Before clergymen in the Catholic Church were barred from marriage, was there a significant loss of church lands due to the lands being treated as personal property by the clergymen and subsequently bequeathed to their heirs? OP REPOST

by Claudzilla

never got an answer, hoping someone may have some insight

armer_heinrich

Sort of - in a sense, the secular clergy never really "owned" church lands in the first place as individuals, though unscrupulous priests could certainly still trouser income from tithes, so that might add up to de facto ownership I guess. And yes, they might well pass on benefices to their kids if they had families, particularly in remote areas with poor episcopal supervision. But it was hard for the Church to "lose" land permanently through inheritance, like this. It was more likely that they'd lose out to laymen appropriating land or other assets, or to religious houses (plenty of evidence of land disputes between bishops and abbots/abbesses, for instance).