VICEDOMINO. — For the patrimonial administration of bishoprics and monasteries, Roman imperial legislation and the canons of the Eastern councils had already established norms and regulations for cases in which it was not appropriate for the bishop and abbot to concentrate the administration in their own hands.
Thus, in the East a special official was created, the economus, whose appointment was designated as obligatory chiefly by the Council of Chalcedon (a. 451). The institution also passed into the Western Churches, where alongside the Greek word economus, the word vicedominus was sometimes used to designate the official who, for economic administration, acted in place of the dominus; these were not priestly functions, but dominical ones.
Today the word vicedominus has disappeared from Western canonical legislation, whereas the term economus has remained, in both East and West, to indicate almost always a vicarious function, of a character that is as much priestly as economic.
Since bishoprics and monasteries needed not only an official for economic administration, but also an official to defend and safeguard their rights and the temporal acts of administration in court, in the West this official was the advocatus, corresponding to an analogous official existing in the East since the imperial period. The functions of V. Church, and especially in Italy: sometimes both are found at the same time; sometimes several V. and several advocates are found; sometimes a single person absorbed the functions of both. In certain phases of their history, V. Church, but also officers whose activity was important to the prince. This depended on the relationship between the authority of the dominus, bishop or abbot, and the prince.
V. are encountered in Italy in the sixth century, in Rome and Ravenna; and it was especially for them that Gregory the Great issued
prescriptions in his letters, through which the typical V. is represented, reappearing likewise in the Decretum Gratiani. V. was to be a cleric, and in episcopal curiae he held an important rank, often alongside and above the archdeacon. He was chosen and appointed by the bishop; and if the latter failed to do so, provision had to be made, St Gregory the Great says, communi consilio of the entire clergy. His function was episcopium disponere; he took part in all acts of administration; his importance increased in the bishop’s absence, when he partly substituted for him. In the eighth and ninth centuries his powers increased with the expansion of the bishop’s patrimonial and territorial power; and the V. bishop, invested with a public status recognized in Carolingian legislation. By this time he was a compulsory officer within the sphere of ecclesiastical immunity, an intermediary between it and the public authority of the king and prince; he had to administer the immune lands in the interest of the Church, but also in that of the State. The institution was therefore generalized, and the appointment made compulsory, with the royal power or its representatives taking part in it; the V. was required to provide certain personal guarantees, and the royal power exercised jurisdiction over him.
As an internal administrator of the episcopal Palace, the V. has left few traces of himself; instead, as an agent of the bishop who enjoyed a sphere of immunity, according to some writers he also exercised jurisdiction within the immune territory, over free men, unfree men, coloni, and serfs. At times he exercised the powers proper to the advocate.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries a new phase of the institution can be observed. Among the bishop’s vassals one encounters a vicedomino who was generally a lay lord, owner of a fortified castle. The feudal movement stripped the ancient V. bishop. Having acquired part of the sovereign public powers, the bishop needed, in order to secure his vassals, effective protection and a lieutenant usually chosen from among the most powerful lords, to whom he established a fief as an appanage for his services.
The functions of the v., the lord of this period, were a mixture of those of the advocate and of the Carolingian V. The V. was the protector of the bishopric, represented the bishop in court, and sometimes substituted for him in the administration of justice. Other functions were the ancient ones of an officer of immunity, namely jurisdiction and distractio. Still other functions may have arisen in the period when the V. bishop. In some places, where armed protection was no longer needed, he returned from being a layman to being an ecclesiastic. Of the functions consisting in the administration and guarding of episcopal property, the V. seems later to have retained only that which made him guardian of the bishop’s palace and possessions during a vacancy of the episcopal see. He exercised without scruple the right of interim administration during the vacancy, and the right of spoliation over the movable property of the deceased bishop (Dante says of the V. of Florence, “... when our church is vacant, they grow fat while sitting in consistory”).
The condition of the V. varied from one bishopric to another; other officials limited his powers; he took part in civic life, even against the bishop; he played a role in the struggles surrounding the formation of the commune; yet he always remained dependent on the bishop. The formation of the commune caused imbalances that were regulated only after struggles, violence, and disturbances. The fief, having become hereditary and alienable, prolonged the conflicts. The struggle was waged between bishops, popes, emperors, and kings on the one side, and V. and advocates on the other, especially with regard to those functions and rights that had become useless or had degenerated. The conflict ended with a new settlement or with the V. or advocate renouncing the fief. The V. advocate, simple agents of the bishop, would retain functions and rights that were sometimes merely symbolic, and their presence would be acknowledged only as the object of certain rights and honors, until the abolition of feudalism or the French Revolution. In some places in Italy there is still a V. Chapter.