TAXAE SACRE PENETENTIARIE APOSTOLICE
(Fee schedule of the Pope’s office for absolutions and dispensations in use from 1338-1569)
Absolution for a priest who joined in marriage persons related in a forbidden degree, and celebrated in their presence …… 7 groats.
Absolution for one who practiced usury in secret …… 7 groats.
Absolution for one who [wrote] false letters of testimony …… 7 groats.
Absolution for one who knew a woman in a church and committed other evils …… 6 groats.
Absolution for a concubinarian [a priest who lived with a concubine, despite vows of celibacy], and dispensation from irregularity; and this contrary to provincial and synodal constitutions, etc. …… 7 groats.
Absolution for a layman on the same matter …… 7 groats.
Absolution for a layman who [took] sacred things from a sacred place [i.e., a thief] …… 7 groats.
Absolution for one who carnally knew his mother, sister, or another kinswoman or relative by affinity, or his godmother …… 5 groats.
Absolution for one who deflowered a virgin …… 6 groats.
Absolution for the vice of simony, for a layman …… 6 groats.
The same for a priest …… 7 groats.
The same for a monk …… 8 groats.
Absolution for a perjurer …… 6 groats.
Absolution for one who gave false testimony in a criminal cause …… 6 groats.
Absolution for a priest who did not restore the church goods he held, [i.e., a thief] although a certain general warning has been issued against such persons …… 7 groats.
Absolution for one who revealed another’s confession …… 7 groats.
On matrimonial cases in a forbidden degree of consanguinity or affinity.
Dispensation in the fourth degree of consanguinity, for a marriage to be contracted, or already contracted in ignorance …… 16 groats.
In the third and fourth [degrees] …… 27 groats.
In the fourth and fifth [degrees] …… 27 groats.
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[N. B. Degree of consanguinity is the Church’s Roman way of counting blood-kinship for marriage. After the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) the impediment ran only to the fourth degree.
How the count works:
Count the generations from one person up to the common ancestor, then down to the other. Each step is one degree. You do not count the two living persons as a single extra step.
Relationship, Degree (Roman / canonical)
Parent and child, 1st
Brother and sister, 2nd
Uncle / aunt and niece / nephew, 3rd
First cousins (children of siblings), 4th
First cousins once removed, 5th
Second cousins, 6th
So:
Two siblings share parents: one step up, one step down = 2nd degree.
Uncle and niece: niece up to parent (1), parent up to grandparent (2), down to uncle (3) = 3rd degree.
First cousins: each up two generations to the shared grandparents, total 4th degree.
What the fees mean:
Super quarto gradu — first cousins (or any pair related only in the 4th). Cheapest of these lines (16 groats if they married in ignorance).
Super tertio et quarto — they are related in both the 3rd and the 4th (for example through two lines in the family), or the case sits on that double impediment. 27 groats.
Super quarto et quinto — 4th plus 5th (first cousins who are also more remotely linked). Also 27 groats.
Si contraxerint scienter et consummaverint — they knew the kinship and still consummated. That costs more than ignorance.
Eodem modo de affinitate — the same ladder, but by marriage, not blood (your brother’s wife’s sister, etc.).
Affinity is kinship created by a valid (or putative) marriage: you are related to your spouse’s blood-kin in the same degree they are related to your spouse.
Public honesty (publica honestas), listed next, is not blood at all. It is the impediment from a betrothal or an invalid marriage that still bars you from marrying that person’s near relations.
The United States has consanguinity laws, but they are state laws, not one federal marriage code.
What every state forbids:
Marriage (and, in almost every state, sexual relations) between:
- parent and child
- grandparent and grandchild
- brother and sister (full or half)
That core is nationwide. Adoptive parent–child is usually treated the same. Many states also bar uncle/aunt and niece/nephew.
Where the states split: first cousins
First cousins are the fourth degree in the civil count (the same degree the old penitentiary tax-book called quartus gradus).
How then is Woody Allen allowed to marry his step-daughter?
He was allowed because, in law, she was not his stepdaughter.
The legal facts:
- Woody Allen and Mia Farrow never married. New York does not treat an unmarried partner as a spouse for this purpose.
- Soon-Yi Previn was adopted by Mia Farrow and André Previn, not by Allen.
- Allen never adopted Soon-Yi. (He later adopted two of Farrow’s other children, Dylan and Moses—not her.)
- They are not blood kin. There is no shared ancestor and no parent–child decree between them.
- When the relationship became public she was an adult. They married in Venice in 1997.
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On defect of birth (illegitimacy).
Dispensation for defect of birth, for all orders and for one benefice, even a cure of souls, if he suffers the defect as the child of an unmarried man and an unmarried woman …… 12 groats.
Likewise, if anyone, notwithstanding the aforesaid defect, and keeping it silent, has had himself promoted to all orders, or to any one of them …… 1 groat.
License to eat flesh, butter, eggs, and other dairy foods, both in Lent and on other fast days …… 7 groats.
[N. B. Defectus natalium is canonical illegitimacy. Without this paper an illegitimate man was irregular for holy orders and barred from a parish (beneficium curatum). De soluto et soluta means both parents were unmarried—simple bastardy, not adultery or incest, which were harder cases. The last item is a separate food dispensation, not part of the birth defect.]
On the killing of a cleric:
Absolution for a layman who is present, who has killed an abbot, or any other priest below a bishop, or a monk or a cleric …… 7, 8 or 9 groats.
It is not granted for one who is absent: because all such persons must visit the Apostolic See—unless someone says he has a perpetual impediment, and then the fee is the same. Or he alleges a temporary impediment, such as wars, deadly enmities, poverty, or sickness: and then let a clause be inserted that, when the impediments have ceased, he is to visit the Apostolic See; and the fee is the same.
