Terminology Tuesday: Simony

Simony. The term, which is derived from *Simon Magus (cf. Acts 8:18–24), denotes the purchase or sale of spiritual things. The legislation of the early Councils shows that simony became frequent in the Christian Church after the age of the persecutions. The Council of *Chalcedon (451) forbade ordination to any order for money. St *Gregory the Great later vigorously denounced the same evil. It came to be very widespread in the Middle Ages, esp. in its form of traffic in ecclesiastical preferment, which was frequently forbidden, e.g. by the Third *Lateran Council (1179). It was treated in detail by St *Thomas Aquinas and again strenuously opposed by the Council of *Trent. Acc. to current RC canon law, anyone who resorts to simony to celebrate or receive a sacrament is to be punished by an *interdict or *suspension (CIC (1983), can. 1380), while the simoniacal provision of an office is invalid (can. 149). In post-Reformation England the English Canons of 1604 exacted an oath from all ordinands and recipients of benefices to the effect that their offices had not been obtained by simoniacal transactions. The system of ecclesiastical patronage led almost inevitably to simony in a large number of cases, an evil partly remedied by the English Benefices Act of 1898, initiated by Abp. E. W. *Benson, which, among other anti-simoniacal provisions, forbade sales of next presentations. The form of the Declaration against Simony now required from the recipients of benefices in the C of E is incorporated in Canon C 16 of the 1969 Canons.
A. Leinz, Die Simonie: Eine kanonistische Studie (1902); N. A. Weber, A History of Simony in the Christian Church from the Beginning to the Death of Charlemagne, 814 (Baltimore, 1909); R. A. Ryder, Simony: An historical Synopsis and Commentary (Catholic University of America Canon Law Studies; 65; 1931). H. Meier-Welcker, ‘Die Simonie im frühen Mittelalter’, ZKG 64 (1952–53), pp. 61–93. J. Weitzel, Begriff and Erscheinungsformen der Simonie bei Grattan und den Dekretisten (Münchener Theologische Studien, 3. Kanonistische Abteilung, 25; 1967). A. Nothum, SCJ, La Rémunération du travail inhérent aux fonctions spirituelles et la simonie de droit divin (Analecta Gregoriana, 176; 1969). A. Bride in DTC 14 (pt. 2; 1941), cols. 2141–60, s.v. ‘Simonie’.

Cross, F. L., & Livingstone, E. A. (Eds.). (2005). In The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed. rev., pp. 1514–1515). Oxford;  New York: Oxford University Press.