Tasse di Curia

TASSE DI CURIA. - These are the contributions that the Dicasteries of the Holy See require from petitioners or parties, in order to cover, with them, at least in part, the expenses necessary for individual administrative, judicial or merely executory acts. They belong to the category of Ecclesiastical Taxes (v.) and have a counterpart in the taxes prescribed by the diocesan curia.

They can be divided into administrative taxes, including also beneficiary taxes, and judicial taxes. The former consist of chancery or seal fees, which, according to laws or internal regulations, or else according to custom, may be collected for the various acts of voluntary jurisdiction, especially for the granting of pontifical rescripts, of letters, or of bulls of appointment. Judicial taxes, on the other hand, are collected for procedural expenses from those who proceed by way of litigation before the Tribunals of the Holy See or before the Sacred Congregation of Rites in causes of beatification and canonization.

I. HISTORICAL NOTES

The taxes were introduced gradually because of the dwindling of the revenues of the patrimony of the Roman Church, owing to the turbulent course of historical events and to the multiplication of business that flowed ever more abundantly to the dicasteries of the Holy See. It was a most ancient custom that elected Bishops should offer a gift to their consecrator and to those who took an active part in the consecration. And the pope consecrated all the bishops of central and southern Italy and those of other places immediately subject to him. Similar gifts were made to the Pope by metropolitans on the occasion of the granting of palliums. These gifts, which were voluntary in origin, were transformed, through custom, into true profits for the benefit of the Curia, and in the end into true and proper taxes, in the 13th century. The so-called Peter's pence had also gradually come into use, a fixed contribution paid by the inhabitants of England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Bohemia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Aragon, Portugal and in the territories conquered by the Teutonic Knights between the Baltic Sea and the kingdom of Poland. To these revenues were later added the censuses paid by the vassal kingdoms of the Apostolic See: Naples, Sicily, Aragon, England. In addition to this, monasteries, various institutions, and castles paid annual censuses to the Camera as they considered themselves included in the ius et proprietatem b. Petri, or by virtue of particular conditions. (See in this regard the Liber Censium Ecclesiae Romanae of Cencio Camerario: ed. P. Fabre-L. Duchesne, with indexes by G. Mollat, 3 vols., Paris 1889-1952).

Other revenues came from the tithes (v.) which the Holy See imposed on benefices on the occasion of Crusades or other extraordinary events. They were collected in each territory by the collectors, aided in turn by the subcollectors, who gathered them and sent them to Rome, where the general account was drawn up, every year or every six months (cf. for Italy the volumes of the Rationes decimarum Italiae in the 13th and 14th centuries, published in the collection Studi e testi of the Vatican Library, nos. 60, 69, 84, 96, 97, 98, 112, 113, 128, 148, Vatican City 1933 ff.). Revenues of the curia were also the annates (v.), by virtue of the ius spolii, which consisted in the right to take possession of everything an ecclesiastic left at the moment of his death. This too was collected by the collectors and sent to the Curia. From the time of Avignon, when the pontifical reservations took on a regular course, these men also had the task of collecting the fruits of the benefice accrued during the period of vacancy (fructus medii temporis) and those which the beneficiary did not make his own, because his appointment had not been regular (fructus male percepti).

A kind of succession tax, under the name of servitium, for consistorial benefices was the servitium commune, which (after 23 Dec. 1334) was divided between the pope and the cardinals present in the Curia, and consisted in the payment of a third of the annual revenue of the bishopric or abbey as it was computed once and for all. The servitia minuta were the gratuities for the familiars of the pope and of the cardinals and were in proportion to the servitium commune; from three, as they were before, in the time of Benedict XI they were raised to five and so many they remained thereafter. During the 15th century the practice grew ever more widespread of imposing, beyond the usual servitium, a supplement when a new benefice incompatible with the first was conferred on a holder. This supplement was called compositio and was agreed each time with the datary and went to the direct profit of the pontiff. Against this system the harshest recriminations were not lacking, on account of the abuses to which it gave rise. As for the Officials of the Curia, they did not receive a fixed stipend, but shared in the emoluments coming to their dicastery. Even the taxes paid in the office of the bulls for the dispatch of the bulls themselves went to the Apostolic Camera (v.), not to the officials of the Curia. Moreover, at times the letters themselves were dispatched gratis pro Deo, especially if it was a matter of familiars or of the employees themselves. The officials of the Curia, however, could receive from petitioners minuscula munera for the prompt handling or dispatch of the case. And here too there were abuses. The Council of Trent, besides the other reforms in the field of benefices, among which the insistence on the duty of residence, insisted on the gratuitousness of dispensations (sess. XXV, c. 18 de reform). Gratuitousness did not exclude a compensation for the so-called Chancery expenses but intended to exclude the payment of a price for the dispensation and also the compensation that might be given by way of honest sustenance. Likewise it did not intend to deny the concept that the tax also had the function of a penalty for the vulnus legis inflicted with the dispensation. When the new ecclesiastical Dicasteries were created, such as the Holy Office, the Congregation of the Index, of the Council, of Bishops and Regulars, these too had to maintain themselves, for expenses and for employees. Then begin the taxes of the Curia more properly so called, on rescripts, graces, letters, decrees. These taxes were then distributed among the employees assigned to the Dicastery, since there was as yet no stipend. The Apostolic Camera in fact granted at most an allowance to the Prelate superior of each dicastery.

