Benefice, or BENEFICIUM, was first applied in the Lombard laws and the Constitutions of Charlemagne to the life-interests in land, which were the reward of military service, and afterwards developed into hereditary feudal grants; but is now used in England to denote any kind of church promotion or dignity, but specially a 'benefice with cure of souls,' such as rectories, vicarages, and other parochial cures, as distinguished from bishoprics, deaneries, cathedral preferments, and other ecclesiastical dignities or offices. Some benefices are called exempt or peculiar, by which is meant that they are not to be under the ordinary control and administration of the bishop; but such exempt or peculiar benefices are nevertheless, so far as relates to pluralities and residence, subject to the archbishop or bishop within whose province or diocese they are locally situated.
There are, in general, four requisites to the enjoyment of a benefice. 1st, Holy orders, or ordination at the hands of a bishop of the established church or other canonical bishop (a Roman Catholic priest may hold a benefice in the Church of England on abjuring the tenets of his church, but he is not ordained again); 2d, Presentation, or the formal gift or grant of the benefice by the lay or ecclesiastical patron; 3d, Institution at the hands of the bishop, by which the cure of souls is committed to the clergyman; and 4th, Induction, which is performed by a mandate from the bishop to the archdeacon to give the clergyman possession of the temporalities. Where the bishop is himself also patron, the presentation and institution are one and the same act, and called the collation to the benefice. The spiritual duties of a benefice are those connected with public worship, baptism, marriage, burial, and the administration of the Lord's Supper, with less defined duties of visitation of and intercourse with parishioners. The emoluments of a rector consist of the freehold of the parsonage house, the glebe, the tithes, and other duties; the vicar has only a proportion of these. The rector is liable for the repair of the chancel, and has serious duties in connection with the church and the churchyard, which in the ordinary case are his freehold. (See Cripps or Phillimore on Church Law.) In Scotland, benefices are divided into temporalities or lands and spiritualities or teinds. The former were taken by the crown at the Reformation and erected into lordships in favour of the lords of erection, titulars, and commendators; but in the 17th century most of these estates returned to the crown. These titulars had also rights of drawing teind from other lands, a public grievance, which was settled by the celebrated decrees arbitral of Charles I. The spiritualities, or main body of the teinds, are still held by the Church of Scotland (see TEINDS, AUGMENTATION, STIPEND). The election of ministers now proceeds under the Patronage Act, 1874. The minister in Scotland has a manse and glebe, but not the same rights in the church or churchyard, as in England. See ADVOWSON, SIMONY, PLURALITY.