Question IV

GRATIAN. But as to what is asked—if they are known to have acquired something from their own goods and those of the church, to whom do those things come?—it is determined thus in the same Council.

Let priests, or any persons to whom care of ecclesiastical goods is committed, concerning whatever they have purchased during the time of their administration, if they possessed anything cheap or costly from their own goods, take care to execute the instruments of the charters in the name of the church over which they preside; for it is not just that the church should make wealthy in another’s goods one whom it received as an outsider and retain him as a defrauder in its own. § 1. But those who are known to possess an income from their own property: concerning every property which they are seen to have acquired after the day of their ordination, whether no instruments or some have been executed, after an accounting has been made of both their own right and the ecclesiastical goods, if the quantity of each property is equal, the acquisition will pertain by equal right to the church and to the heirs of the deceased. GRATIAN. But if anyone has inflicted detriment upon the goods of the church for the advantage of his own property, or if on account of ecclesiastical goods he has suffered detriment in his own property, in turn the goods which experience the gain shall make reparation to those suffering the losses. Hence it is read in the Third Council of Braga, [c. 8]:

Whoever through this neglect has allowed divine goods to suffer is to be constrained by a special decree, so that if from the goods or increases of the church he has increased his own gain by his labors and from this has either exhibited neglect of labor toward ecclesiastical goods or introduced diminution or loss, he shall restore to it whatever he diminished in the goods of the church, from whose goods and supports he has been convicted of enlarging his own labors. But if he expended anything for the utilities or substance of the church, or sustained anything of expense or loss, if he can prove this, all of it will be restored to him from the goods of the same church, for whose utility he is proved to have expended it. GRATIAN. But if they are known to have acquired something only from the goods of the church, they both ought to draw up the instruments in the name of the church and will not be able to give those things to anyone. Hence it is read in the Council of Agde, [c. 54]:

When a priest holds a diocese, let him make the document concerning the things which he purchases in the name of the church, or let him depart from the governance of the church which he holds.