Residence

Residence In the early Church there were laws regulating the residence of the clergy, and their design was to bind them to constant attendance upon their duty. The Council of Sardica had several canons relating to this matter. The seventh decreed that no bishop should go εἰς στρατόπεδον, to the emperor's court, unless the emperor by letter called him thither; but if any petition was to be preferred to the emperor relating to any civil contest, the bishop should depute his apocrisarius, or resident at court, to act for him, or send his veconomus, or some other of his clergy, to solicit the cause in his name, that the Church might neither receive damage by his absence nor be put to unnecessary expenses. Another canon of the Council of Sardica limited the absence of a bishop from his church to three weeks, unless it were upon some very weighty and urgent occasion. Another allowed the same time for a bishop to collect the revenues of his estate, provided he there celebrated divine service every Lord's day. By two other canons, presbyters and deacons were similarly tied. The Council of Agde made the like order for the French churches, decreeing that a presbyter or deacon who was absent from his church for three weeks should be three years suspended from the communion. By a rule of the fourth Council of Carthage, every bishop's house was to be near the church. The fifth council prescribed that every bishop should have his residence near his principal or cathedral church, which he should not leave, to the neglect of his cure.

In Great Britain, at the present time, residence is now regulated by 1 and 2 Vict. c. 106. The penalties for it, without a license from the bishop, are, one third of the annual value of the benefice when the absence exceeds three but does not exceed six months; one half of the annual value when the absence exceeds six but does not exceed eight months; and when it has been for the whole year, three fourths of the annual income are forfeited. Certain persons are exempted from the penalties of nonresidence, as the heads of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the warden of Durham University, and the headmasters of Eton, Winchester, and Westminster schools. Privileges for temporary non-residence are granted to a great number of persons who hold offices in cathedrals and at the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge. See Bingham, Christian Antiq. bk. 6 ch. 4 p. 7; Eadie, Eccles. Cyclop. s.v.