], economy, i.e. divine or religious systems, as in the
Jewish, Mosaic, Christian dispensations. Dispensation in law is,
strictly speaking, the suspension by competent authority of general
rules of law in particular cases. Its object is to modify the hardships
often arising from the rigorous application of general laws to
particular cases, and its essence is to preserve the law by suspending
its operation, i.e. making it non-existent, in such cases. It follows,
then, that dispensation, in its strict sense, is anticipative, i.e. it
does not absolve from the consequences of a legal obligation already
contracted, but avoids a breach of the law by suspending the obligation
to conform to it, e.g. a dispensation or licence to marry within the
prohibited degrees, or to hold benefices in plurality. The term is,
however, frequently used of the power claimed and exercised by the
supreme legislative authority of altering or abrogating in particular
cases conditions established under the existing law and of releasing
individuals from obligations incurred under it, e.g. dispensations
granted by the pope _ex plenitudine potestatis_ from the obligation of
celibacy, from religious and other vows, from _matrimonium ratum_, _non
consummatum_, &c.

1. _Ecclesiastical Law._--In the theory of the canon law the dispensing
power is the corollary of the legislative, the authority that makes
laws, and no other, having power to suspend them. It follows that the
law of nature (_jus naturae_) and _a fortiori_ the law of God (_jus
divinum_) are not subject to dispensation of any earthly authority, and
that it is only the disciplinary laws made by the Church that the Church
is empowered to suspend or to abrogate. Thus, not even the pope could
grant a dispensation for a marriage between persons related in the
direct line of ascent or descent, e.g. father and daughter, or between
brother and sister, while dispensations are granted for marriages within
other prohibited degrees, e.g. uncle and niece.

The dispensing power, like the legislative authority, was formerly
invested in general councils and even in provincial synods; but in the
West, with the gradual centralization of authority at Rome, it became
ultimately vested in the pope as the supreme lawgiver of the Church.
Subject, however, to the supreme jurisdiction of the pope, the power of
dispensation continued to reside in the other organs of the Church in
exact proportion to their legislative ca