Title X: On Witnesses and Attestations

An accomplice in the crime of simony is admitted as a witness if he is only an accomplice in the crime and the action is civil; otherwise he is not. John Andrew.

Gregory IX at the Council of Lyons. In detestation of the crime, intermediaries through whom the crime of simony is frequently committed are admitted to give testimony against the authors of that same crime if the action is not criminal but civil and they obtained no emolument from it.

He establishes the manner of a remission from the curia, gives the manner of swearing upon positions and says by whom the oath ought to be taken, gives the manner of responding, and the manner of discrediting probatory witnesses and of discrediting the witnesses who discredit them in turn. This is what it says. John Andrew.

The same. By authority of the present letters we command that, in the cause conducted between the abbot and convent of Saint Nicholas of Angers on the one side, and the prior and convent of Paldigen of the diocese of Lyconensis on the other, concerning the assertion of the same abbot and convent that they were despoiled by the prior and convent of Paldigen of possession of the subjection of that priory, and concerning the invalidation of a certain composition formerly entered into between the parties and other matters, you receive from the same abbot and prior, in their own name and upon the souls of those convents or of their greater and sounder parts, an oath concerning stating the truth. You are then to enjoin upon the said abbot and prior that, both in making positions and in responding, they state the truth that they themselves know concerning the positions transmitted to you under our seal and understand through those upon whose souls they swore.

Furthermore, you are to cause the parties to respond sufficiently to one another, individually concerning each article contained in each position, receiving absolutely no contradiction from them concerning those positions. Without an oath, however, you are to inquire of the syndic of each party what he knows or believes concerning positions of this kind.

You are also diligently to examine, by the Kalends of next November, according to the interrogatories of the opposing party that we transmit to you under the same seal, the witnesses whom the party of the said prior and convent determines to produce concerning the articles transmitted under that seal in order to discredit the witnesses produced by the other party in the principal cause, whose names are contained in those articles. Nevertheless, a separate specification is first to be made against the person of each witness produced by the aforesaid abbot and convent of the crimes and other objections against him contained in those articles.

But if the said abbot and convent produce any witnesses before you against the witnesses to be produced by the same prior and convent, you are to take care to receive them according to the articles that the abbot and convent themselves produce to you concerning the discrediting of the witnesses produced by the prior and convent in the same cause, and to examine them diligently by the Kalends of next February. A similar specification of the crimes and other things objected against the witnesses of that prior and convent is to be observed, after an oath has first been furnished by the procurator of the said abbot and convent that they do not proceed to this through malice.

An advocate or procurator in the principal cause cannot testify in the appeal cause; an oath, however, ought not to be tendered to the appellant because the presumption favors him unless it seems good to the judge. Dominicus.

Innocent IV at the General Council of Lyons. The Roman Church—(And below:) In the appeal cause, one who had been the appellant’s procurator or advocate in the prior judicial proceeding is not to be received as a witness. Nor, merely because a presumption favors him, is an oath indiscriminately to be tendered even to the appellant himself, but only when, after the circumstances of the persons and the cause itself have been considered, it ought to be done.