TASSA INNOCENZIANA. - Under this name is indicated the body of preceptive and directive norms issued under Innocent XI to standardize ecclesiastical taxes. They were due to the request that many bishops presented to Innocent XI so that, for the security of their consciences, to remove every occasion of doubt that could arise from the different customs of the dioceses, and to prevent frauds, a general and uniform tax might be established for the episcopal or ecclesiastical forum.
For this purpose the Pontiff deputed a special congregation, composed of the cardinal prefects of the Sacred Congregations of the Council and of the Bishops, of four other cardinals and of the secretaries belonging to them, of the monsignor datary and of the auditor of His Holiness.
This Congregation decided that in contentious causes, civil, criminal and mixed, a general tax could not be fixed without prior knowledge of the particular taxes of each diocese or province, since juridically this tax could vary according to different custom, regulated by the diversity of countries and places. However, the declarations that had been made at various times and on different occasions by the Sacred Congregations of the Council and of the Bishops in ecclesiastical or merely spiritual matters were published, so that it might be known what was unlawful and every excuse or protest of ignorance or of contrary custom might be removed. In such matters the observance had to be everywhere uniform because of the generality of the canons and councils, particularly of Trent, so that every contrary custom or different tax, in whatever manner made in the past, had to be called reproba et illicita. Thus there was declared, with pontifical approval, on 1 Oct. 1678 (Bull. Rom., XIX, Turin 1870, p. 105 ff.), the emolument that it was lawful to receive, for example, for benefices conferred by bishops, for the execution of apostolic letters, for manual chaplaincies, in new foundations and erection of benefices, chaplaincies, confraternities, congregations, etc., in causes concerning marriage and betrothal (execution of apostolic matrimonial dispensations, proof of free status, dispensation from the banns, permission to contract marriage at home or outside or at an unusual or forbidden time, etc.), for the various licenses (to preach, to work on feast days, etc.).
Benedict XIII, in the Roman provincial Council (15 Apr. - 29 May 1725: Bull. Rom., XXII, Turin 1871, p. 284) again commanded the observance of the Innocentian tax. In 1896 Leo XIII, in order to make the Innocentian law more suited to the times, to the new and different conditions of men and to the changed value of money, appointed at the Sacred Congregation of the Council a commission which, in the form of answers to doubts raised, declared that in sacramental matters and especially in matrimonial matters and in beneficial matters, a tax could, according to the rules of justice and prudence, be imposed (the truly poor were to be exempt from it). This could be determined either by individual Ordinaries or by provincial Synods or, for Italy, regional ones, and once determined it had to be communicated for approval to the Sacred Congregation of the Council, which would grant it ad instar experimenti for a five-year period for the dioceses of Italy and for a ten-year period for the others. On 10 June 1896 Leo XIII approved and confirmed the answers of the commission (Acta Sanctae Sedis, 29 [1937], pp. 433-35). The matter forming the object of the Innocentian tax was again regulated, being adapted to the times, by the provisions contained in chap. IX and in the transitional provisions of the Ordo servandus annexed to the constitution Sapienti consilio of Pius X of 29 June 1908. At present, in consideration of the changed financial conditions of various countries, this matter is regulated by norms issued by each Congregation, Tribunal and Office of the Roman Curia.
Bibliography
Guglielmo Felici