In its quality of a perfect and independent society the Roman Catholic Church may also decide under what forms and on what conditions it will accept donations made to works of religion donationes ad pias causas; English: donations toward pious causes, it pertains to the State to legislate for all other donations. The restrictions known as the "right of amortization" are of later date, and are the outcome of theories elaborated in the Middle Ages but carried to their logical issue in the modern civil legislation concerning biens de mainmorte, or property held by inalienable tenure, i.e. the property of religious corporations, they being perpetual.
At the request of the donor the Church granted him the use of the donated object for five years, for his life, or even a use transferable to the heirs of the first occupant. Generally speaking, the consent of the civil authority princeps was not indispensable for the acquisition of property by religious corporations. Moreover, the insinuatio or declaration of the gift before the public authority was required only for donations equivalent in value to 500 solidi or more, a privilege later on extended to all donations. Synods of this epoch assert to some extent the validity of pious donations even when the legal requisites had not been observed, though as a rule they were not omitted. Even before the Church was free to acquire property by donation either as a juridically recognized association or as a society de facto tolerated note that the right to acquire property by last will and testament dates only from 321 in the reign of Constantine.