Definition
In ecclesiastical law, pentecostals are customary offerings or oblations made by parishioners to their parish priests at the feast of Pentecost. In some arrangements, inferior or dependent churches and parishes were also required to make these payments to the principal mother church from which they derived. The term is effectively a synonym for "Whitsun farthings," reflecting the popular English name for the same obligation (Whitsunday being the English name for Pentecost). These were not voluntary charitable gifts but quasi-obligatory customary dues forming part of the broader system of ecclesiastical finance in medieval and early modern England.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of Pentecostal — referring to members of Pentecostal Christian denominations, characterized by beliefs including speaking in tongues and direct experience of the Holy Spirit.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Offerings formerly made to the parish priest, or to the mother church, at Pentecost."
The gap here is almost total. A modern researcher encountering "pentecostals" in any context outside historical ecclesiastical law will almost certainly understand it as a reference to members of the Pentecostal movement, a Protestant tradition that did not emerge until the early twentieth century. In legal and ecclesiastical sources predating that movement, the term refers exclusively to a category of customary church dues, not to any group of persons. The capitalization (or lack of it) in a source is a useful but not reliable guide to which meaning is intended.
Common Confusion
Pentecostals (ecclesiastical dues) should not be confused with the modern religious denomination of the same name, nor with the broader category of tithes. While tithes were mandatory assessments on agricultural produce and income with statutory backing, pentecostals were customary oblations tied to a specific liturgical occasion. The legal enforceability and character of each differed, and conflating them in research on ecclesiastical finance or church court records will produce errors.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources dealing with pre-Reformation and early modern English ecclesiastical law, canon law commentary, and church court records. Researchers working in these areas should be alert to several points.
First, the term is largely absent from modern legal sources. Its relevance is confined to historical ecclesiastical law, making it a term of art for researchers in legal history, church history, and the history of ecclesiastical taxation rather than practitioners.
Second, the relationship between pentecostals and the hierarchy of mother churches and dependent chapelries is significant for understanding how parish structures and financial obligations were organized. A dependent chapel's obligation to pay pentecostals to the mother church is evidence of that dependency relationship, which could have legal consequences for questions of burial rights, baptism, and other parochial functions.
Third, researchers using the Law Mind corpus should be aware that the term may appear in discussions of ecclesiastical dues alongside mortuaries, oblations, and synodals — each a distinct category of customary church payment with different legal bases and enforcement mechanisms. Treating them as interchangeable will distort analysis.
Fourth, the alternate name "Whitsun farthings" appears in some sources where "pentecostals" does not, and vice versa. A thorough search of historical ecclesiastical law sources should include both terms.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary are in close agreement, defining pentecostals as pious oblations made at the feast of Pentecost by parishioners to their priests, and sometimes by inferior churches to mother churches. The second edition adds the alternate name "Whitsun farthings" and attributes the entry to Wharton, a reference to the ecclesiastical law commentary tradition. Webster's 1913 confirms the same meaning in plain terms.
The historical dictionaries treat this as a settled, narrow term with no significant ambiguity. What they do not address is the mechanism of enforcement — whether these dues were collected through ecclesiastical courts, and how they interacted with other customary obligations — matters relevant to researchers working in primary ecclesiastical court records. For that level of detail, the dictionary sources must be supplemented with ecclesiastical law treatises and canon law scholarship.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to English ecclesiastical law and the legal traditions derived from it. It has no recognized equivalent or application in American law, civil law jurisdictions, or modern common law contexts outside the history of the Church of England and its legal arrangements.