§ 1. I call a Chapter a select senate of the Church congregated by law and in order. It is of two kinds: the Cathedral Chapter and that of private Churches, for we are not now treating the Chapters of religious.
§ 2. The name of Chapter flowed from the Chapters of religious. For since there were religious in most Churches where Clerics or Canons now dwell, it thereby came about that, after they were changed into Canons, they retained certain names and ceremonies of religious. Nevertheless, the institution is most ancient; for formerly Bishops deliberated upon difficult affairs with their brethren, that is, with the council of priests, and executed them by their counsel. Thus we possess the Apostolic norm. For the Apostles were in the place of Bishops, while the presbyters were in the place of priests. There were then presbyters or elders who sit in council with the Apostles in Acts 5: “The Apostles and elders assembled to consider this word.” Likewise, not only the Apostles but also the elders write to the Antiochenes. Jerome also relates that the Churches were governed by the common counsel of the presbyters; nevertheless, after schisms arose, the presbyters were only assessors of the Bishops. Yet the Bishops were judges of the presbyters. Thus 1 Timothy 5: “Do not receive an accusation against a presbyter except under two or three witnesses.” A presbyter could therefore be accused before the Bishop; the Bishop was therefore the judge of the presbyter. Chapters, then, reproduce for us this council of presbyters, although not all their members are priests. In this matter practice has indeed prevailed contrary to the ancient canons, so that even subdeacons and deacons are equated with priests as regards government, and Archdeacons also frequently exercise power over priests.
§ 3. The authority of Chapters, especially Cathedral Chapters, is now great in the Church, and it is useful and preservative of Churches. For Chapters keep watch over discipline when the absence, negligence, occupation, or health of Bishops cannot care for it. The Second Council of Cologne, celebrated in the year 1536, admonishes in chapter 14, part 3: “Let the Chapters of discipline, as they call them, be observed with much greater diligence than hitherto. This shall be done if not so much profane as sacred matters are treated in them; if inquiry is made concerning morals; if the life of each is examined; and if, as the holy Fathers are known formerly to have done, the brethren are sometimes admonished by an occasional address. And above all, let them be incited to undertake sacred letters and to place their best hours in them; let them be stirred by the fact that here is found the gushing fountain of life, from which he who drinks will not thirst forever; here is hidden the Gospel treasure for whose sake one ought to sell all things, from which that prudent father of a household brings forth new things and old.”
Concerning the Chapters of monks, the Council of Augsburg, celebrated in the year 1548, chapter 12, speaks in the same manner: “We command that monasteries of every Order be reformed according to the Rules which they have professed; that the monks themselves be contained in obedience and the religion of their Order; that the Chapter of discipline be held frequently; that vices daily springing up there be corrected severely; that divine worship be observed reverently and duly; that keepers of concubines, adulterers, drunkards, criminals, infamous persons, and those suspected of heresy or other crimes be chastised with due punishments; that the habit and tonsure be diligently preserved; and that buildings and libraries be studiously cared for and estates, revenues, and rights preserved. We shall chastise by severe coercion and due means those who resist or are impatient of reformation.”
But since it is easy to assemble when rights, revenues, and other affairs are treated, while in certain places assemblies concerning discipline were held rarely, some Churches wisely and piously established that greater regard for piety should be had in Chapters. Thus the Second Council of Milan, decree 13: “Every week let the Canons of each Church hold a Chapter in which, besides inquiry whether the decrees of the former Council concerning the divine offices are observed, and likewise whether any errors have been committed in the rite of sacred ceremonies, some portion shall then be read of those matters prescribed in our constitutions concerning the life and honorable conduct of Clerics, or of those expressed in the Roman Catechism or other books which pertain to the doctrine of Christian piety and the discipline and method of ecclesiastical life. Then let them also be occupied in other exercises of spiritual life, and all this according as shall seem good to the Bishop or the Superior of the Chapter. In this Chapter let nothing else which pertains to the care and administration of temporal affairs be treated or transacted before regard is had for that treatment which is wholly placed in spiritual affairs.”
