Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/280

Rh their crime and contumacy, and their persistence therein, be pushed, by the bishop himself, with the penalty of imprisonment, suspension from their order, and inability to obtain benefices, or in other ways according to the sacred canons. Bishops also, if, which far be it! they abstain not from crime of this nature, and, being admonished by the provincial synod, do not amend, shall be by the very fact suspended; and if they persevere, they shall even be reported by the said synod to the most holy Roman Pontiff, who shall animadvert upon them according to the chatacter of their guilt, even with deprivation, if need be.

CHAPTER XV.

The Illegitimate Sons of Clerics are to be excluded from certain Benefices.

That the memory of paternal incontinency may be banished as far as possible from places consecrated to God, the which purity and holiness do most especially become; it shall not be lawful for the sons of clerks, who are not born from lawful wedlock, to hold, in those churches wherein their fathers have, or have had an ecclesiastical benefice, any benefice soever, even though a different one; nor to minister in any way in the said churches; nor to have pensions out of the fruits of benefices which their fathers hold, or have at another time held. And if a father and son shall be found, at this present time, to hold benefices in the same church; the son shall be compelled to resign his benefice, or to exchange it for another out of that church, within the space of three months; otherwise he shall by the very fact be deprived thereof; and any dispensation touching the aforesaid shall be accounted surreptitious. Moreover any reciprocal resignations which shall heretofore be made by fathers who are clerks in favour of their sons, that one may obtain the benefice of the other, shall be absolutely regarded as made with a view to the fraudulent evasion of this decree, and of the ordinances of the canons; nor shall the collations that have followed, by force of resignations of this kind, or of any others soever which have been made fraudulently, be of avail to the said sons of clerks.