CANONI e CENSI. –
I. CANONI
In the Middle Ages, this was the name given to the periodic payments generally owed as pensio or rent, in the various forms of land tenure, such as short- or long-term leases, emphyteusis, hereditary leases, censuses, ground rent, and the like.The use of these forms of land tenure, with the consequent collection of canoni, was also adopted by ecclesiastical institutions, as owners of landed estates, once the various grants of land made by them could be justified in their regard, especially those made for the long term, which were regarded as equivalent to alienations, by the needs and advantage of the institutions themselves.
The canon could be established in money or in kind.
The latter was then a portion of the produce of the estate and, like a payment in money, could be calculated as a pars quanta of the estate’s natural products (sharecropping, payment of a third, etc.), or could be paid in a fixed amount, as a pars quanta.
As the doctrine of the double ownership became established with regard to the more substantial and long-term or perpetual forms of land tenure, the utilista came to be regarded as the holder of an ownership that was called useful ownership. Thus the payment of the canon eventually constituted the external proof of this ownership, while its collection represented the external proof of the grantor’s direct ownership. And since useful ownership was capable of alienation, the right to collect the canon came to be regarded as a right which, in the manner of a real encumbrance, rested upon the estate (now understood rather as a useful economic entity, belonging more to the utilista than to the grantor). Because of its attachment to the estate, like a limited burden, the canon remained effective against every subsequent utilista.
In modern times, by virtue of civil laws inspired by the freedom of land ownership, which proved particularly oppressive toward ecclesiastical grants of this kind, and under the apparent pretext of recognizing the claims arising from the labor expended in cultivating and improving the estate, utilisti were granted the right to redeem the canon, notwithstanding any contrary agreements that might have been made between the parties. This right was understood to prevail even over the right of reversion of the direct ownership.
The CIC makes specific provision emphyteusis (v.).
II. CENSI
The expression refers both to the legal relationship of a particular form of land grant and to the payment (also otherwise called canone, or canone censuale) in money or in kind that derives from that specific grant relationship.The legal relationship of c. took shape, as such, in the intermediate law under the differing forms of c. riservativo and c. costitutivo or consegnativo. The first type, in any case regarded as lawful (the c. riservativo, later also called rendita fondiaria, of which it in fact represents rather one of the original forms), existed when, upon alienating a property, one reserved over it the right to a periodic payment.
The c. costitutivo or consegnativo, on the other hand, was established by the delivery of a sum of money to whoever requested II. The recipient had to grant in favor of the grantor a right to receive a portion, in money or in kind, of the fruits of a property belonging to him.
However, since this contract could conceal a loan at interest (usury), which was prohibited by the Church, the relationship of c. consegnativo, in order to be deemed lawful, had to meet certain conditions, which were finally and definitively established by Pope Pio V in the bolla de censibus of 19 January 1569 (and it was therefore also called c. bollare). Among other provisions, it established that the capital paid could not be reclaimed and specified the amount within which the periodic payment had to remain.
Both forms of c. were widely used by ecclesiastical institutions to meet their financial needs or to secure for themselves a suitable form of periodic income guaranteed by a property.