The same Augustus to Taurus, Praetorian Prefect.

Only a bishop shall not be compelled by anyone to deliver his property to the municipal council, just as was formerly established, but he shall remain a bishop and shall not make any surrender of his substance. Of course, if any persons have attained the rank of presbyter, or even of deacon or subdeacon or of any other cleric, if the municipal council should be present and should issue their consent under the supervision of the judge, when it is established that the lives of the aforesaid clerics are outstanding and are pure in every virtue, such clerics must have the heritage of their commendable way of life, so that they may retain their own property, especially if it is requested by the voices of the whole people. 1. But if by chance any persons should aspire by clandestine devices to those ranks which We have mentioned or should creep in by the use of fraudulent tricks, if the decurions should not testify openly before the judge, and if the people, finally, should not make a request, the aforesaid clerics shall surrender their patrimony to their children, who shall be chosen as their substitutes for the performance of the compulsory duties of the municipal councils. But if these clerics should have no children, they shall deliver two thirds of their own property to their near kinsmen, if, however, they come within the grades of statutory succession, and they shall reserve one third for themselves. Thus, of course, the compulsory service of the clerics shall be performed by such near kinsmen after they have received the property, if they are decurions or even if they have never before performed compulsory duties for the municipal council. But if the aforesaid clerics should abandon the municipal council and pass into the service of divine worship, the municipal council thus abandoned must receive two thirds of the property, and one third shall be left within the possession of such clerics, if, as We have said before, they aspired to the association of ecclesiastics by means of insidious devices. But those properties which pass from the ownership of the clerics to the municipal council must belong to the municipal council and must not be transferred from its ownership. Since it is to be feared that such property may be alienated or previously transferred to the ownership of others, and thus no provision could be made for the welfare of the municipal council, the regulation must be observed that if fraudulent plans should be revealed, a person who is joined to these clerics by any tie of kinship whatever, if he can demonstrate such kinship, shall receive the aforesaid properties and shall obediently perform the compulsory public services of the municipal council; or if search for near kinsmen shoul prove fruitless, all property shall be transferred to the municipal council if it is proved to have been alienated under any title whatsoever, after the time at which the person who assumed the way of divine worship began to refuse the compulsory service of the municipal council. 2.  If provosts of the State storehouses and persons who are going to accept a magistracy, and also provosts of the peace and receivers of the various taxes in kind should suppose that they should aspire to a position in the Church, after they have undertaken the duties of the administration or honor imposed upon them, first of all, the bishops theselves of the celestial law must oppose such action, and first of all they must exert themselves that the aforesaid persons be recalled to their proper services; or, if the bishops should neglect this matter, the said men shall be dragged back by the decurions, with the support of the office staff of the judge. (Etc.) Given on the fourth day before the kalends of September in the year of the consulship of Taurus and Florentius. August 29, 361.

 

(trans. Pharr 1952: 349)