16.5.57
THE SAME AUGUSTI TO AURELIANUS, PRAETORIAN PREFECT FOR THE SECOND TIME.
The Montanists shall understand that they are deprived of all right to assemble, to hold meetings, and to create clerics. Moreover, if they should hold unlawful assemblies, their clerics, bishops, presbyters, or deacons who have attempted to hold such nefarious conventicles or have dared to create clerics or have acquiesced in being created clerics shall receive the sentence of deportation.
1. If, indeed, any person should receive the aforesaid persons for the purpose of holding the forbidden meetings, he shall undoubtedly understand that he will be deprived of the property in which he allowed such meetings to be held and the accursed mysteries to be performed, whether such property was a house or a landholding. But if procurators should receive such persons without the knowledge of their masters, they shall not doubt that they will be severely punished and sent into exile. 2. Moreover, if any of their buildings should now exist, which ought not to be called churches but feral grottoes, such property with its offertories shall be adjudged to the venerable churches of the orthodox sect. This must be accomplished in such a way that the property of private persons shall not be molested, so that under the pretext of property belonging to the churches of the Montanists, despoliation and plunder may not be perpetrated against private persons.
GIVEN ON THE DAY BEFORE THE KALENDS OF NOVEMBER AT CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE YEAR OF THE TENTH CONSULSHIP OF HONORIUS AUGUSTUS AND THE SIXTH CONSULSHIP OF THEODOSIUS AUGUSTUS (= 31 October 415).
(trans. Pharr 1952: 461)