II. PRESENT STATE

This continued until the reform of the Roman Curia carried out by Pius X, who took upon himself the obligation of maintaining the major, minor and service Officials, and at the same time reserved the fees to the Holy See. On the basis of this reform, which has remained almost unchanged down to the present day, in every request for a grace, a dispensation, or the opening of a case before the Apostolic Tribunals, the Ordinaries, having obtained information from the respective parish priests, must indicate spontaneously or upon request of the competent Dicastery the economic status of the petitioner or the plaintiff (cf. Sapienti consilio, chap. 11, 3: AAS, 1 [1909], p. 33). For the poor, in the administrative sphere, if the grace is morally necessary and not lucrative, the fee must be reduced by half or even entirely remitted, according to the circumstances, apart from postal expenses and other out-of-pocket expenses (ibid., art. 2: loc. cit.); in the judicial sphere, free legal aid is granted (v.) or a reduction of expenses.

For the computation of the fees, which must be recorded in the rescript, there must be one or more officials in each Congregation. Today, normally in the Dicasteries the administrative part (which is reduced to the collection of fees) is carried out by a Cashier, who collects the fees, and sometimes by an accountant, who records them, upon the notification of the Minute-Writer. Supervision belongs to the superior Prelate of the Dicastery, who with his visa periodically transmits the receipts to the administration of the goods of the Holy See. The ecclesiastical fee is then the result of the fee properly so called, fixed for each rescript and the same for all; of the componenda, which was in use at the Apostolic Datary, proportioned in matrimonial dispensations, for example, to the nature of the impediment and the gravity of the cause and the wealth of the requesting petitioners; of the agency fee, which consists in the remuneration for the one who acts as forwarding agent; and of out-of-pocket expenses, such as postage, paper, etc. In general, everyone is required to pay the out-of-pocket expenses and the agency fee; the middle classes are also required to pay the fee; the rich are also charged the componenda.

On 10 February 1920 Benedict XV approved the revision of the fees to be applied to rescripts following the devaluation caused by the war: a revision made by a cardinalitial Commission headed by Card. G. De Lai.

Another revision, though not uniform in all the Dicasteries, was made after the Second World War in 1946. The Rotal tariffs, also revised after the last war, vary according to the scope and gravity of the case. They are made known in a special table that reports the minimum and maximum of the fees that may be requested by advocates from their clients. Not rarely is free legal aid granted, or at least the benefit of a reduction of judicial expenses (for the determination of expenses in the Sentence v. SPESE).

The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura performs certain acts free of charge, such as the sending of matrimonial sentences and of rescripts of dispensation to the Courts of Appeal in Italy and in the other countries that recognize, on the basis of Concordats, the civil effects of ecclesiastical sentences. For the other questions within its competence, on the basis of the decree of 6 Aug. 1946, still in force, an initial deposit is made and then a fee, notably modest, is paid for the decision, the rescript, the commission and, at times, for the extension of the decision.

More substantial in comparison with all the others are the fees paid for the bulls of appointment to benefices reserved to the pontiff which, if minor, go to the Datary, if major or concistorial to the S. Congregazione Concettoriale or to the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide or to the Congregation for the Eastern Church and to the Office of Apostolic Briefs, dependent on the Secretariat of State for the briefs of appointment to the prelature and to pontifical honors. The fees for the causes of the Servants of God, discussed before the Sacred Congregation of Rites, are regulated by particular norms. The fees in force at the Vicariate of Rome are of the same nature as the fees in force at any diocesan Curia.

Giuseppe Palazzini