Let all Churches imitate this. For the extent of a Church, the multitude of ornaments, its rights, wealth, and nobility—all are directed to this: that piety may flourish and that the worship of the divine office may be performed with devotion and purity of minds.
§ 4. It is altogether expedient that the Bishop possess great power over the Chapter, and the Chapter in turn over the Bishop. That power is not contrary to itself, but salutary to the public good and necessary to ecclesiastical discipline. First I shall speak concerning the power of a Cathedral Chapter.
The first is that heretics can be excommunicated by it while the see is vacant. Thus the Decretals, Book 5, title 7, chapter 9: “All who do not fear to think or teach otherwise concerning the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, or concerning baptism, the confession of sins, matrimony, or the remaining ecclesiastical sacraments, than the sacrosanct Roman Church preaches and observes—and generally all whom that same Roman Church, or individual Bishops throughout their dioceses with the counsel, if need be, of neighboring Bishops, shall have judged heretics—we bind with the bond of perpetual anathema.”
The second is that they may restrain individual colleagues from sacred functions and deprive them of their fruits. Thus in all places. And beautiful is the constitution of the Synod of Cologne in the year 1549: “If the Dean perceives any to be rebellious; negligent in divine worship and their office; quarrelsome; litigious; strikers; gamblers; harborers of prostitutes; or entangled in other public crimes, and if these refuse to hear fraternal correction, let him do in these Chapters what Paul commands: ‘Rebuke those who sin before all.’ Then, if they are unwilling to recover their senses, let him restrain them from sacred functions and prohibit them from sharing in the fruits until they return to a better fruit of life, yet in such a way that this Apostolic rule is observed: ‘Rebuke the restless, console the fainthearted, be patient
toward all,’ and let neither anger, hatred, nor rancor claim any part for itself. For that solicitude of superiors is useful and that caution praiseworthy in which reason does everything and fury claims nothing for itself. For anger frequently brings even the innocent into crime. For while we grow angry beyond what is just and wish to restrain the sins of others, we commit graver sins.
“Nevertheless, by these things we prejudice neither our privileges and those of the Churches of our province nor their lawful customs, and especially not the practice and custom which exists in some Churches—namely, that cases of discipline are adjudicated by the deacons—provided nevertheless that the deacons, at the Dean’s demand, apply themselves gravely and vigorously to their office and fulfill it. But if the Dean and Chapter shall have been negligent or entangled in the same crimes, it will be necessary to return to the disposition of common law.”
The third is that they may bind members of the Chapter by oaths to pronounce judgment faithfully and to perform other things, and especially to obey the Dean. This too is in use; but sometimes excessively many oaths are exacted, which deservedly displeased the Synod of Cologne, chapter 20: “And since Christ prohibited the faculty of swearing with such seriousness that we ought not to swear at all unless we are compelled by necessity concerning truth or something else in danger, that immoderate exaction of oaths in Chapters must be restrained. Through it, it is necessary that many fall into perilous perjuries, of which not only those who forswear themselves are guilty, but also those who provide the cause of perjury by rashly exacting it. For the word of Christ is: ‘Let your word be, Yes, yes; no, no; what is more than this is from evil.’ And in Ecclesiasticus we read: ‘A man who swears much will be filled with iniquity, and the plague will not depart from his house.’ If we judged ourselves, we would certainly not be judged.”
The fourth, by which the authority of Cathedral Chapters has grown very greatly, is the power of electing Bishops and Archbishops. For since cunning men frequently crept into the Pontiff’s favor, since the election of the people was tumultuous, and since Emperors sold prelacies, that power devolved upon the Chapters, which conducted elections more faithfully, sincerely, and constantly. And as the aristocrats of the Church they are accustomed to elect the high priest. I do not deny that the errors of certain Chapters were shameful when they elected a Bishop advantageous to themselves or their vices but useless or pernicious to the Church. Nor have examples of these disgraceful things been lacking in our times; yet they have been far fewer and less harmful than the ancient ones.
