Proprietary church

During the Middle Ages, a proprietary church (Latin ecclesia propria, German Eigenkirche) was a church, abbey or cloister built on private ground by a feudal lord, over which he retained proprietary interests, especially the right of what in English law is "advowson", that of nominating the ecclesiastic personnel.

As early as the late 5th century, Pope Gelasius I listed conditions under which bishops could consecrate new churches within the metropolitan see of Rome.

[3] Within the Carolingian empire, the rules concerning proprietary churches had been expressly formulated in the ninth century, at the reforming councils of 808, under Charlemagne and of 818/9, under Louis the Pious.

The usufruct might be reserved to a female (ancilla dei) or a male as yet unborn, let alone not yet in Holy Orders, and allowed the donor to make provision for the support of family members.

[4] The proprietor and his heirs retained unabated legal rights to the ground on behalf of the saint whose relics lay beneath the altar.

Addleshaw, French historians attribute the development of proprietary churches to the decentralization that ensued with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West and the increased authority of late Roman and Merovingian landowners, who assumed responsibility for rural churches in lieu of bishops in their urban sees.

Simony, the outright purchase of an ecclesiastic position through payment or barter, was an ever-present problem, one that was attacked over and over in all the synods of the 11th- and early 12th-century Gregorian reforms, and fuelled the Investiture Controversy.