NOVALI. - With this name there were designated, from the Middle Ages onward, plots of land that were brought under cultivation for the first time. Consequently the name itself was applied also, indeed principally, to the tithes that had to be paid for noval lands; hence there arose the so-called decimae novales.
These were, under common law, to be paid to the parish churches in which the lands were situated. Alexander III, however, in 1170, confirmed an ancient privilege granted by Adrian IV by which certain religious orders had been exempted from paying to others the tithes of any land that they cultivated directly or had cultivated at their own expense, and all religious from paying the tithes of noval lands, provided that they cultivated them personally or paid for their cultivation (10, X, III, 30). The privilege was again confirmed by Gregory IX (33, X, V, 33). Nevertheless Innocent III, considering that even lands and woods left in their natural state and without particular cultivation brought the parishes in which they were situated revenues that were sometimes considerable, and in order to prevent these sources of income from ceasing with the bringing of the land under cultivation, established that the exemption from payment of noval tithes be limited to the sole cases of parishes already sufficiently rich or in any case such as not to suffer grave detriment from the exemption (21, X, V, 40).
Subsequent interventions of the Holy See defined better the rights and burdens of pious places or of religious with regard to noval tithes: for example, Alexander IV in 1258 (5, III, 13 in 6°) and Clement V in 1306 (1, III, 8 in Clem.).
In the centuries that followed, there came about gradually, both through direct concessions and through communication of privileges, the total exemption of all regulars from every kind of noval tithes. With the decline of the law of tithes, every distinction between these and noval tithes likewise ceased (v. also DECIME).
Bibliography2 works
Lorenzo Simeone