For all the members of a Chapter, since many good, learned, and prudent men live among them, will not readily conspire in favor of one wicked man.
Moreover, election belongs to Chapters under these laws:
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Let the Canons elect the Prelate unless that right belongs to another.
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Let boys and any who are not subdeacons not elect.
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Nor let the excommunicated, suspended, heretics, or absent elect, unless there is a lawful cause of absence.
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If they do not elect at the prescribed time and in the prescribed manner, the right of electing devolves upon the next superior.
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If knowingly they elect an unworthy man, such as a keeper of a concubine, they lose the right of electing and it is transferred to the Pontiff.
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Those who elect an unworthy man are incapable for three years of a passive voice, for those who elected a wicked or unworthy man ought not themselves to be elected.
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But the one elected must possess confirmation from the Pontiff.
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Before all things they give their vote under oath and, according to their custom in most places, after receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist.
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Let them bind the man elected or to be elected by no promise contrary to the canons.
The fifth: they can also abolish certain prelacies, but they require confirmation of the act. Thus the Canons of Toul abolished the office of Primicerius, with the revenues distributed among the Canons. In our time they also divided certain provostships in poor Churches because they denied that they had need of a Provost.
The sixth: the Canons can establish a definite number of Canons in the Chapter, but they cannot divide or suppress prebends. When resources have increased, they can admit more Canons. But just as they cannot suppress prebends, so neither can they add new burdens, whether corporeal or pecuniary, unless they are common ones, so that the benefices of all are burdened in equal proportion; otherwise the condition of the younger members would daily be rendered worse. Concerning this matter many things are established everywhere in law, against which private law or capitular statutes effect nothing. For things established by a few to the prejudice of common law are void by the law itself.
The seventh: no one unless a subdeacon shall possess a voice or the right of voting. Thus the Council of Trent, Session 22: “Whoever, in a Cathedral or collegiate Church, secular or regular, is devoted to divine offices and is not constituted at least in the order of the subdiaconate shall not possess a voice in the Chapter in Churches of this kind, even if this has been freely granted to him by others. But those who possess, or in future will possess, dignities, personates, offices, prebends, portions, and any other benefices in the said Churches to which various burdens are annexed—namely, that some say or sing Masses, some the Gospel, and some the Epistles—with whatever privilege, exemption, prerogative, or nobility of lineage they may be distinguished, shall be bound, in the absence of a just impediment, to receive the required orders within a year. Otherwise they shall incur the penalties according to the constitution of the Council of Vienne which begins Ut ii, qui, which it renews by the present decree. And let the Bishops compel them on appointed days personally to exercise the said orders or all the other offices which they ought to perform in divine worship, under the same and other, even graver, penalties to be imposed at their discretion. Nor henceforth shall provision be made for others except those who are known already to possess the age and the other qualifications completely; otherwise let the provision be void.”
Thus the statutes of all the Churches which I indeed remember, common laws, and custom confirm it.
The eighth: they can restrain depraved junior Canons from the Chapter, nor can the Bishop compel them to receive such men. The Council of Mainz, celebrated under Sebastian in the year 1549, establishes as follows:
“We perceive, not without the ruin of the Churches, that hitherto sufficiently negligent watch has been kept in Cathedral and collegiate Churches—at least in that part in which our Forefathers, not without great reason, wished younger Canons, whom they call Domicellares, not to be admitted to Chapters immediately upon receiving benefices, but to be detained for a time under the yoke of the Prelates—while those upon whom this care falls, paying little attention to the studies and morals of the Domicellares, admitted any persons whatsoever into the Chapters without further selection, provided only that the Domicellares had passed a definite time in possession of the benefice or paid the money established for emancipation, even those whom they knew to be neither sufficiently suitable by honorable conduct of life or learning nor likely to be useful to the Churches. Hence it comes about that Churches, sometimes burdened by a less useful crowd of Canons, are administered with due services neither in spiritual nor temporal matters.
