That no one shall receive a fugitive clerics or monks

 

On this topic the Fathers of the past issued many decrees so that it is sanctioned with the multiplied prohibition that no one should claim a cleric of someone else, no one receive a fugitive, and moreover, no one dare to hide or ordain him. But because while iniquity thrives and love cools down, and no one takes heed of honesty nor restrains desire, it has to be enforced that those who are not corrected by the admonition without punishment shall be coerced by the clear sentence of damnation.

Hence, it pleases us that no one receive a fugitive or vagabond presbyter, abba, minister or subdeacon, or any other cleric or monk, nor persuade him to run away, nor provide him a hideout, nor keep him at one's place and show him clemency, nor invent with wrongful hostility opportunities to hide the fugitive somewhere else as if without one's knowledge. For not only is honesty polluted in all those cases, but also fraternity is disturbed by the bitterness of frequent sorrows. Therefore, if someone says that he received a cleric of someone else with a simple mind and did not know that he was a fugitive, then the evident purity of his innocence has to be proved as follows: he will present a cleric whom he has received to the judge within eight days according to the decree of the law, and within the time settled by the laws he will restore the fugitive to the place from where he escaped as a vagabond. Whoever then of the pontiffs, priests, ministers or monks violates this decision of ours, if the receiver of a fugitive is a bishop, he shall restore without delay the fugitive with everything that he may have, to the person from whom he escaped, and he will be excommunicated as a profane and transgressor of the decree of the Fathers and removed from his office for as long as the fugitive remains under his power. If the trangressor of this canon is a presbyter, deacon or any other religious person, he shall restore the fugitive with all his things, and he shall do penance for a year under the supervision of a person whose fugitive he had received. Whoever shows kindness to such fugitives shall know he will be subjected to the same punishment that applies by the sanction of the law to the receivers of fugitives. Those, however, who assert that it had been done by the temerity of their predecessors, shall be free of punishment if within the time of two months from the day of their ordination they disclose the hiding-place of the person who is staying with them, and restore this fugitive person to his master.

But in regard to those who run away from the neighbouring bishops or other rectors of the churches to their metropolitan bishop for the necessity of their affairs, as the licence of such escape is given, the people who receive such persons cannot be punished as the receivers of the fugitives, especially if they welcome them publicly, and suggest to those with whom they have issues to meet [judicially?] at the request of the person who is demanding the return of the cleric.

 

(trans. M. Szada)