Commentaria in Numeros
“Our forefathers,” he says, “abounded in all plenty because they gave tithes to God and rendered tribute to Caesar; but now, because devotion to God has departed, the imposition of the treasury has come; we would not share tithes with God, and now all is taken away: the treasury takes what Christ does not receive.” And serm. 219 On the Season: “This is the most just custom of the Lord, that if thou givest him not the tithes, thou shalt be brought back to a tenth.” See him in the whole of that sermon (1).
31. BECAUSE IT IS THE PRICE FOR THE MINISTRY WHEREWITH YOU SERVE IN THE TABERNACLE.—“Price,” in Hebrew, wages, namely of the labour wherewith you, O Levites, as servants and bearers, toil in carrying, arranging and directing the tabernacle, etc. For this ministry was in itself bodily, and merited a bodily price and wages; although it was referred to a spiritual end, namely the worship of God, that spiritual reference could not be sold without simony.
Secondly, “price” means a stipend of support: for this also, under the new law, is owed in justice to parish priests and other ministers of the Church.
Verse 32.—32. THAT YOU DEFILE NOT THE OBLATIONS OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL (which you would do if, when they give the best tithes, you should choose from them the worst tenth to give to the priests), AND DIE.
Concerning this chapter on tithes, note first that the Gentiles also paid tithes continually to their gods. Cicero teaches this, bk. iii On the Nature of the Gods: “Did anyone ever vow a tenth to Hercules,” he says, “if he had become wise?” and Plautus: “That he might pay the tithes to Hercules”; and Herodotus in Clio: “Station,” he says, “at each gate some of your guards to forbid the carrying out of wealth, that the tithes of it may of necessity be paid to Jove.” This Croesus said to Cyrus, king of the Persians; and Xenophon: “Agis,” he says, “set out for Delphi and offered a tenth to the god.”
Philo notes secondly, in his book On the Honour of Priests, that tribute is to be paid to priests as to kings, by the judgment of God; hence by the judgment of the law the priests are equalled in honour and majesty to kings, nay preferred to them; for subjects pay tribute to kings under compulsion and unwillingly: “But this nation (the Jewish),” he says, “brings forth the money due gladly and joyfully, as though it were not giving but receiving, adding auspicious wishes and thanksgivings.”
St. Jerome notes thirdly, on Malach. iii, that the first-fruits and tithes given to the Levites and priests of the old law foreshadowed and prefigured that the same were to be given to the priests of the new law; for, as Origen says here, hom. 41: “It is impious for one who worships God, and knows that his ministers stand at the altar and serve the word of God or the ministry of the Church, not to offer first-fruits to the priests from the fruits of the earth which God gives, bringing forth his sun and ministering his rains; for such a soul seems to have no memory of God, nor to think or believe that God gave the fruits which it has gathered.” Hence a Roman Council under Damasus long ago decreed that tithes and first-fruits should be given by the faithful, and that those who refused should be struck with anathema.
…commands that shoemakers and other artisans, when they sell or buy shoes and other wares of their craft, pay to God at least the tenth part of the price. Would you have an example? At Meliapore in India the tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle was found by the Portuguese, with an inscription in ancient letters that this temple had once been built by the holy Apostle of God, Thomas; and that for the keeping and worship of the temple the tenth of the merchandise imported into the city had been assigned by King Sagamus; there was added an adjuration to posterity that none should wish this revenue lessened by any donation. So our Maffei relates, bk. viii Indian History.
When Charles Martel wished to turn the tithes of the Church to the pay of soldiers against the Saracens, St. Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans, withstood him, and was therefore banished by him into exile, as John Molanus, Doctor of Louvain, has it in his Annals of the Saints of Belgium, 20 February.
When St. Stephen, king of Hungary, devoted the Hungarians to St. Martin, who was a Hungarian, by whose invocation he had obtained victory, tithes also were assigned to the Church, as is plain from his Life, which is extant. Hear what John, Archbishop of Upsala, relates of Denmark in his History of the Goths, bk. xviii, chap. xiii; Saxo Grammaticus, bk. xi History of the Danes; the Martyrology of Usuard, 6 July; John Molanus, orations 2 and 3 On Tithes; James Meyer, bk. iii History of Flanders, in the year of Christ 1088. King Canute, when he strove with the highest and most pious zeal that the ministers of Christ might be more liberally and conveniently provided for out of tithes and first-fruits, was betrayed by the notable perfidy of one Blacco and slain by the frenzied populace. After this deed so great a scarcity of grain fell upon all Denmark that the greater part of the people, destitute of food, perished of hunger. Yet the neighbouring countries had abundant harvest, so that it seemed the private vengeance of a nation and not a public calamity of the lands. Nor was fertility restored to the Danish fields until the people, turning back to their heart, did penance for having slain so holy a king, who had asked such just and honourable things for the ministers of Christ. And now they had learned by experience that they had justly lost nine parts of their grain, who would not render a tenth of it to God and God’s ministers.
Of the Poles, Longinus, Canon of Cracow, relates, and from him Baronius, tom. xi, in the year of Christ 1022, that when some of their nobles, on account of the burdensome payment of tithes, thought of falling away from Christianity and returning to paganism, and therefore of not paying tithes, not frequenting churches, but driving the priests out of the churches, the pious king Boleslaus seized the authors of the crime and punished them, some with death, some with scourging.
Of the Italians, John Molanus relates from Crantz, Usuard and others, on 26 November, that St. Bellinus, Bishop of Padua, when he pressed a certain rich man named Thomas Capivaccius to pay tithes, was slain by him on a journey, and, as after his death he shone with many miracles, was inscribed by Eugenius IV in the catalogue of Martyrs; but that the murderer, punished by God, was reduced to extreme want, and, forsaken by all, ended his life miserably in prison; and that his descendants could never enter the church dedicated to God in honour of St. Bellinus, and shortly after wholly died out.
Of the Scots, Hector Boece writes, bk. xiii, and John Major, bk. iv On the Deeds of the Scots, chap. x, that the men of Caithness burnt in his own kitchen their bishop Adam, who was exacting tithes as was customary and compelling payment by anathema; King Alexander of Scotland, hearing of it, gathered forces, seized the authors of the crime, and put more than four hundred to extreme punishment; and the Earl of Caithness, because he had not helped Adam when he called for his aid, he deprived of his earldom. But God punished him more heavily; for after a few years his servants, whom he had treated more harshly than was just, slew him by night, and laid him on a pallet (that the deed might remain hidden) and burnt him by setting the house on fire. He perished, therefore, by the same kind of punishment with which his people had visited Bishop Adam.
Of the Saxons hear Lambert of Schaffnaburg, in the year of Christ 1059. Burchard, Bishop of Halberstadt, claimed for himself, by reason of episcopal rule, the tithes of Saxony which belonged to the monastery of Hersfeld. Meginher, abbot of that monastery, bade Frederick the Count Palatine tell the bishop, since he could by no right be led to restore what he had taken, that the time was soon at hand when this cause must be judged before God. The abbot died soon after. And when the bishop, for that matter, had called a synod, he fell from his horse on the journey and was carried home; where he asked both his household and the bishops who visited him to restore those tithes to the monastery without delay, for he was already paying the penalty of injustice.
Of the Noricans punished with famine for unpaid tithes, I shall speak at Deut. xiv, at the end.