“Wishing to provide for their indemnity, we have judged that the consciences of Prelates, Chapters, and others whose interest it is must be burdened,
and by strict command we enjoin upon them that hereafter, not according to the alleged custom—which in this respect, as pernicious to the Churches, must be judged irrational or rather a corruption—but according to conscience, they admit only suitable and worthy persons into the Chapters, especially Metropolitan and Cathedral ones. But let them restrain those given to depraved morals and the slothful from capitular dignity and emolument until they seem by amendment of life to deserve this place; or if, stubborn against every amendment, they persevere in showing themselves incorrigible, let them altogether compel them, as incapable, insufficient, and less suitable, to resign their benefices by remedies of law. By this our constitution, we judge that occasion is afforded both to the Prelates and Chapters to keep diligent watch over their office, and to ecclesiastical youth to undertake the cultivation of life and intelligence with more accurate study.”
The ninth: alienation by a Bishop without the consent of the Chapter is void. Thus the Council at Valencia and the Decretals, Book 3, title 10, chapter 1: “A donation, sale, or exchange of ecclesiastical property by Bishops shall be void without the approval and subscription of the Clerics.”
The reason is lawful and arises from equity. For since ecclesiastical properties are of such a kind that by them ministers and Churches are supported, the poor and justice are defended, and the roofs of churches are restored, they ought not to be alienated without the knowledge of those whose interest it is. But the vices of many Prelates produced those laws, for they were accustomed to give the goods of the Churches to kinsmen, ministers, and flatterers or sell them for a trifling price; a Chapter cannot readily be brought to approve those matters.
The tenth: indeed, for the same reason a Prelate ought not to treat the public affairs of the Church without the counsel of the Chapter.
Alexander III established this law, Decretals, Book 3, title 10, chapter 4: “The prudence of your discretion knows how you and your brethren are one body, such that you are proved to be the head and they the members. Hence it does not become you, after omitting the members, to employ the counsel of others in the affairs of your Church, since there is no doubt that this is contrary both to your honorable character and to the institutions of the holy Fathers. For it has become known to our ears that without the counsel of your brethren you institute and remove Abbots, Abbesses, and other ecclesiastical persons”; and below: “Therefore we prohibit it by Apostolic authority”; and below: “For we decree that such institutions and removals lack the strength of firmness.”
And chapter 5: “We command your Fraternity that in concessions, confirmations, and the other affairs of your Church you seek your brethren and, with their counsel or that of the senior part, accomplish and treat them; that you establish the things which must be established, correct errors, and scatter and uproot the things which must be uprooted. Nor shall you allow the names of absent brethren to be entered, because such instruments are void and false, and on that account you can deservedly fear a charge of falsity.”
The eleventh: nor can he give other Churches to others without the consent of the Chapter. In the same place, chapter 8: “You also added the question whether it is lawful for a Bishop or Elect, together with the Archdeacon alone and apart from the assent of the greater Church—since the Bishop is elected from it and the Archdeacon is assumed from it—to confer perpetually vacant baptismal Churches upon monasteries or conventual Churches to which the right of patronage belongs”; and below: “The solution of the other question is also gathered evidently from the Epistle of Pope Leo, in which it is read: ‘Let no Bishop dare to give, exchange, or sell anything from the goods of the Church, unless perhaps he does one of these things in order to provide for better things, and, with the deliberation and consent of the whole Clergy, chooses that which is undoubtedly profitable to the Church. For a donation, sale, and exchange of ecclesiastical property by Bishops shall be void without the agreement and subscription of the Clerics.’ By this you will know that the question proposed in the second place is solved, since there is no doubt that perpetual concessions of Churches pertain to alienations.”
