Aparson is an ordainedChristian person responsible for a small area, typically a parish. The term was formerly often used for someAnglican clergy and, more rarely, for ordained ministers in some other churches. It is no longer a formal term denoting a specific position within Anglicanism, but has some continued historical and colloquial use.[1]
In the pre-Reformation church, a parson was the priest of an independentparish church, that is, a church not under the control of a larger ecclesiastical or monastic organization. The term is similar torector and is in contrast to avicar, a cleric whoserevenue is usually, at least partially, appropriated by a larger organisation. Today the term is normally used for some parish clergy of non-Roman Catholic churches, in particular in the Anglican tradition in which a parson is theincumbent of aparochialbenefice: a parishpriest or arector; in this sense a parson can be compared with a vicar. The titleparson can be applied to clergy from certain other denominations. A parson is often housed in a church-owned home known as aparsonage.[2]
William Blackstone'sCommentaries on the Laws of England says that aparson is a parish priest with the fullest legal rights to the parish properties:
Although often used colloquially to refer to anyincumbent, in an official sense a parson is arector.
InUlster, in the early 17th century, everyparish had avicar and a parson instead of aco-arb and anerenagh. The vicar, like the co-arb, was always in orders. He said the mass (‘serveth the cure’) and received a share of the tithes. The parson, like the erenagh, had a major portion of the tithes, maintained the church and provided hospitality. As he was not usually in clerical orders, his responsibilities were mainly temporal.
However, there were differences in the divisions of the tithes between various dioceses inTyrone. In theDiocese of Clogher, the vicar and the parson shared the tithes equally between them; in theDiocese of Derry, church income came from both tithes and the rental of church lands (‘temporalities’). The vicar and the parson each received one third of the tithes and paid an annual tribute to the bishop. In places where there was no parson, the erenagh continued to receive two thirds of theincome in kind from the church lands, and delivered the balance, after defraying maintenance, to the bishop in cash as a yearly rental. In other places, the parson, the vicar and the erenagh shared the costs of church repairs equally between them. In theDiocese of Armagh the parson received two-thirds of the tithes and the vicar one third. The archbishop and the erenagh impropriated no part thereof because they received the entire income from thetermon lands.
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