The Theodosian Code freed the property of the Church from most fiscal burdens, and the clergy from taxes, from public and military service, and from many other obligations which sometimes the Code groups under the head of _sordida munera_. The Church might receive all manner of bequests, and it inherited the property of such of its clergy as did not leave near relatives surviving them. Its property generally was inalienable; and the clergy were accorded many special safeguards. Slaves might be manumitted in a church. The church edifices were declared asylums of refuge from pursuers, a privilege which had passed to the churches from the heathen fanes and the statues of the emperors. Constitution after constitution was hurled against the Church’s enemies. The Theodosian Code has one chapter containing sixty-six constitutions directed against heretics, the combined result of which was to deprive them, if not of life and property, at least of protected legal existence. Of enormous import was the sweeping recognition on the Empire’s part of the validity of episcopal jurisdiction. No bishop might be summoned before a secular court as a defendant, or compelled to give testimony. Falsely to accuse one of the clergy rendered the accuser infamous. All matters pertaining to religion and church discipline might be brought only before the bishop’s court, which likewise had plenary jurisdiction over controversies among the clergy. It was also open to the laity for the settlement of civil disputes. The command not to go to law before the heathen came down from Paul (1 Cor. vi.), and together with the severed and persecuted condition of the early Christian communities, may be regarded as the far source of the episcopal jurisdiction, which thus divinely sanctioned tended to extend its arbitrament to all manner of legal controversies.[401] To be sure, under the Christian Roman Empire the authority of the Church as well as its privileges rested upon imperial law. Yet the emperors recognized, rather than actually created, the ecclesiastical authority. And when the Empire was shattered, there stood the Church erect amid the downfall of the imperial government, and capable of supporting itself in the new Teutonic kingdoms. The constitutions of Christian emperors did not from their own force and validity become Ecclesiastical or Canon law--the law relating to Christians as such, and especially to the Church and its functions. The source of that law was God; the Church was its declarative organ. Acceptance on the Church’s part was requisite before any secular law could become a law of the Church.