Superstitious Use
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary · Walter A. Shumaker and George Foster Longsdorf; ed. James C. Cahill · 1922
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary
In English law
— When lands, tenements, rents, goods, or chattels are given, secured, or appointed for and towards 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 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 cy pres under the sign manual.
Bac. Abr. "Charitable Uses and Mortmain" (D); Duke, Char. Uses, 105; 6 Ves. B67; 4 Coke, 104.
In the United States, where all religious opinions are free, and the right to exercise vail. In Alabama and Wisconsin gifts for prayer or masses for the departed are invalid chiefly on the ground of want of living beneficiaries.
6 Cyc. 920.