That the rectors of the Churches shall be prudent lest they suffer accusation of murder by their disordered punishing.

 

Although according to the edict of the ancient constitution the people that are to be corrected shall be treated with benevolence rather than with severity, by exhorting rather than by agitation, with love rather than with power, we have learnt that some of the brothers affected more by the malice of hatred than by a solicitude for correction, while pretending to impose a spiritual punishment, indiscriminately bring death to their subjects whom they condemn without a hearing and whom they punish with unclear judgements to penance. It shall no longer be allowed to imitate with perverted will what they contrived, but each time as a subject is to be corrected, he shall be either cured by public punishment by a priest, or differently, if it pleases the rectors [of the Churches], after obtaining a testimony of two or three spiritual brothers, the type of a crime shall be learnt and the type of penance shall be imposed, in this manner, however: that, if the particular judgement decrees that an offender deserves exile or imprisonment, this sentence announced by the priest to the transgressor in the presence of three brothers should be specially signed by the person who passed the sentence with his own hand. It shall be done in that way lest trangressors incur the ruin of their life without a testimony and the rectors be ashamed by the accusation of having destroyed someone.

 

(trans. M. Szada)