The same Augustuses to Eutychianus, Praetorian Prefect.

If, in the future, any slave, maidservant, decurion, public debtor, procurator, collector of purple dye fish, or anyone, finally, who is involved in public or private accounts should take refuge in a church, and if he should be either ordained a cleric or defended in any way by clerics and if he should not be returned to his former condition immediately by the issuance of a summons, decurions, indeed, and all others who are called by a customary function to the duty that they owe shall be recalled to their former lot by the energy and wisdom of the judges, as if by forcible seizure. We no longer permit such persons to have the benefit of the law which did not forbid decurions to be clerics after surrender of their patrimonies had ensued. But also those persons who are called stewards, that is, those who customarily manage ecclesiastical accounts, shall be compelled without any delay to the repayment of a public or private debt to which it appears that those persons are obligated whom clerics received to be defended and did not

suppose should be produced immediately. (Etc.) Given on the sixth day before the kalends of August at Mnizus in the year of the fourth consulship of Honorius Augustus and the consulship of Eutychianus. July 27, 398.

 

(trans. Pharr 1952: 265)