the right of the chapter of Soissons to decree the judicial combat appears to be undoubted, as well as the earnestness of the worthy ecclesiastics to exercise the privilege.[513] Even more significant is a declaration of the authorities of Metz, as late as 1299, by which the granting of all wagers of battle is expressly admitted by the civil magistrates of the city to appertain to the court of the archbishop;[514] and even in 1311 a bishop of St. Brieuc ordered a duel between two squires pleading in his court, in consequence of high words between them. From some cause the combat did not take place, and the Christian prelate seized the arms and horses of the parties as his mulct. They appealed to the Parlement of Paris, which ordered the restoration of the confiscated articles, and fined the bishop for his disregard of the royal edicts prohibiting the single combat.[515] Not long before, Beaumanoir had definitely asserted that the church could not be concerned in cases which involved the judicial duel, or the infliction of death or mutilation;[516] but the church was not disposed to admit this limitation on its jurisdiction, and in spite of the attempted suppression of the wager of battle by the crown it continued in its multifarious capacity of seigneur to execute the cruel laws of the period with undiminished activity.[517] In other lands, where the duel had not experienced as in France the hostility of the supreme power, prelates continued to decree it, regardless of the papal anathemas. It was to no purpose that canon lawyers proved that they thereby incurred mortal sin, and that if death ensued they became “irregular” and incompetent to perform divine service. To all this they turned a deaf ear, and John of Freiburg, towards the close of the thirteenth century, is reduced to wishing that preachers would expound these principles in the pulpit and make them understood by the people at large.[518] * * * * *