Commendatory Abbot - History

History

As early as the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) vacant abbeys were given in commendam to bishops who had been driven from their episcopal sees by invading barbarians. The practice began to be seriously abused in the eighth century when the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kings assumed the right to set commendatory abbots over monasteries that were occupied by religious communities. Often these commendatory abbots were laymen, vassals of the kings, or others who were authorized to draw the revenues and manage the temporal affairs of the monasteries in reward for military services. These secular appointments often gave the position of commendatory abbot to unqualified people who mismanaged their monasteries. The practice was especially widespread in the early tenth century, when Marozia was influential in Rome and Italy, and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, during the reigns of Henry IV of Germany, Philip I of France, William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Henry I and Henry II of England.

After the eighth century various attempts were made by popes and councils to regulate the appointment of commendatory abbots. At the Concordat of Worms in 1122, when the Investiture Controversy was settled in favour of the church, the appointment of laymen as commendatory abbots was abolished. The practice again increased during the Avignon Papacy (1309–1377) and especially during the Papal Schism (1378–1417), when the papal claimants gave numerous abbeys in commendam in order to increase the number of their adherents. Boniface VIII (1294–1303) decreed that a benefice with the cure of souls attached should be granted in commendam only in great necessity or when evident advantage would accrue to the Church, but never for more than six months (c. 15, VI, De elect., 1, 6). Clement V (1305–1314) revoked benefices which had been granted by him in commendam at an earlier date (Extr. comm., c. 2, De praeb., 3, 2). The Council of Trent (Sess. XXV, cap. xxi, de Regularibus) determined that vacant monasteries should be bestowed only on pious and virtuous regulars, and that the motherhouse of an order, and the abbeys and priories founded immediately from it, should no longer be granted in commendam. The succeeding bull "Superna" of Gregory XIII and the constitution "Pastoralis" of Innocent X greatly checked in commendam appointments but did not abolish them entirely.

Especially in France, they continued to flourish to the detriment of the monasteries; for example the Abbey of Cluny. Finally the French Revolution and the general secularization of monasteries in the beginning of the eighteenth century reduced the significance of commendatory abbots along with the significance of monasteries in general. Since that time commendatory abbots have become very rare, and the former abuses have been abolished by careful regulations. There are still a few commendatory abbots among the cardinals; Pope Pius X himself was Commendatory Abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Subiaco near Rome.