recast, and the consent of the two authorities has been required for the
establishment of new parishes. As regards candidates for ecclesiastical
offices, the concordats concluded with Catholic nations regularly give
the sovereign the right to nominate or present to bishoprics, often also
to other inferior benefices, such as canonries, important parishes and
abbeys; or at least the choice of the ecclesiastical authority is
submitted to the approval of the civil power. In all cases canonical
institution (which confers ecclesiastical jurisdiction) is reserved to
the pope or the bishops. In countries where the head of the state is not
a Catholic, the bishops are regularly elected by the chapters, but the
civil power has the right to strike out objectionable names from the
list of candidates which is previously submitted to it. Other
conventions secure the exercise of the jurisdiction of the bishops in
their diocese, and determine precisely their authority over seminaries
and other ecclesiastical establishments of instruction and education, as
well as over public schools, so far as concerns the teaching of
religion. Certain concordats deal with the orders and congregations of
monks and nuns with a view to subjecting them to a certain control while
securing to them the legal exercise of their activities. Ecclesiastical
immunities, such as reservation of the criminal cases of the clergy,
exemption from military service and other privileges, are expressly
maintained in a certain number of pacts. One of the most important
subjects is that of church property. An agreement is come to as to the
conditions on which pious foundations are able to be made; the measure
in which church property shall contribute to the public expenses is
indicated; and, in the 19th century, the position of those who have
acquired confiscated church property is regularized. In exchange for
this surrender by the church of its ancient property the state engages
to contribute to the subsistence of the ministers of public worship, or
at least of certain of them.

Scholars agree in associating the earliest concordats with the
celebrated contest about investitures (q.v.), which so profoundly
agitated Christian Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. The first in
date is that which was concluded for England with Henry I. in 1107 by
the efforts of St Anselm. The convention of Sutri of 1111 between Pope
Paschal II. and the emperor Henry V. having been rejected, negot