Title XXXV: On Agreements

Latin source headnote: Agreements, however bare, are to be observed.

From the African Council.

Antigonus, Bishop of Madauros, said: I suffer grave injury, and I believe that your holiness grieves at my insult and reckons it a common injury. When Optantius presented himself, he entered into an agreement with me, and we divided [the congregations; our handwritten instruments and documents are held. Contrary to this agreement he goes about the congregations assigned to me and usurps the peoples, so that they call him father and me stepfather. Bishop Gratus said: This deed is to be grieved at,] so that he may entice to himself there the souls of unlearned peoples contrary to discipline, contrary to evangelical tradition, contrary to the covenants of peace. For if anyone reckoned that this could happen to him, surely no one would ever have sinned against a brother. Hence, either let agreements entered into obtain their firmness, or let the person convened, if he does not restrain himself, experience ecclesiastical discipline. All said: Let peace be preserved; let agreements be kept.

Latin source headnote: An invalid agreement is validated through the superior's consent.

Gregory.

Whenever our assent is awaited in certain agreements, lest the matters conducted come into doubt, ratification ought to solidify them for the security of the parties. [Accordingly, etc.]

Latin source headnote: A judge ought to act studiously so that promises are fulfilled.

The same.

In what manner in Sardinia [lesser or poor persons are oppressed by those who are greater there is attested by the letters of our most reverend brother Dominicus, Bishop of Carthage, and of our most eminent son Innocentius, prefect. So that you may know the matters written to us, we have provided that copies of their letters be transmitted to you. And therefore, because the things that are to be sought are offered,] action is to be taken studiously so that the things that are promised are completed in deed.

Textual note: The Latin Library transcription's qiu has been corrected to qui.

Latin source headnote: An agreement by which an ecclesiastical benefice is to be resigned for money is not valid.

Alexander III, to the Bishops of Exeter and Worcester.

When formerly the cleric S., proctor of the Prior and monks of Acra, and the cleric P., for the cause disputed between those monks and the aforesaid P. and his brother—on whose behalf he said that he acted—concerning the church of S. and chapel of L., approached our presence together, they agreed between themselves, though not with us as intermediary, that three marks of silver would be paid to P. for the expenses he had made, and that P. would withdraw from the suit and entirely cease from molestation of the monks. And when they brought this settlement to our hearing and sought that it be confirmed by apostolic authority, we decided not to admit it because it appeared to contain a depraved species of illicit agreement.

But we admonished the aforesaid P. that, both for himself and his brother, he leave the monks in peace and entirely renounce that suit. He, therefore, acquiescing in our admonitions and entirely renouncing that suit for himself and his brother, surrendered into our hands the authentic instruments that he had concerning this. Sending them, namely, to the aforesaid prior and monks, we commanded that, since the aforesaid P. acquiesced in our admonitions concerning this, they too attend to our benign prayers and take care to provide P. and his brother with some benefice from which, by apostolic intercession, they might receive a greater gain than ought to have come to them from that illicit agreement.

But because, as we have learned, the oft-mentioned prior and brothers were unwilling to acquiesce, we, compassionating with paternal piety the labors of those clerics, by apostolic writings command you by way of precept that you admonish the prior and monks to confer and assign a decent and competent benefice to the aforesaid P. and his brother. Otherwise, if it is established to you, as they themselves assert, that the oft-mentioned clerics were violently ejected unjustly and without judicial order from the aforesaid church of Sintonia and chapel of Lintona, you are to cause them to be restored to them, notwithstanding the letters of our confirmation that the aforesaid prior and monks are known to have impetrated from us.

Textual note: The Latin Library transcription's acqiuevit has been corrected to acquievit.

The same, to the Archbishop of York.

We have learned that certain churches have been granted to clerics under such a tenor that, after their deaths, others named individually should succeed them. But because this is iniquitous and hostile to the sacred canons, and therefore ought not to be tolerated in any way, by apostolic writings we command your fraternity by way of precept that, with contradiction and appeal ceasing, you prohibit successions of this kind as detestable and iniquitous, and decree that they are altogether frivolous and empty.

Latin source headnote: One who obtained a church through an agreement to increase its pension ought to be deprived of it and otherwise canonically punished.

The same, to the Archbishop of Canterbury and his Suffragans.

Since clerics of your jurisdiction, as we have learned, when persons of churches die, make agreements to pay pensions greater than usual from those churches so that they can more easily obtain the same churches, we wish diligent care and solicitude to be employed for extirpating so detestable a vice. Hence it is that by apostolic writings we command your fraternity by way of precept that, publicly and strictly prohibiting all your clerics from presuming to attempt this, if they should presume to come against your prohibition, with appeal ceasing you are as quickly as possible to despoil them of churches thus obtained, otherwise punishing them with ecclesiastical severity for the excess of so great a presumption. In addition, etc. (cf. c. 11, On Census, III. 39.)

Textual note: The Latin Library transcription's adhihere has been corrected to adhibere.

Latin source headnote: If a church, when leasing its property or granting it in fief, adds an agreement to the prejudice of the parochial right of another church, it does not hold, and it is compelled to return to that church whatever it received on this occasion.

Innocent III, in the General Council.

Very many regular and sometimes secular clerics, as we have learned, when they lease houses or grant fiefs, add an agreement to the prejudice of parochial churches that the lessees and feudatories pay tithes to them and choose burial among them. But since this proceeds from the root of avarice, we entirely reprove an agreement of this kind, establishing that whatever was received on occasion of such an agreement be returned to the parochial church.

Textual note: The Latin Library headnote's eeclesia has been corrected to ecclesia.

Latin source headnote: An agreement concerning spiritual things, or one that induces sin, or one that is base, concerning a base thing, or impossible by law or fact, is not valid.

Gregory IX.

The agreements made by you, as we have heard, for obtaining certain spiritual things are of no effect at all, since in matters of this kind every pact and every agreement ought altogether to cease. The same is also to be said concerning others that, if observed, tend toward loss of the soul. For even according to lawful sanctions, a base agreement, or one concerning a base thing or something impossible by law or fact, induces no obligation.