Page "Concordat of Worms" Paragraph 6
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The most prized and contested rights that attached to benefices were inheritance and security against confiscation.
Inheritance was an important issue, since land could fall into the hands of those who did not have loyalty to the Church or the great lords.
The usual grant was in precaria, the granting of a life tenure, whereby the tenant stayed on the land only at the pleasure of the lord.
Counts ’ benefices came to be inherited as counties were broken up and as counts assimilated their offices and ex-officio lands to their family property.
In central Europe, kings and counts probably were willing to allow the inheritance of small parcels of land to the heirs of those who had offered military or other services in exchange for tenancy.
This was a source of profit to both churches and lords when the inheritors were charged a fee to inherit the land.
To these peasants, grants were made in precario or in beneficio, usually for a specified and limited number of life tenures.
By the twelfth century great churches in Germany, like those elsewhere were finding it difficult to hold out against the accumulation of lay custom and lay objections to temporary inheritance.
The Bishop of Worms issued a statement in 1120 indicating the poor and unfree should be allowed to inherit tenancy without payment of fees.
The growing masses of unfree and the marginal were needed for labor, and to bolster the military of both nobility and the church.
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