Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/272

252 was consecrated at an earlier or later date. And, in order that they may mutually make advances to each other with worthy and becoming honour, and may give an example to others of mutual respect, he whose turn it is according to the aforesaid, shall, without regard to that fact, and with charitable intent, invite the other to officiate; and, not till he has done this, shall he proceed to perform the above, or any of the above functions.

24.

(1) If any one, together with princes, knights or privates, or also any plebeian persons, shall enter into an unhallowed conspiracy, or shall take the oath of such conspiracy, concerning the death of our and the holy Roman empire's venerable and illustrious prince electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, or of any one of them—for they also are part of our body; and the laws have decided that the intention of a crime is to be punished with the same severity as the carrying out of it:—he, indeed, shall die by the sword as a traitor, all his goods being handed over to our fisc. (2) But his sons, to whom, by special imperial lenity, we grant their life—for those ought to perish by the same punishment as their father, whose portion is the example of a paternal, that is of a hereditary crime—shall be without share in any inheritance or succession from the mother or grandparents, or even from relatives; they shall receive nothing from other people's wills, and shall be always poor and in want; the infamy of their father shall always follow them, and they shall never achieve any honour or be allowed to take any oath at all; in a word they shall be such that to them, grovelling in perpetual misery, death shall be a solace and life a punishment. (3) Finally we command that those shall be made notorious, and shall be without pardon, who shall ever try to intervene with us for such persons. (4) But to the daughters, as many of them as there are, of such conspirators, we will that there shall go only the "falcidia"—the fourth part of the property of the mother if she die intestate; so that they may rather have the moderate alimony of a daughter, than the entire