Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/331

298 But when the abbess or prioress of any monastery shall have to do homage for the feud by which she holds the monastery from some prince or temporal lord, or to take an oath of fealty to him (unless that she may be able to do this through the proctor), she may in that case have liberty to leave her monastery with a seemly and becoming society, sure to return forthwith after the homage is done, or the oath of fealty has been taken, so that nothing soever may be done to the detriment of residence or of monasterial seclusion.

Furthermore, that nuns may have no cause or opportunity for straying about, we beg, require, and beseech, by the bowels of the mercy of Jesus Christ, of all secular princes and other temporal lords, still recommending the same persons (so to do) for the remission of sins, that they would suffer the abbesses and prioresses themselves, and all nuns soever, bearing charge of their monasteries, as also the administration and affairs of the same, under what names soever they may be styled, to conduct their litigations through the medium of proctors in their tribunals or courts, so that it may not be necessary that they should stray about instead of appointing proctors (who in some places are called attorneys ), or other such persons. But if any shall presume [to act] otherwise, refusing to comply with such reasonable and holy exhortation, as it is contrary to justice that women (especially religious women) should conduct lawsuits personally, and as it is swerving from the path of decorum, and involves the danger of souls, they should be forced to this (line of conduct) by ecclesiastical censure, through their own ecclesiastical ordinaries. But on the bishops and other prelates, superior and inferior, whoever they be, we enjoin, that they themselves shall see that the causes and transactions, which the aforesaid nuns shall have to manage, be carried on and managed in their own presence, or in the courts of the same, whether they be homages, oaths of fealty, lawsuits, or other matters, through the agency of their proctors.

And since it be not enough to establish laws, unless there