Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/340

Rh the same ordinaries observe this diligence, that they do not presume to confer a personate, dignity, or other benefice having a similar cure of souls, on anj person holding several of the same kind, until a dispensation evidently sufficient be shown by them regarding those so obtained, which being shown, we desire that they at length proceed to the collation, if it appear by the same that the person on whom the collation is to be made can freely retain such personate, dignity, or benefice, along with those already held, or if he freely and willingly resign those which he thus holds. Otherwise, let a collation made of personates, dignities, and such benefices, be of no moment soever.

From the Sixth of the Decretals, lib. 3, tit, XX, on Estimates or Exactions made under a Plea of Procuration, cap. 2.

(Sess. xxiv. de reform. cap 2.)

The audacity of the perverse requires that we be not content with the mere prohibition of misdemeanours, but also, that we impose a penalty on those offending. Willing, therefore, that the constitution of Pope Innocent IV., of happy memory, our predecessor, published regarding the non-acceptance of procurations in money, or on the receiving of gifts interdicted to visitants and their associates, which the temerity of many is said to transgress, should be inviolably preserved, we decree that it be strengthened by the addition of a penalty; enacting, that all and every individual who shall presume to exact money on account of a procuration due to him on the score of a visitation, or even to receive it from a willing person, or in any other way to violate the constitution itself by receiving presents, or, the office of visitation not being rendered, [by receiving] a procuration in victuals, or anything else under the plea of a procuration, let such persons be bound to refund, within a month, double of that, which they may have received, to the church from which it may have been received. Otherwise, let patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, delaying to restore this double sum within the prescribed time, know that henceforward their entrance into the church is interdicted. But let inferior functionaries know that they are suspended from their office