an ecclesiastical sense, a church endowed with a revenue for the performance of divine service; or the revenue itself assigned to an ecclesiastical person, by way of stipend, for the service he is to do that church.

All church-preferments, except bishoprics, are called benefices; and all benefices are, by the canonists, sometimes styled dignities: but we now ordinarily distinguish between benefice and dignity; applying dignity to bishoprics, deaneries, archdeaconries, and prebendaries; and benefice to parsonages, vicarages, and donatives.

Benefices are divided by the canonists into simple and sacerdotal. In the first there is no obligation but to read prayers, sing, &c. such as canonries, chaplainships, chantries, &c.: the second are charged with the cure of souls, or the direction and guidance of consciences; such as vicarages, rectories, &c.

The Romanists again distinguish benefices into regular and secular. Regular or titular benefices are those held by a religious, or a regular, who has made profession of some religious order; such are abbeys, priories, conventuals, &c.; or rather, a regular benefice is that which cannot be conferred on any but a religious, either by its foundation, by the institution of some superior, or by prescription: for prescription, forty years possession by a religious makes the benefice regular. Secular benefices are only such as are to be given to secular priests, i.e., to such as live in the world, and are not engaged in any monastic order. All benefices are reputed secular, till the contrary is made to appear. They are called secular benefices, because held by seculars; of which kind are almost all curacies.

The canonists distinguish three manners of vacating a benefice, viz. 1. De jure, when the person enjoying it is guilty of certain crimes expressed in those laws, as hereby, simony, &c. 2. De facto, as well as de jure, by the natural death or the resignation of the incumbent; which resignation may be either express, or tacit, as when he engages in a state, &c. inconsistent with it, as, among the Romanists, by marrying, entering into a religious order, or the like. 3. By the sentence of a judge, by way of punishment for certain crimes, as concubinage, perjury, &c.

Benefice in commendam is that, the direction and management of which, upon a vacancy, is given or recommended to an ecclesiastic, for a certain time, till he may be conveniently provided for.

Beneficiarii, in Roman antiquity, denote soldiers who attended the chief officers of the army, being exempted from other duty. Beneficiarii were also soldiers discharged from the military service or duty, and provided with beneficia to subsist on. These were probably the same with the former, and both might be comprised in the same definition. They were old experienced soldiers, who, having served out their legal time, or received a discharge as a particular mark of honour, were invited again to the service, where they were held in great esteem, exempted from all military drudgery, and appointed to guard the standard, &c. These, when thus recalled to service, were also denominated evocati; before their recall, emeriti.

Beneficiarii was also used for those raised to a higher rank by the favour of the tribunes or other magistrates. The word beneficiarius frequently occurs in the Roman inscriptions found in Britain, where confulis is always joined with it; but besides beneficiarius confulis, we find in Gruter beneficiarius tribuni, praetorii, legati, praefecti, proconfulis, &c.