help of the nobles against the Emperor forced him to stay his hand.
The third Lateran Council (1179) forbade, on pain of peril to the
soul, the transfer of tithes from one layman to another, and deprived
of Christian burial any one who, apparently having received such a
transfer, should not have made it over to the Church. This was a
definite claim for tithes as a right of which the Church had only been
deprived by some wrongful act. But in the very next year (1180)
Frederick I, at the Diet of Gelnhausen, declared that the alienation
of tithes as feudal fiefs to defenders of the Church was perfectly
legitimate. Religious scruples, however, seem to have caused the
surrender of tithes by many lay impropriators, especially to
monasteries.

[Sidenote: Bequests.]

There were many other sources of wealth to the Church. An enormous
quantity of property was bequeathed to pious uses by testators. The
attendance of the clergy at the death-bed gave them an opportunity of
which they were not slow to make use. The bodies of those who died
intestate, as of those unconfessed, were denied burial in consecrated
ground; all questions concerning wills were heard in the
ecclesiastical courts. The civil power attempted to check the freedom
of death-bed bequest, especially in Germany, where it was held that a
valid will could only be made by one who was still well enough to walk
unsupported. Another common source of revenue came from purchases or
mortgages or other arrangements made with crusaders, in which
advantage was taken of the haste of the lay men to raise funds for
their expedition.

[Sidenote: Wealth of the Church.]