CANONS AND CENSUSES. - I. CANONI. - Thus were called in the intermediate age the periodic payments generally owed as pensio or fitto, in the various forms of land concession, such as the types of lease of short duration or long term, emphyteusis, the livello, ground rents, land revenue and the like.
The use of these forms of land concession, with the consequent collection of canons, was also followed by ecclesiastical bodies, as holders of landed patrimonies, once the various land concessions made by them could be justified in their regard, especially those of long term which were considered as so many alienations, by the necessities and the advantage of those same bodies.
The canon could be established in money or in kind.
This then was a part of the fruits of the estate and could, in the same way as the payment in money, be proportioned to a pars quanta of the natural products of the estate (sharecropping, third-farming, etc.) or be paid in a fixed measure, as a pars quanta.
With the consolidation in doctrine of the figure of double ownership in the species of the more intense and long-term or perpetual land concessions, the utilist came to be considered the holder of a domain which was called useful. Hence the payment of the canon ended up constituting the external proof of that domain, while its collection represented the external proof of the direct domain of the grantor. And since the useful domain was susceptible of alienation, the right to collect the canon came to be considered as a right which, like a real burden, rested on the estate (understood by now rather as a useful economic entity, that is, more of the utilist than of the grantor). By this its adherence to the estate, as a limited charge, the canon was maintained in respect of every subsequent utilist.
In modern times, by force of the civil laws inspired by the freedom of estates, which proved particularly persecutory in regard to ecclesiastical concessions of this kind, and behind the apparent motive of recognizing the claims of the labor sustained for the cultivation and for the improvement of the estate, there was established for the utilists the faculty of redemption of the canon, notwithstanding any contrary agreements that might have intervened between the parties. This right was understood to have to prevail over the very right of devolution of the direct domain.
The CIC particularly provides for redemption in the matter of emphyteusis (v.).
II. CENSUSES
The expression relates both to the legal relationship of a particular form of land concession and to the payment (otherwise called canone, or also canone censuale) in money or in kind, which derives from that specific relationship of concession.
The legal relationship of c. took shape, as such, in the intermediate age under the different figures of reservative c. and constitutive or conveyance c. The first kind, held in any case to be lawful (the preservative c., also later called landed income, of which in reality it represents rather one of the original forms), occurred when, a piece of land having been alienated, the right to a periodic payment was reserved over it.
The constitutive or conveyance c. was instead established by the delivery of a capital sum in money to whoever had requested it. The recipient had to grant in favor of the grantor a right to the perception of a share in money or in kind from the fruits of a piece of land owned by him.
However, since this contract could conceal an interest-bearing loan (usury) which was forbidden by the Church, the relationship of conveyance c., in order to be held lawful, had to meet certain conditions which were finally definitively established by Pope Pius V in the bulla de censibus of 19 January 1569 (for this reason it was also called bollare c.). Among other things, it provided for the irrecoverability of the capital paid and the measure to which the periodic payment had to be limited.
Both forms of c. were widely used by ecclesiastical bodies to meet their needs for money or to secure for themselves a convenient form of periodic income, guaranteed on a piece of land.
Bibliography3 works
Antonio Rota