Causa XVI

GRATIAN. A certain abbot had a parochial church; he instituted a monk there to celebrate the office for the people; he possessed it for forty years without any challenge. At last a complaint is raised against the abbot by the clerics of the baptismal church in whose diocese that parochial church was situated. (QUESTION I.) Here it is first asked whether monks are permitted to celebrate offices for peoples, give penance, and baptize. (QUESTION II.) Second, if it should happen that they have chapels by episcopal benefice, whether they are to be instituted by them or by the bishops. (QUESTION III.) Third, whether the rights of churches are removed by prescription. (QUESTION IV.) Fourth, if a church prescribes against a church, whether a monastery also can prescribe against a church. (QUESTION V.) Fifth, whether it is able to claim for itself by territorial right a chapel built in its territory. (QUESTION VI.) Sixth, if an archpriest or bishop, by his own authority and not by a judicial sentence, has usurped that chapel, whether he falls from the cause, so that the church over which he presides no longer has the right to reclaim what its pastor illicitly usurped. (QUESTION VII.) Seventh, it is asked: if laymen held that chapel, as is the custom of certain persons, and resigned it into the hands of the abbot and delivered it to be ordered, whether with the consent of the bishop and clerics the abbot can hold it.