The twelfth: nevertheless, the Bishop’s concession is valid if the Chapter afterwards ratifies it. In the same place, chapter 3: “It is certain, by rigor of law, that the concession which it is established was made by your predecessor while the Chapter protested is not valid, unless it afterwards ratified it.”
Formerly the silence of the Chapter produced ratification, in the same place, chapter 2. Now they deservedly require from the statutes a consent that is open and consigned in writing. For good laws have arisen from evil morals.
The thirteenth: it is a privilege of Cathedral Chapters that they be admitted to provincial Synods. Thus the Decretals, Book 3, chapter 10, Provinciae Senones: “The Chapters of the Cathedral Churches have sent a complaint to us that the Archbishop of Sens and his Suffragans were unwilling to admit their procurators, recently summoned to the provincial Council, to its deliberation”; and below: “It has seemed good to us and our brethren that the Chapters themselves ought to be invited to Councils of this kind and their envoys admitted to the deliberation, especially concerning those matters which are known to affect the Chapters themselves.”
Hence, therefore, it appears that the Church is best ordered when the Bishop possesses very great power for edification, so that the whole discipline is in his hand and no one can appeal from it; but the least power for destruction—in selling, giving, or alienating rights and goods under any title, and in admitting Canons without lawful examination.
The fourteenth: in the Chapter the greater and sounder part prevails unless the lesser part contradicts it with reason. Thus the Decretals, Book 3, title 11, chapter 1: “Since in all Churches that which has seemed good to the more numerous and sounder brethren ought to be observed without hesitation, it is exceedingly grave and most worthy of rebuke that in certain Churches a few sometimes do not permit an ecclesiastical ordinance to proceed so much from reason as from their own will. Therefore by the present decree we establish that, unless something has been reasonably objected and shown by the fewer and inferior members, with appeal removed, that which has been established by the greater and sounder part of the Chapter shall always prevail and attain its effect. Nor let our constitution be impeded if perhaps someone says that he is bound by oath to preserve the custom of his Church. For those things which come against the utility of the Church and the institutions of the holy Fathers are to be called not oaths but rather perjuries. But if anyone has presumed to swear to customs of this kind, which are neither supported by reason nor congruent with sacred institutions, let him be excluded from reception of the Lord’s body until he has performed worthy penance.”
Therefore, if the greater part of a Chapter were to elect as Bishop an unlearned or avaricious man, a keeper of a concubine, or one infamous through another vice, the lesser part will contradict it with reason and the authority of the canons and will render the election void.
But as regards his saying that oaths are perjuries, this is the sense: to swear to that which is contrary to the canons or justice is as much a sin as perjury and must no more be observed than perjury. Therefore it would be prudent for the oaths of all Chapters to be proposed and examined in a provincial Synod and for a determination to be made concerning confirming or abolishing them,
and that new ones not be imposed upon those who come without public authority. Next, mutual connivance has introduced many abuses, as concerning the distribution of revenues, which in some Churches are given in great amount to absentees, as the Council of Mainz under Sebastian complains in chapter 70: “It is a pernicious abuse, joined with shameful disgrace to the Clergy, peril to souls, and grave detriment to Churches, that in certain Cathedral and collegiate Churches the largest portion of the revenues is distributed to Canons even when they do not reside at the Churches and perform no useful or necessary ministry, while to the Vicars, who by labor by day and night sustain all the functions of the Church, there is left scarcely a meager income, which barely suffices to sustain life wretchedly. Hence we exhort the Chapters and Canons of Churches in the Lord that, mindful of equity and of the account someday to be rendered to God, from the fruits of the Churches they assign sufficient and honorable sustenance for the functions necessary to their Churches to those who perform them, lest they provide cause for necessarily disposing otherwise of the revenues of the Churches.”
