CANONS and CENSU. —
I. CANONS
This was the name given in the Middle Ages to periodic payments generally owed as rent or lease payments in various forms of land grants, such as short-term or long-term leases, emphyteusis, level, censu, land rent, and similar arrangements. The use of these forms of land grants, with the consequent collection of canons, was also adopted by ecclesiastical bodies as holders of landed estates, once the various land grants made by them—especially long-term ones, which were considered as so many alienations—could be justified in their favor, along with the needs and advantages of the bodies themselves.The canon could be established in money or in kind. In the latter case, it was a portion of the produce of the land and, like the payment in money, could be proportional to a pars quota of the natural produce of the land (sharecropping, third-share tenancy, etc.) or paid as a fixed amount, as a pars quanta.
With the consolidation in doctrine of the figure of divided ownership in the case of more intensive and long-term or perpetual land grants, the utilista (tenant) came to be regarded as the holder of a dominium utile (beneficial ownership). Hence, the payment of the canon came to constitute external proof of such ownership, while its collection represented external proof of the direct ownership of the grantor. And since the beneficial ownership was capable of alienation, the right to collect the canon came to be regarded as a right that, like a real encumbrance, weighed upon the land (though the land was now considered rather as an economic entity useful to the utilista than to the grantor). Because of this adherence to the land, like a limited burden, the canon remained in force against any subsequent utilista.
In modern times, by virtue of civil laws inspired by the freedom of land, which succeeded in preserving such concessions especially in the case of ecclesiastical bodies, and under the ostensible pretext of recognizing the claims arising from the labor expended in cultivating and improving the land, the utilitati (tenants) were granted the faculty of redeeming the canon, despite any contrary agreements between the parties. This right was understood to prevail even over the grantor’s right of reversion of direct ownership.
The CIC (Code of Canon Law) specifically provides for redemption in matters concerning emphyteusis (q.v.).
II. Censu
The term refers both to the legal relationship of a particular form of land grant and to the payment (also called canon or censual canon) in money or in kind arising from that specific grant relationship.The legal relationship of censu took shape in medieval law under two distinct forms: censu reservativus (reserved censu) and censu constitutivus or consegnativus (constitutive or delivery censu). The first type, always considered licit (the reserved censu, later also called land rent, of which it was in fact one of the original forms), occurred when, upon alienating a piece of land, the grantor reserved for himself the right to a periodic payment.
The censu constitutivus or consegnativus, on the other hand, arose from the delivery of a sum of money to the grantee upon request. The recipient had to grant the grantor the right to receive a share of the produce in money or in kind from a piece of land belonging to the recipient.
However, since this contract could conceal a loan at interest (usury), which was forbidden by the Church, the relationship of consegnativus censu could only be considered licit if it met certain conditions, which were finally definitively established by Pope Pius V in the bull *De censibus* of January 19, 1569 (hence it was also called censu bullare). Among other things, this bull stipulated the irrecoverability of the capital paid and the limits within which the periodic payment had to be contained.
Both forms of censu were widely used by ecclesiastical bodies to meet their financial needs or to secure for themselves a convenient form of periodic income guaranteed by a piece of land.