a duchy of Italy, bounded on the north by the Marquisate of Ancona and duchy of Urbino, on the east by Farther Abruzzo, on the south by Sabina and the patrimony of St Peter, and on the west by Orvietano and Perugino. It is about 55 miles in length and 40 in breadth. It was anciently a part of Umbria, and now belongs to the Pope.—The name of the capital city is also Spoleto. It was formerly a large place, but in 1703 was ruined by an earthquake; from whence it has never recovered itself.

SPOILIATION, in ecclesiastical law, is an injury done by one clerk or incumbent to another, in taking the fruits of his benefice without any right thereunto, but under a pretended title. It is remedied by a decree to account for the profits so taken. This injury, when the jus patronatus, or right of advowson, doth not come in debate, is cognizable in the spiritual court: as if a patron first presents A to a benefice, who is instituted and inducted thereto; and then, upon presence of a vacancy, the same patron presents B to the same living, and he also obtains institution and induction. Now if A disputes the fact of the vacancy, then that clerk who is kept out of the profits of the living, whichever it be, may sue the other in the spiritual court for spoliation, or taking the profits of his benefice. And it shall there be tried, whether the living were or were not vacant; upon which the validity of the second clerk's pretensions must depend. But if the right of patronage comes at all into dispute, as if one patron presented A, and another patron presented B, there the ecclesiastical court hath no cognizance, provided the tithes sued for amount to a fourth part of the value of the living, but may be prohibited at the instance of the patron by the king's writ of indicavit. So also if a clerk, without any colour of title, ejects another from his parsonage, this injury must be redressed in the temporal courts: for it depends upon no question determinable by the spiritual law (as plurality of benefices or no plurality, vacancy or no vacancy), but is merely a civil injury.