TASSA INNOCENZIANA. — Under this name is indicated the complex of preceptive and directive norms issued under Innocent XI to standardize ecclesiastical taxes. They were prompted by the request of many bishops to Innocent XI that, for the security of their consciences, to remove any occasion for doubt that might arise from the differing customs of the dioceses, and to prevent abuses, a general and uniform tax be established for the episcopal or ecclesiastical forum.
To this end, the Pope appointed a special congregation, composed of the cardinal prefects of the Sacred Congregations of the Council and of Bishops, four other cardinals, and the secretaries belonging to them, the Monsignor Datary and the Auditor of the Holy See.
This Congregation decided that in centesimal, civil, criminal, and mixed causes, a general tax could not be fixed without prior knowledge of the particular tax rates of each diocese or province, since such a tax could legally vary according to differing customs, regulated by the diversity of countries and places. However, declarations were published, made at various times and occasions by the Sacred Congregations of the Council and of Bishops in ecclesiastical or purely spiritual matters, so that it would be known what was illicit and every excuse or protest of ignorance or contrary custom would be removed. In such matters, observance was to be uniform everywhere according to the general canons and councils, particularly the Tridentine, so that any contrary custom or different tax, however previously established, was to be considered reprobate and illicit. Thus, with papal approval, on 1 Oct. 1678 (Bull. Rom., XIX, Turin 1870, pp. 105 ff.), the emoluments that were licit to receive were declared, for example, for the conferral of benefices by bishops, for the execution of apostolic letters, for manual chaplaincies, in new foundations and allocation of benefices, chaplaincies, confraternities, congregations, etc., in matters concerning marriage and espousals (execution of apostolic matrimonial dispensations, justification of free status, dispensation from banns, license to contract marriage at home or elsewhere or at an unusual or prohibited time, etc.), and for various licenses (to preach, to work on feast days, etc.).
Benedict XIII, in the provincial council of Rome (15 Apr. – 29 May 1725; Bull. Rom., XXII, Turin 1871, p. 284), again commanded the observance of the t. i. In 1866 Leo XIII, to adapt Innocentian law to the times, to the new and different conditions of men and to the changed value of money, appointed a commission at the Sacred Congregation of the Council, which, in the form of responses to posed doubts, declared that in sacramental matters, especially matrimonial and beneficial, a tax could be imposed according to the rules of justice and prudence (the truly poor were to be exempt). This could be determined either by individual Ordinaries, or by provincial or, for Italy, regional synods, and once determined it was 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 Italian dioceses and for a ten-year period for others. On 10 June 1866 Leo XIII approved and confirmed the commission’s responses (Acta Sanctae Sedis, 29 [1937], pp. 433–35). The matter forming the object of the t. i. was again regulated, adapting it to the times, by the provisions contained in chap. IX and 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.