[Doosan Encyclopedia]

Tithing

Also known as the "tenth tax" or "tenth parish tax. It derives from the Old Testament law that required ancient Jews to give one-tenth of their income to Yahweh, and Jews attending Old Testament rituals would bring bread and wine to share as they could afford. In Western Europe, tithing was initially accepted as a pious act of devotion that Christians enjoyed voluntarily giving to God, but from the 6th century onward, the church gradually imposed it on the faithful, and by the 8th century, Pippin and Charles the Great of the Carolingian dynasty made it mandatory. Especially in the 10th century, secular lords used the private church system to privatize the tithes paid by their subjects.

The Church attempted to recover tithes from the lords through the Lateran Council (1179) and Gregory VII's reforms of the church system, but without success, and much of it went into the hands of secular lords. The priest of a small parish levied tithes on grain, wine, livestock, and fodder (known as the Great Tithe), flax, poultry, and vegetables (known as the Lesser Tithe), and cleared land (known as the New Tithe) to support his living and the maintenance of the church. In France, however, it was actually only 1/14 or 1/15 of the income. By the end of the Ancien Régime, it became the subject of public complaints and criticism, and was abolished in the course of the Great Revolution of 1789-1790, and was abolished in England in 1648 and 1688, and in Germany in 1807.