members should escape their feudal obligations, nor even that they
should contribute nothing to the exigencies of the State. The desire
was merely that the clergy should be free from oppression and that the
Church should be so far as possible self-governing. Thus Alexander III
decreed in the third Lateran Council (1179), that for relieving the
needs of the community, everything contributed by the Church to
supplement the contributions of the laity should be given without
compulsion on the recognition of its necessity or utility by the
bishop and the clergy. Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council
(1215), provided a further safeguard against lay impositions in
demanding the permission of the Pope for any such levy. This does not
mean that the clergy escaped taxation at the hands of the State; it
merely means that while the Popes themselves heavily taxed them for
purposes which it was often difficult to describe as religious, the
price paid by the Crown for leave to tax the clergy was that a large
portion of the money should find its way to Rome.

[Sidenote: Tithes from the laity.]

The clergy were not content with this merely negative position.
Besides the right of self-taxation, they claimed that the laity should
contribute to the needs of the Church. The chief permanent source of
such contribution was the tithe, both the lesser tithes on smaller
animals, fruits, and vegetables, and the greater tithes on corn, wine,
and the larger animals. The Church also claimed tithes of revenues of
every kind, even from such divers classes as traders, soldiers,
beggars, and abandoned women. Much of the regular tithe had fallen
into the hands of laymen by gift from Kings to feudal tenants, or from
bishops to nobles and others, in return for military protection. These
alienated tithes Gregory VII tried to recover; but his need for the