Impropriation

The act of employing the revenues of a church living to one's own use: it is also a parsonage or ecclesiastical living in the hands of a layman, or which descends by inheritance. Techn. Dict. The transfer to a layman of a benefice to which the cure of souls is annexed with an obligation to provide for the performance of the spiritual duties attached to the benefice is said to be nearly the same as an appropriation. Holth. Before the Reformation the terms were used without a very clear distinction, and appropriations by spiritual persons and incorporation were termed impropriation. Later the use of the latter word was restricted by Spelman and others to appropriation by laymen. Moz. & W. The distinction is thus clearly stated: The practice of impropriation differs from the somewhat similar but more ancient usage of appropriation, inasmuch as the latter supposes the revenues of the appropriated benefice to be transferred to ecclesiastical or quasi-ecclesiastical persons or bodies, as to a certain dignitary, a convent, a college, a hospital: while impropriation implies that the temporalities of the benefice are enjoyed by a layman; the name, according to Spelman, being given in consequence of their thus being improperly applied, diverted from their legitimate use. The practice of impropriation, and still more that of appropriation, as in the case of monasteries, etc., and other religious houses, prevailed extensively in England before the Reformation.