Likewise, if it is a woman or a monk, that person is bound to visit the Apostolic See at the same fee.
Likewise, letters concerning the mutilation of limbs are of the same fee as those concerning homicide.
On the killing of a layman:
Absolution for the killing of a layman, for a layman; and it may be committed to his own rector …… 5 groats.
But if he is a cleric, it is committed to his ordinary and to no one else, because the exercise of his orders, if he has any, is forbidden him, and also advancement to higher orders. But if he has been promoted only to minor orders, let him be dispensed so that he may minister in the orders he has received; but advancement to higher orders is forbidden him …… 7 groats.
Homicidium clericale is killing a person in holy orders (or a monk). That case was reserved to Rome; hence the rule that the guilty party must come to the Apostolic See unless impeded. Homicidium laicale is killing a layman—it is cheaper and often handled locally.
Absolution for one who has killed his father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or another blood-relation—namely a lay person: because if any of them were a cleric, the slayer would be bound to visit the Apostolic See.
Likewise, these absolutions are committed to his own bishop or official, or to some abbot or other prelate, or to a bishop in the diocese. They cannot be committed to a parish priest. And each of them comes to …… 5 or 7 groats.
Killing a lay kinsman could be cleared locally by a prelate. Killing a clerical kinsman was reserved to Rome, as in the previous article on homicidium clericale.
Note that if the slayer is a cleric, he is suspended from the exercise of his orders, if he has any, and advancement to higher orders is forbidden him forever …… 7 groats.
Absolution for a husband and wife who found beside them a child smothered (overlaid), for each of them …… 6 groats.
Absolution for a husband who struck his wife, from whom she then brought forth an abortive child …… 6 groats.].
And the same for any other layman …… 6 groats.
Absolution for a woman who drank some potion, or did some other act, by which she destroyed a fetus already quickened in the womb …… 5 groats.
Note that if the person committing the foregoing is a cleric or a priest or has destroyed a fetus quickened in the mother’s womb, it shall be done as in the case of killing a layman, and the penalty is the same—of which penalty mention has been made above.
Dispensation, with an absolution inserted, for a secular priest, present or absent, in the matter of killing a layman, by the form Fiat de speciali, for caution’s sake …… 16, 17, 18, and sometimes 19 groats.
Puerum oppressum is overlaying: the infant found dead in the parents’ bed. Fetum vivificatum is a fetus after quickening. Fiat de speciali is the Penitentiary’s formula granting the favor “of special grace,” a higher and dearer track than the ordinary composition.
Note that when a man is dispensed simply for all orders, he is [also] dispensed for any benefices without cure of souls …… 6 or 7 groats.
Note that when someone has been promoted to all sacred orders, or to one of them, and is dispensed for the killing of a layman—because for the killing of a cleric no dispensation is granted to an absentee—he may minister in minor orders only. But if he has not been promoted, he is not dispensed for any orders, nor for any benefices, even if he is a cleric.
So: a simple grant “to all orders” quietly includes uncured livings. A priest or deacon cleared for killing a layman may keep serving in the minor orders he already has but may not rise higher. Killing a cleric still requires a personal journey to Rome if the guilty party is absent. An unordained clerk who has killed gets neither orders nor a living from this office.
On the laying on of hands (violence against a sacred person)
Absolution for laying hands on a provost, a dean, a priest, a deacon, or a cleric, or any religious—even a lay brother—granted for a layman, a priest, or a cleric who is present, even where blood was shed …… 9 groats.
Injectio manuum is the old reserved crime of striking a person protected by holy orders or religion (Si quis suadente diabolo = at the Devil’s instigation). The fee here is for the person who appears in person at the office. Bloodshed is expressly included in this same 9-groat rate.
On spoils (plunder).
Absolution and dispensation for plunder, arson, robbery, and the killing of laymen …… 8 groats.
And it may be committed to some other prelate than the ordinary.
But if the foregoing were committed in a sacred place, or with breaking into sacred places, the absolution is committed to the ordinary. And if such a person is a cleric, the exercise of his orders and advancement to higher orders are forbidden him …… 8 groats.
On ravishers and incendiaries [i.e., abductors of women/rapists and arsonists]…… 7 groats.
Rehabilitation for one who is disqualified …… 35 groats.
On the legitimation of those who have neither father nor mother …… 12 groats.
For a letter of a man who had one wife, and she departed from him, and he waited for her for some time, and afterward used diligence to learn whether she was dead or alive, and a report of her death was brought; afterward he contracted, or wishes to contract, with another wife: he asks that he may remain with the second, and that the offspring, etc. If the letter is judicial, etc., let the auditor see, etc. …… 10 groats.
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Today the Roman Church still teaches and grants indulgences.
What an indulgence is (official definition):
“A remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven,” applied by the Church from the treasury of Christ’s and the saints’ satisfactions.
Two kinds
Plenary — remits all temporal punishment (if the conditions are fully met). Normally once a day.
Partial — remits some of it. May be gained more than once a day.
Both may be applied to oneself or, by way of suffrage, to the dead.
How one obtains a plenary indulgence now:
Paul VI’s constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina (1 January 1967) and the current Enchiridion Indulgentiarum govern the practice. Required are:
The prescribed work (a set prayer, a pilgrimage to a designated church, an act of charity, etc.).
Sacramental confession.
Holy Communion.
Prayer for the Pope’s intentions (an Our Father and Hail Mary suffice).
Detachment from all sin, even venial.
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