In the feudal system of the European Middle Ages, an ecclesiastical fief, held from the Church, followed all the laws laid down for temporal fiefs. The suzerain, e.g. bishop, abbot, or other possessor, granted an estate in perpetuity to a person, who thereby became his vassal

Vassal

A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...

.

As such, the grantee at his enfeoffment did homage to his overlord, took an oath of fealty, and made offering of the prescribed money or other object, by reason of which he held his fief. These requirements had to be repeated as often as there was a change in the person of the suzerain or vassal. These fiefs were granted by churchmen to princes, barons, knights, and others, who thereupon assumed the obligation of protecting the church and domains of the overlord.

Features of the system

This system of feudal tenure was not always restricted to lands, as church revenues and tithes were often farmed out to secular persons as a species of ecclesiastical fief. Strictly speaking, however, a fief was usually defined as immovable property

Immovable property

Immovable property is an immovable object, an item of property that cannot be moved without destroying or altering it - property that is fixed to the Earth, such as land or a house. In the United States it is also commercially and legally known as real estate and in Britain as property...

 whose usufruct

Usufruct

Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that either belongs to another person or which is under common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed...

 perpetually conceded to another under the obligation of fealty and personal homage. A fief was not ecclesiastical simply because its overlord was a churchman; it was requisite also that the domain granted should be church property. Lands, which belonged to the patrimony of an ecclesiastic, became a secular fief if he bestowed them on a vassal.

All fiefs were personal and hereditary, and many of the latter could be inherited by female descent.

Passive fiefs

Fiefs bestowed by the Church on vassals were called active fiefs; when churchmen themselves undertook obligations to a suzerain, the fiefs were called passive. In the latter case, temporal princes gave certain lands to the Church by enfeoffing a bishop or abbot, and the latter had then to do homage as pro-vassal and undertake all the implied obligations. When these included military service, the ecclesiastic was empowered to fulfil this duty by a substitute.

It was as passive fiefs that many bishoprics, abbacies, and prelacies, as to their temporalities, were held of kings in the medieval period, and the power thereby acquired by secular princes over elections to ecclesiastical dignities led to the strife over investiture

Investiture

Investiture, from the Latin is a rather general term for the formal installation of an incumbent...

s. These passive fiefs were conferred by the suzerain investing the newly-elected churchman with crozier and ring at the time of his making homage, but the employment of these symbols of spiritual power gradually paved the way to claims on the part of the secular overlords (see Investiture Conflict).

Papal fiefs

Among papal fiefs were included not merely landed estates, however vast, but also duchies, principalities, and even kingdoms. When the pope enfeoffed a prince, the latter did homage to him as to his liege lord, and acknowledged his vassalage by an annual tribute. Pope Pius V

Pope Pius V

Pope Saint Pius V , born Antonio Ghislieri , was Pope from 1566 to 1572 and is a saint of the Catholic Church. He is chiefly notable for his role in the Council of Trent, the Counter-Reformation, and the standardization of the Roman liturgy within the Latin Church...

 (29 March 1567) decreed that, in future, fiefs belonging strictly to the Patrimony of St. Peter should be incorporated with the Pontifical States whenever the vassalage lapsed, and that no new enfeoffment take place. John of England

John of England

John , also known as John Lackland , was King of England from 6 April 1199 until his death...

, declared that he held his realm as a fief from the pope in 1213, and James II of Aragon

James II of Aragon

James II , called the Just was the King of Sicily from 1285 to 1296 and King of Aragon and Valencia and Count of Barcelona from 1291 to 1327. In 1297 he was granted the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica...

, accepted the same relation for Sardinia

Sardinia

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...

 and Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

 in 1295.

The most famous papal fief was the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, springing from investitures of 1059 and 1269.