Lay abbot

'"abbot-count, lay abbot, abbot-soldier"') is a name used to designate a layman on whom a king or someone in authority bestowed an abbey as a reward for services rendered; he had charge of the estate belonging to it, and was entitled to part of the income.

Numerous synods held in France in the sixth and seventh centuries passed decrees against this abuse of church property.

Charles Martel was the first to bestow outright extensive existing ecclesiastical property upon laymen, political friends and soldiers.

The abbey of Saint-Riquier (Centula) in Picardy had secular abbots from the time of Charlemagne, who had given it to his friend Angilbert, the poet and the lover of his daughter Bertha, and father of her two sons.

In order to accomplish this it was necessary to restore the free election of abbots, and the appointment as well of blameless monks as heads of the monastic houses.

iii) about the lives of monks; many convents, it was said, were governed by laymen, whose wives and children, soldiers and dogs, were housed in the precincts of the religious.

[7] It was only through the so-called investitures conflict that the Church was freed from secular domination; the reforms brought about by the papacy put an end to the bestowal of abbeys upon laymen.