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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 391227" data-attributes="member: 5328">G'day thereIt is astonishing how little people in mediaeval societies got for their taxes and tithes.Taxes in general were raised to pay for wars, or to repay loans that were originally taken out to pay for wars and other royal extravagances, such as building castles and palaces. Justice was self-funding out of fines. And roads and ports were generally built and paid for by a corvée (labour tribute) rather than paid for by the royal government.Tithes did not go to pay the parish priests, or at least not always. They usually belonged to some prelate or even lay magnate, usually the successor of the person who built the church. The priest lived by farming or renting out a piece of land called 'the glebe', and by collecting fees for services, and by collecting dues (such as the best bed and best clothes and second-best beasts of anyone who died in the parish, etc.) Charging for the sacraments was technically simony, but a lot of it went on anyway. Even priests who recieved incomes from endowments set up to say certain masses often did not do it. They kept the salaries and did not show up. So in the later mediaeval period, rather than endow chantries and so forth, many people left incomes in trust with attorneys to pay fees only to the priests who actually showed up to sing specified masses. The unedifying spectacle of priests singing a mass in an indistinguishable mumble and then filing past a lawyer to collect a fee was on of the disillusioning impressions that led to the Reformation.There is no reason why characters in a D&D world should fare any better, unless the deities take a more interventionist role than God does in the administration of his Church.Regards,Agback</blockquote>

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