacks those withholding tithes alongside simoniacal patrons, and reports their denial that the dues are owed by divine law.

Context: Burton’s polemical argument; the divine-right claim is contested within the passage.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: detain Tithes

Modern rendering: withhold tithes

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase or construction in the supplied parallel text.

Word and construction: Detain means withhold, rather than hold a person in custody; Tithes retains the institutional noun.