It was an outcome of ancient canons which forbade clerics to dispose by will of goods accruing from their ecclesiastical office.
These canons were gradually relaxed because of the difficulty of distinguishing between ecclesiastical and patrimonial property.
Councils (Tribur, 895; Trosly, 909; Clermont, 1095; II Lateran, 1139) of the Church legislated against these abuses, finally obtaining a renunciation of this so-called right.
In the thirteenth century the Roman Church put forth in a modified way the same claim, and it eventually became a principle of canon law that the goods of beneficed ecclesiastics, dying intestate, belonged of right to the papal treasury.
In the Kingdom of Naples a compromise was made at the close of the sixteenth century, whereby the right was renounced for an annual payment to the papal treasury.