Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/279

246 the more learn to reverence them, the more pure of life they know them to be: the holy synod forbids all clerks soever to dare to keep concubines, or any other women of whom any suspicion can be entertained, either in or out of their own dwellings, or to presume to have any commerce with them: otherwise they shall be punished with the penalties imposed by the sacred canons, or by the statutes of the churches. But if, having been admonished by their superiors, [they ahall not refrain from these women, they shall be by the very fact deprived of the third part of the fruits, revenues, and proceeds of all the benefices and pensions whatsoever; which [third part] shall, at the discretion of the bishop, be applied to the fabric of the church, or to some other pious place. If, however, persisting in the same crime, with the same or some other woman, they shall not yet have obeyed a second admonition, not only shall they thereupon forfeit all the fruits and proceeds of their benefices, and their pensions, which shall be applied to the places aforesaid, but they shall also be suspended from the administration of the benefices themselves, for as long a time as the ordinary shall think fit, even as the delegate of the Apostolic See. And if, having been thus suspended, they shall nevertheless not send away those women, or if they shall even have intercourse with them, then shall they for ever be deprived of their ecclesiastical benefices, portions, offices, and pensions of what kind; soever, and be rendered thenceforth incapable and unworthy of any manner of honours, dignities, benefices, and offices, until after a manifest amendment of life, it shall seem good to their superiors, for a [just] cause, to grant them a dispensation. But if, after they have once put them away, they shall have dared to renew the interrupted connection, or to take to themselves other scandalous women of this sort, they shall, in addition to the penalties aforesaid, be smitten with the sword of excommunication. Nor shall any appeal, or exemption, hinder or suspend the execution aforesaid; and the cognizance of all the matters above mentioned shall not belong to archdeacons, or deans, or other inferiors, but to the bishops themselves, who may proceed without the noise and the formality of justice, and by the sole investigation of the truth of the fact. But clerks, who hold not ecclesiastical benefices or pensions, shall, according to the quality of