Eleemosynary Corporations

Eleemosynary corporations, corporate bodies con-stituted for the perpetual distribution of the free alms or bounty of the founder of them. Of this kind are all hospitals for the maintenance of the poor, sick, and impotent, and all colleges, both in our universities and out of them, which are founded for the promotion of piety and learning by proper regulations and ordinances, and for imparting assistance to the members of those bodies, in order to enable them to prosecute their devotions and studies with greater care and assiduity. These eleemosynary corporations, though in some things partaking of the nature of ecclesiastical bodies, are, strictly speaking, lay, and not ecclesiastical, even though composed of ecclesiastical persons; and, accordingly, they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, or to the visitations of the ordinary or diocesan in their spiritual charac-ters, 3 Steph. Com.