in ecclesiastical history, among the Greeks, were a kind of donatories or commendatories, who enjoyed uncontrolled power over the revenues of hospitals and monasteries. The origin of this abuse is referred to the iconoclasts in the eighth century, and particularly to the emperor Constantine Copronymus, the avowed enemy of the monks, whose monasteries he gave away to strangers. In after-times the emperors and patriarchs gave many to persons of rank, not to enable the donatories to reap any temporal advantage from the grants, but to repair, beautify, and patronize them. But avarice prevailed over these good intentions, so that at length they were all given away, rich and poor, monasteries and nunneries, and that even to laymen and to married men.