Annates ( or ; , from , "year") were a payment from the recipient of an ecclesiastical benefice to the collating authorities. Eventually, they consisted of half or the whole of the first year's profits of a benefice; after the appropriation of the right of collation by the Roman see, they were paid to the papal treasury, ostensibly as a proffered contribution to the church. They were also known as the "first fruits" (), a religious offering which dates back to earlier Greek, Roman, and Hebrew religions.
History
This custom was of only gradual growth. At a very early period, bishops who received episcopal consecration in Rome were wont to present gifts to the various ecclesiastical authorities concerned. Out of this custom, there grew up a prescriptive right to such gifts.
The jus deportuum, annalia or annatae, was originally the right of the bishop to claim the first year's profits of the living from a newly inducted incumbent, of which the first mention is found under Pope Honorius III (d. 1227), but which had its origin in a custom, dating from the 6th century, by which those ordained to ecclesiastical offices paid a fee or tax to the ordaining bishop. Originally, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, annatæ or annalia, signified only the first-fruits of those lesser benefices of which the pope had reserved the patronage to himself, and granted outside of the consistory. It was from these claims that the papal annates, in the strict sense, in course of time developed. These accrued to the Apostolic Camera (Papal treasury).
The earliest records show the annata to have been, sometimes a privilege conceded to the bishop for a term of years, sometimes a right based on immemorial precedent. In course of time the popes, under stress of financial crises, claimed the privilege for themselves, though at first only temporarily. Thus, in 1305, Pope Clement V claimed the first-fruits of all vacant benefices in England, and in 1319 Pope John XXII those of all Christendom vacated within the next two years. In those cases the rights of the bishops were frankly usurped by the Holy See, now regarded as the ultimate source of the episcopal jurisdiction.
Classification
These annates may be divided broadly into four classes, though the chief features are common to all:
the or : a payment by an abbot, bishop, or archbishop, due upon his induction, of the anticipated revenue of the next year in his new benefice. This payment is traceable to the paid to the pope when consecrating bishops as metropolitans or patriarchs. When, in the middle of the 13th century, the consecration of bishops became established as the sole right of the pope, the oblations of all bishops of the West were received by him; by the close of the 14th century, these became fixed at one year's revenue. the , , or : the annates due to the bishop or archbishop for benefices under his control but "reserved" by the church for the maintenance of the Papacy. the : the annates of benefices attached to communities or corporations, which—under a 1469 bull of Paul II—were not paid at every presentation but instead offered every fifteen years. the : a small additional payment eventually added to other annates as a kind of notarial fee.
National variation
It must not be supposed that this system ever was worked with absolute uniformity and completeness throughout the various parts of Catholic Christendom. There were continual disagreements and disputes: the central authorities endeavouring to maintain and extend this most important of their financial schemes, and the subordinate ecclesiastics doing their best to get rid of the impost altogether or to transmute it into some less objectionable form. The easy expedient of rewarding the officials of the Curia and increasing the papal revenue by "reserving" more and more benefices was met by repeated protests, such as that of the bishops and barons of England (the chief sufferers), headed by Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, at the council of Lyons in 1245. The subject frequently became one of national interest, on account of the alarming amount of specie which was thus drained away, and hence numerous enactments exist in regard to it by the various national governments.