Where any bishops who, in past times, have committed the offences
hereinbefore mentioned, and have been in adverse possession of church
property for thirty years, and declare that they hold said property
by the right of prescription; such persons we leave to the justice of
God, for we decline to pass judgment upon them. But whoever, up to
the time when this law is promulgated, shall not have had possession
of such property for the space of thirty years, shall be compelled
to restore it intact to the church, but no penalty shall be required
of them. And where any bishop, who from the day of the adoption of
this law, should appropriate anything given by the faithful to the
churches of God, and should use such property for his own benefit,
or for that of his cathedral church, or should bestow any of it upon
any person whomsoever, his act shall not be confirmed by any lapse of
time; and, according to the above-mentioned decree, whenever he shall
have been convicted of the commission of such acts by anybody, he
shall be compelled to restore the property which he took, along with
lawful amends out of his own possessions, to that church which has been
defrauded. If he should not have the means to make full restitution out
of his own property, on account of his abuse of authority, he shall
undergo the penalty of excommunication prescribed by the canon of
the eleventh Council of Toledo; that is to say, if the property that
was appropriated was worth ten _solidi_, he shall purge himself
of guilt by twenty days of penance. If the value of the property
appropriated should be greater or less, the proportion of days to be
passed in penance shall always be doubled; and he also shall undergo
a similar penalty who retains possession of any property taken from a
diocesan church, which has been appropriated by his predecessor.
Any judge who neglects to carry out the provisions of this law, or
delays the proceedings without just cause, or does not notify the king
that he may take cognizance of the affair, shall be liable to the same
penalty as the bishop who committed the offence, and shall pay said
penalty out of his own property to the church whose cause he neglected
to decide. This law not only applies to property which has been
bestowed upon minor and diocesan churches, but to that in which all
assemblies included under the general name of churches are concerned;
that is to say, monasteries and convents of men and women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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