Chapter II — On rent-charges real and personal, and their division

I. SOLE QUESTION. What is a rent-charge, and of how many kinds is it? ANSWER. It is the right of exacting a pension from another's fruit-bearing thing. The younger authors add another particle, or from a person, that they may include in the common definition of a rent-charge the personal rent-charge. But since that rent-charge is to me fictitious, and a mask of usury, therefore I exclude it from the definition of a rent-charge.

II. A rent-charge is distributed into reservative and consignative. When a man delivers his thing to another with this burden added, that he who receives the thing pay yearly a prescribed pension, he constitutes a reservative rent-charge. A consignative rent-charge is that in which, the dominion of your thing — an estate, a house, and so forth — being retained, you sell to another the right of perceiving a pension every year.

III. The consignative is again divided: first, on the part of the thing in which it is founded, into real, personal, and mixed; second, on the part of the pension, into pecuniary and fruit-bearing; third, on the part of time, into temporal and perpetual; fourth, on the part of the manner in which it is celebrated, into redeemable and irredeemable.

IV. A real rent-charge is constituted upon a field, a house, or some fruit-bearing land. If it be alienated and pass to several lords, the burden of that rent-charge passes also, until it be redeemed. If the thing perish, the rent-charge perishes. A personal rent-charge is constituted immediately upon a person, who is obliged to pay the pension from his industry, labour, and works, and also from his goods, if he have them. That rent-charge immediately affects and accompanies the person, not the thing. Wherefore if the goods perish and not the person, the rent-charge stands. And although a hypothec be delivered for assurance, it does not therefore pass into a real one, because the hypothec does not remain immediately obligated, but only in default of the person. A mixed one is constituted both upon a thing and upon a person. And therefore if the thing perish and not the person, the latter must pay; if on the contrary the person perish and not the thing, the pension is exacted from the latter. A pecuniary one is paid in money, a fruit-bearing one in fruits. A temporal one has a fixed time. A perpetual one lasts always. A life rent-charge is bound to an uncertain time, namely to a person. A redeemable one can be redeemed at the discretion of the rent-buyer, or of the rent-payer, or of both. An irredeemable one can never be redeemed. He who buys the rent-charge is called the censualist; he who pays it, the censuary.

V. The real rent-charge Martin V, Callixtus III, and St. Pius V in the constitution Cum onus, and so forth, in the year 1568, approved. That contract is lawful and just. Both parties consent. The price is just. Since although all the pensions taken together exceed the price of the thing, yet received successively they are worth less.

VI. The assailants of rent-charges, the defenders of usury, object: A rent-charge is a pure and mere loan. I deliver to you 100, that every year you render me five. Ten years having elapsed, the principal has been rendered. And nevertheless I shall receive five every year in perpetuity. What is this but a perpetual loan?

VII. The various answers which authors afford show that the objection is of no light moment. The only true answer seems to me this. An accession above the principal in a loan is disapproved, because money by its own nature is barren and is consumed by civil use. It becomes fruitful by the industry of the borrower, not of the lender. On the contrary, the estates of rent-charges are by their own nature fruit-bearing, in which the usufruct is distinguished from the dominion. If these two are in fact distinct, one can be sold without the other. Nor is this asserted gratuitously. For if the field, the house, the estate in which the rent-charge is founded perish by alluvion, fire, or another way, it perishes to the censualist himself and by no means to the censuary. On the contrary in a loan it perishes to the borrower, not to the lender. The difference therefore is true and real. The matter comes back to this, that rent-charges be celebrated according to the apostolic constitutions: that there truly intervene a real contract of selling and buying of the right of perceiving pensions; and that the estate of the rent-charge be in fact fruit-bearing, free, and corresponding to the principal. Most frequently those rent-charges are fictitious, because the conditions prescribed by the pontifical constitutions are not observed. Those authors who neglect the conditions prescribed by the Holy See expose the pontifical bulls to the calumnies of heretics. If you are eager to know more of the difference between a rent-charge and money lent, read our commentary on the Encyclical of Benedict XIV, dissertation 3, chapter 4, § 5.