Article II: Of the Chancellor and Other Notaries and the Episcopal Archive

§ 1. In any Curia a chancellor is to be constituted by the Bishop, who is to be a priest, whose principal duty is to keep the acts of the Curia in the archive, to arrange them in chronological order, and to make an index table of them.

§ 2. When necessity demands, a helper can be given to him, whose name is vice-chancellor or vice-archivist.

§ 3. The chancellor is by that very fact a notary.

§ 1. Besides the chancellor, the Bishop can also constitute other notaries, whose writing or signature makes public faith.

§ 2. The same persons can be constituted either for any acts, or for judicial acts only, or only for acts of a certain case or business to be prepared.

§ 3. If clerics are lacking, they can be taken from lay persons; but the notary in criminal cases of clerics must be a priest.

§ 4. The chancellor and other notaries must be of unimpaired reputation and above every suspicion.

§ 5. All can be removed or suspended by the one who constituted them, or by his successor or Superior, but not by the Capitular Vicar unless with the consent of the Chapter.

§ 1. The office of notaries is:

1° To draw up acts or instruments concerning dispositions, obligations, citations and judicial intimations, decrees, sentences, or other matters about which their work is required.

2° Faithfully to reduce to writing the things which are done, and to sign them with indication of place, day, month, and year.

3° To exhibit acts or instruments from the register to one legitimately requesting them, the things to be observed having been observed, and to declare copies of them conforming to the original.

§ 2. A notary cannot draw up acts except in the territory of that Bishop by whom he was chosen, or for the business for which he was legitimately constituted.

§ 1. Bishops are to erect in a safe and suitable place a diocesan archive or record-office, in which instruments and writings which regard diocesan business, both spiritual and temporal, are to be preserved suitably arranged and diligently locked.

§ 2. With all diligence and solicitude an inventory or catalogue is to be made of the documents which are contained in the archive, with a brief synopsis of each writing.

§ 1. Each year, in the first two months, those writings which were completed in the preceding year or otherwise were neglected are to be added to the inventory or catalogue.

§ 2. Ordinaries are carefully to seek out papers and writings perhaps carried elsewhere and dispersed; and they are to apply any necessary remedies so that the same writings may be restored to the archive.

§ 1. The archive must be locked, and no one is permitted to enter it without the permission of the Bishop or the Vicar General and the chancellor.

§ 2. The chancellor alone is to have its key.

§ 1. It is not lawful to carry writings out of the archive without the consent of the Bishop or Vicar General, and the same are to be returned to their place after three days. The faculty of extending this time, however, is reserved to the Ordinary, but this extension is to be granted only moderately.

§ 2. Whoever carries some writing out of the archive is to leave with the chancellor a receipt signed by his own hand, signifying this very thing.

§ 1. Bishops are furthermore to have another secret archive, or at least in the common archive a cabinet or chest entirely closed and locked, which cannot be removed from the place. In it writings to be kept secret are to be guarded most cautiously; but each year as soon as possible the documents of criminal cases in matters of morals are to be burned, in which the accused have departed life or which have been completed ten years earlier by a condemnatory sentence, a brief summary of the fact being retained with the text of the definitive sentence.

§ 2. Also of this secret archive or cabinet an inventory or catalogue is to be made according to the norm of can. 375, Sec. 2.

§ 3. This archive or cabinet is to be opened with two keys different from each other, of which one is kept with the Bishop or Apostolic Administrator, the other with the Vicar General or, in his absence, the chancellor of the Curia.

§ 4. The Bishop or Apostolic Administrator, after the other key has been reclaimed, alone by himself, with no one standing by, can open and inspect the secret archive or cabinet, when there is need; it is then to be closed again with both keys.

Immediately after taking possession, the Bishop is to designate a priest who, when the see is vacant or impeded, is to assume the key of the secret record-office or cabinet which had been with the Bishop.

§ 1. Unless an Apostolic Administrator has been given to the diocese:

1° When the see is impeded according to the norm of can. 429, Sec. 1, the priest designated by the Bishop, if indeed the governance of the diocese is in the hands of an ecclesiastical man delegated by the Bishop, is to send the key to him; if it is in the hands of the Vicar General, he is to retain it himself.

2° But when the see is vacant or impeded according to the norm of the cited can. 429, Sec. 3, the same priest is to send the key to the Capitular Vicar immediately after his designation; moreover the Vicar General or chancellor must at the same time send the other key retained by him to the first dignity of the Chapter or to the diocesan consultor older in office.

§ 2. Before the keys have been sent to those to whom they must be handed according to the norm of Sec. 1, the Vicar General or chancellor and the priest designated by the Bishop as above are to seal the record-office or cabinet with the seals of the Curia.

§ 1. The record-office or cabinet is never to be opened nor are the seals to be removed from it, except in urgent necessity and by the Capitular Vicar himself in the presence of two canons or diocesan consultors, who are to watch lest any writing be taken from the record-office; but the Capitular Vicar alone can inspect the documents preserved in the record-office, with the same canons or consultors standing by, yet never remove them. Moreover the archive, after inspection, is to be sealed again with seals.

§ 2. When the new Bishop arrives, if the seals have been removed and the record-office or cabinet opened, the Capitular Vicar is to render an account of the urgent necessity by which he was moved to this.

§ 1. Bishops are to take care that inventories or catalogues also of the archives of cathedral, collegiate, and parochial churches, as well as confraternities and pious places, be made in two copies, of which one is to be kept in its own archive, the other in the episcopal archive, with the prescription of can. 470, Sec. 3, 1522, nn. 2, 3, 1523, n. 6 remaining firm.

§ 2. Original documents are not to be carried out from the aforesaid archives, except according to the norm of can. 378.

§ 1. Documents which do not have to be preserved under secrecy in the archives of parishes and Curias may be inspected by anyone whose interest it is; likewise there is the power of asking that a legitimate copy of them be transcribed and handed to him at his own expense.

§ 2. The chancellors of Curias, pastors, and other keepers of archives, in communicating documents and in describing and handing over copies of them, are to observe the rules given by legitimate ecclesiastical authority, and in doubtful cases consult the local Ordinary.