Talk:Prebendary

Continental reformation
Prebendaries did in fact survive the continental reformations to some degree and still exist in Lutheran Germany. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.55.127 (talk) 12:39, 31 March 2009‎

Suggest Expanding the Parameters to Include All Systems with Prebends
This was originally a RC practice, but this article is written as if it were only Anglican churches that had or may still have it in a few cases. (I believe it's behind the more casual British saying--a couple of Austen novels come to mind--that a parish minister "had the living of" a given church: its endowed income had a line item for the minister's pay, in other words.)

In fact, the system was quite prevalent in both pre- and post-Reformation RC churches, and deserves a better and more full explanation than it's given here. It also ensured that the canons were present to sing the Office in the cathedral to which they were tied.

That basically connects with the comment above: not only RC and Anglican, but Lutheran practices should be considered, and some structures in other settings that were created in contrast (Congregational reformers started the idea that a new minsterial graduate could only be ordained if they had a paying position so as not to create more pastors than the church system could support.96.233.98.79 (talk) 05:32, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not really the same as a parish priest having a living. It is true clerical incomes varied greatly according to the property with which the parish as endowed, which generated the "living" for the local cleric. In the Church of England, this system has been replaced by one in which the Church Commissioners collect and redistribute clerical incomes on an agreed basis. However, a prebendal system is different, in that it used a portfolio of property to support a canon in a cathedral or college chapter. The property might be compact estate, but more often it was a scattered group of lands and might include rights, like running mills or ferries or holding markets. Formerly, including the situation in the medieval Catholic Church, the important distinction was between
 * 1. a portionary system, in which a group of clergy, not generally constituted as a corporate body like a college or chapter, collected and shared the total income of the church. This was common in the Anglo-saxon and Norman periods, when many rural churches covered huge, often turbulent, parishes and were staffed by numerous priests and deacons.
 * 2. a prebendal system, in which the income from a distinct property portfolio was generally earmarked for the occupant of a specific choir stall in the church. This system became steadily more common in England roughly from the mid-12th century, starting with major cathedral chapters and spreading to the colleges of secular canons. In many cases it was imposed on former royal chapels that had been seized by bishops or cathedral chapters during the Anarchy.

Obviously, in a prebendal system, even if the property portfolios started as equal in value, they might develop very differently, owing to different management or changing economic circumstance. In the Industrial Revolution, for example, some prebendaries found they were sitting on a coal mine, which might as well have been a gold mine, while sometimes their neighbours were stuck with agricultural estates of relatively declining value. Prebends were perhaps more likely to be burdened by legal problems relating to leases, as they were usually rented out to lay entrepreneurs, generating an income to pay a deputy for the prebendary, who would usually be an absentee and a pluralist.Sjwells53 (talk) 20:57, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I see no significant relevance
"In the Church of England, when a diocesan bishop retires, moves to another diocese or dies, the monarch will summon the greater chapter to elect a successor. This election is ceremonial, as the monarch (following the advice of the prime minister) tells the members of the greater chapter whom they are to elect." This has no bearing on the subject of this article, does it? Why is it included?? It should, imho, be removed.98.21.213.85 (talk) 14:48, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * The ceremony gives the prebendaries something to do, since (per the preceding sentence) they are part of the greater chapter. -- Wire723 (talk) 19:10, 25 November 2023 (UTC)