Commendam - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition commendam

Definition :

Commendam is a benefice or ecclesiastical living which, being void, is commended by the Crown to the care of a clerk until it may be conveniently supplied with a pastor. Not only dignitaries and benefices, but deaneries, prebends, headships of colleges and hospitals, have been granted in commendam. The acceptance by a beneficed clerk of a second living vacated the one be already held, and to avoid this a dispensation, called a commendam retinere, had to be obtained either from the Pope, or in later times from the King. See Mirehouse on Adv. C. vii., S. 6.

By the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act, 1836 (6 & 7 jWm. 4, c. 77), s. 18, which abolished commendams by bishops (with a saving for those at the passing of the Act), every commendam, whether to retain or to receive, and whether temporary or perpetual, became absolutely void.