An Exempt Order of the Church

Abstract

The existence of exempt Orders created special problems for the mediaeval Church and there can be no doubt of the hostility felt towards them. Exemption threatened to lessen the income and position of the secular clergy, while it enriched those who depended for their discipline not upon the authority of a local bishop, but directly upon that of the papacy and their own officers. An eminent historian has recently pointed out that had the policy of granting exemptions been carried much farther, the result would have been two parallel and un-co-ordinated jurisdictions within the Church and a ‘body of clergy acting at variance both with ancient law and with the most cogent reasoning of the great scholastic theologians’.¹ On the other hand, the international Orders could argue with some justification that the financing of their undeniably good works, the independence that was necessary for these to be adequately undertaken and the spiritual welfare of their members would be impossible without extraordinary privileges and without some centralised administration freed from the authority of diocesan bishops with local needs and aspirations.