Chapter I: Of Transaction

§ 1. Since it is greatly to be desired that lawsuits among the faithful be avoided, the judge is to employ exhortations so that, when some contentious controversy which regards their private good is proposed to him to be settled by judicial form, the lawsuit may be composed by transaction, if some hope of concord shines forth.

§ 2. The judge will be able to satisfy this office either before the parties are called into judgment, or when they have first stood in judgment, or finally at whatever time he has considered that this can be attempted both more efficaciously and more opportunely.

§ 3. Nevertheless it befits the dignity of one judging that he not personally by himself, at least regularly, undertake this business to be treated, but that he commit it to some priest, especially from the synodal judges.

In transaction, the norms established by the civil laws of the place in which the transaction is entered into are to be observed, unless they are opposed to divine or ecclesiastical law and with the prescription of the canons which follow saved.

§ 1. Transaction cannot validly be made either in a criminal cause, or in a contentious cause in which there is question either of dissolving a marriage, or of a benefice matter when the very title of the benefice is disputed, unless legitimate authority accedes; nor concerning spiritual things whenever payment of a temporal thing intervenes.

§ 2. But if a question is made concerning ecclesiastical temporal goods and those things which, although attached to spiritual things, nevertheless can be considered separately from spiritual things, transaction can be made, with the solemnities established by law for alienation of ecclesiastical things nevertheless observed if the matter demands it.

§ 1. The effect of a transaction brought happily to its end is called composition or concord.

§ 2. Unless another thing has been expressly provided, each party is to pay half of the expenses which the transaction required.