in the ecclesiastical law, the trust or administration of the revenues of a benefice, given either to a layman, to hold by way of depositum for six months, in order to repairs, &c., or to an ecclesiastic or beneficed person, to perform the pastoral duties thereof until the benefice be provided with a regular incumbent.

Anciently the administration of vacant bishoprics belonged to the nearest neighbouring bishop; and on this account such prelates were called *commendatory bishops*.

This custom appears to be very ancient. St Athanasius says of himself, according to Nicephorus, that there had been given him *in commendam*, or in administration, another church besides that of Alexandria, of which he was stated bishop.

The care of churches which had no pastor was, it seems, committed to a bishop till they were provided with an ordinary. The register of Pope Gregory I. is full of these commissions or commendams, granted during the absence or sickness of a bishop, or the vacancy of the see.

Some say that Pope Leo IV. first established the modern commendams, in favour of ecclesiastics who had been expelled their benefices by the Saracens, and that to them the administration of the vacant churches was committed for a time, in expectation of their being restored; though St Gregory is said to have done the same thing while the Lombards desolated Italy.

In a little time the practice of commendams was exceedingly abused, and the revenues of monasteries were given to laymen for their subsistence. The bishops also procured several benefices, or even bishoprics, in commendam, which served as a pretext for holding all of them at once, without directly violating the canons. Part of the abuse has been retrenched; but the use of commendams is still retained, as an expedient to take off the incompatibility of the person by the nature of the benefice.

When a parson is made bishop, his parsonage becomes vacant; but if the king give him power, he may still hold it in commendam.