Superstitious Use

— In English Law. When lands, tenements, rents, goods, or chattels are given, secured, or appointed for and toward the maintenance of a priest or chaplain to say mass;

— for the maintenance of a priest or other man to pray for the soul of any dead man in such a church or elsewhere;

— to have and maintain perpetual obits, lamps, torches, etc., to be used at certain times to help to save the souls of men out of purgatory; in such cases the king, by force of several statutes, is authorized to direct and appoint all such uses to such purposes as are truly charitable; Bac. Abr. Charitable Uses and Mortmain (D); Duke, Char. Uses 105; 6 Ves. 567; 4 Co. 104.

The doctrine has no recognition in this country; Appeal of Seibert, 18 Wkly. Notes Cas. (Pa.) 276; and a bequest to support a Catholic priest, and perhaps other uses void in England, would not be considered as superstitious uses; Methodist Church v. Remington, 1 Watts (Pa.) 219, 26 Am. Dec. 61; Witman y.

Lex, 17 S. & R. (Pa.) 88, 17 Am. Dec. 644.

Yet many of the superstitious uses of the English law would fail to be considered as charities, and would undoubtedly come under the prohibition against perpetuities.

See Charities; Charitable Uses; 1 Jarin. Wills, ch. ix.

In England there are three classes of persons who have been held obnoxious to the law against superstitious uses: 1. Roman Catholics.

2.

Protestant dissenters.

3.

Jews. Their various disabilities have been almost wholly removed.

See Masses.