Annates

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.

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. ===Germany=== In Germany, it was decided by the concordat of Constance, in 1418, that bishoprics and abbacies should pay the servitia according to the valuation of the Roman chancery in two half-yearly instalments. Those reserved benefices only were to pay the annalia which were rated above twenty-four gold florins; and as none were so rated, whatever their annual value may have been, the annalia fell into disuse. A similar convenient fiction also led to their practical abrogation in France, Spain and Belgium. The council of Basel (1431–1443) wished to abolish the servitia, but the concordat of Vienna (1448) confirmed the Constance decision. Politically, the collection was opposed by Martin Luther his 1520 To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, in which he wrote: The practice of collecting servitia continued through the Reformation, in spite of the efforts of the congress of Ems (1786) to alter it, still remains nominally in force. As a matter of fact, however, the revolution caused by the secularization of the ecclesiastical states in 1803 practically put an end to the system, and the servitia have either been commuted via gratiae to a moderate fixed sum under particular concordats, or are the subject of separate negotiation with each bishop on his appointment. In Prussia, where the bishops received salaries as state officials, the payment was made by the government.

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