patron (Latin patronus)

A person or body, who founded or presented a church institution and in return he received certain privileges concerning the life of the church (in general advowee's right, in Latin jus patronus). The origins of advowee's right go back to the 5-6th century. In the west - especially in German regions - this institution was preceded by the system of the institution of so-called private churches, which originated from German law. The importance of this was landlords could consider the churches founded on their own estates as their own property, so church authorities could intervene in the matters of those (for example, appointing parish priests). From the point of the view of the church this system was harmful, so they worked out the regulation of advowee's rights in the 12th century. After this the most significant right of the patron was the right of introduction, and this meant that he could appoint any ecclesiastic person to the lead of an institution on his estate, but this had to be acknowledged by the county bishop. Besides this the patron had other honorary rights (place of honour and tomb place in the church). In return he was obliged to support and defend the church. In the 11th century in Hungary part of the churches belonged to royal patrons, part of them belonged no one, since in compliance with St Stephen's law they were built by the community (ten villages), so the bishop could appoint leaders to them. The system of private patrons appeared in the second half of the 11th century, and it was fully developed by the 13th century, when (besides landlords) towns were given the right to elect parish priests. Advowe's right played an important role again during the Reformation, when Hungary adopted the free choice of religion of German principals to the institution of advowees (Latin cuius regio, eius religio = the one who owns the region owns the religion).

MA