serre in an inferior ministry, than, to the scandal of those set over him, to aspire to the dignify of more exalted degrees; to him, unto whom the ascent to sacred orders shall have been interdicted by his own prelate, from what cause soever, even on account of some secret crime, or in what manner soever, even extra-judicially; or [to him] who shall have been suspended from his own orders, or degrees, or ecclesiastical dignities; no license, conceded against the will of the said prelate, for causing himself to be promoted, nor any restoration to former orders, degrees, dignities, or honours, shall be of any avail.
CHAPTER II.
If a Bishop shall confer any Orders soever on one not subject to him, be he even his own Domestic, without the express consent of [that persons'] proper Prelate, both shall he subjected to a stated Punishment.
And inasmuch as certain bishops of churches which are in partibus infidelium,[1] being destitute either of clergy or Christian people, and being little else than wanderers, and having no fixed see; seeking not the things of Christ, but others' sheep, without the knowledge of their own proper pastor, when they find themselves prohibited by this holy synod from exercising pontifical functions in the diocese of another without the express permission of the ordinary of the place, and then only in reference to persons who are subject to the said ordinary, do, in evasion and contempt of the law, of their own rashness, choose as it were an episcopal throne, in a place which is of no diocese, and presume to mark with the clerical character, and to promote even unto the sacred orders of the priesthood, any that resort to them, even though, they have no commendatory letters from their own bishops or prelates; by the which it for the most part comes to pass, that, persons being ordained who are but little fit, and are uneducated and ignorant, and who have been rejected by their own bishop as incompetent and unworthy, they are neither able rightly to perform the divine offices, nor to administer the sacraments of the Church: none of the bishops, who are called titular, even though they may reside, or be tarrying in a place within no diocese, even though it be
- ↑ I. e. in places or districts inhabited by unbelievers.