And indeed the Council of Trent recently, and God from eternity, disposed otherwise. This is his command: “He who does not labor, let him not eat.” For this reason the treasury, the soldier, and the robber seize so many things: because sufficient labor is not yet performed for that which remains, and the smallest portion is distributed to the one who labors—not by the law of the canons, but by a depraved abuse contrary to the canons.
§ 5. The Bishop also possesses great and ordinary power over the Chapter and all members of the Chapter, and this power is Apostolic. Thus the Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 3: “Let the Prelates of Churches prudently and diligently attend to correcting the excesses of their subjects; and let no secular Cleric, of any personate, or regular Cleric dwelling outside a monastery, be judged protected by pretext even of the privilege of his Order from being capable, if he has offended, of being visited, punished, and corrected by the Ordinary of the place, acting as a delegate of the Apostolic See in this matter, according to the canonical decrees.”
And chapter 4: “The Chapters of Cathedral and other greater Churches, and their persons, shall not be able to protect themselves by any exemptions, customs, judgments, oaths, or agreements which bind only their authors and not their successors, so as to prevent them from being capable of being visited, corrected, and amended by their Bishops and other greater Prelates, either by themselves alone or with those associated whom it shall seem good to them to employ, according to the canonical decrees, as often as there shall be need, even by Apostolic authority.”
Therefore no exemption can protect any member of a Chapter from correction by the Bishop; and all statutes made toward that end are void because they are contrary to law—I add, contrary to justice. For the Bishop is the Bishop of the members of the Chapter just as of the rest of the Clergy and laymen; therefore it falls upon him to employ his power over them, otherwise they would be without a spiritual head. But if perhaps they allege that they are immediately under the Pontiff alone, as many are, they are nevertheless not thus exempt from the Bishop’s jurisdiction; for he is the Pontiff’s Legate, against whom every exception and exemption is invalid. Therefore the Bishop is the censor of morals even in an exempt Chapter. Hence it was most rightly established in the Third Council of Milan: “So that the Bishop may more readily increase divine worship in the Church committed to him, preserve the concord and mutual charity of the Canons, and protect canonical discipline, let him strive to be present at the canonical Chapter every month, or at least frequently during the year, either in the place where it is customarily held or in another place to which he prefers to summon it to himself. But let him summon it on account of any matter for which he shall have judged it expedient. In this Chapter let him sometimes see whether those things prescribed concerning the worship of the divine offices are performed rightly, duly, in order, and with dignity.”
Nor does it exempt an exempt Chapter, for it adds: “But if the Chapter is exempt, the Bishop may, under the decree of the Council of Trent, summon it at his discretion in that case alone when he himself wishes to propose something to the Canons in a matter which does not pertain to his own advantage or that of his people, and then only in the place in which the Chapter was previously accustomed to assemble.”
Therefore he can be present at an exempt Chapter, order morals, correct the wicked, and establish things pertaining to divine service. For this is not to act concerning his own advantage or that of his people, but the common advantage, since ecclesiastical discipline generally depends upon exempt Chapters.
§ 6. Nor can recourse be had to capitulations and agreements, for the Bishop is the ordinary judge and superior of his Clergy. Next, a Cleric exempt in whatever manner is subjected by the precept of a General Council to the Bishop as regards visitation and correction; therefore they cannot exempt themselves by any agreements or constitutions.
But if before the election of a Bishop all exact the oath, “If I shall be elected, I swear that I will admonish, summon, or judge no member of the Chapter, and that I will permit them every liberty,” this oath is one of iniquity, because he swears that he will not discharge the office of a good man, much less of a good Bishop. And all who exact or take such an oath can be deprived of the right of election. But more concerning these things when Bishops must be treated. For from this abuse it follows that certain Canons scarcely recognize any superior. The Pontiff is far away; they are protected from Apostolic Nuncios; they do not care for the Bishop. Therefore some of those who ought to furnish an example of obedience to all live altogether at their own discretion and think lawful whatever pleases them. But this is contrary to the law of nature.