Sirmondian Constitutions 6
Emperor Theodosius Augustus and Valentinian Caesar to the Illustrious Amatius, praetorian prefect of Gaul.
We restore with eager devotion to all the churches and the clergy their privileges which the tyrant had begrudged to Our age, namely, that whatever each of the bishops obtained from the sainted Emperors shall be confirmed and preserved throughout all eternity. The presumption of no person shall dare to disturb a situation in which We confess that a privilege has rather been granted to Us. Clerics also, who the accursed presumptor had declared must be led indiscriminately before secular judges, We reserve for a hearing before the bishops, and those regulations shall remain valid which antiquity sanctioned in regard to them. For it is not right that ministers of the divine service should be subjected to the judgement of temporal authorities.
Therefore Your Illustrious Authority shall command that the regulations which We have ordered and which shall be valid for all the ages shall be issued to the knowledge of the provinces, to be observed, even under the penalty prescribed for sacrilege. You shall especially include in your illustrious commands that in all matters the statutes of the ancient Emperors shall be observed with respect to ecclesiastical privileges. But We direct that the divergent bishops who follow the neferious false doctrine of the teaching of Pelagius and Caelestius shall be formally notified by Patroclus, bishop of the sacrosanct law. Because We trust that they can be reformed, if they should not correct their errors and return to the Catholic faith within twenty days from the time of such notification, during which time We have granted them an opportunity for deliberation, they shall be expelled from the regions of Gaul, and in their place shall be substituted a more loyal priesthood, in order that the blot of the present false doctrine may be cleansed from the minds of the people and the boon of a more upright discipline may be established for the future.
Because, of course, it is unseemly that religious people should be depraved by any superstitions. We command that the Manichaeans and all other heretics, whether schismatics or astrologers, and every sect that is inimical to the Catholics shall be banished from the very sight of the various cities, in order that such cities may not be defiled by the contagion even of the presence of such criminals. To Jews also and to pagans We deny the right to plead cases and to be members of the imperial service. It is Our will that persons of the Christian faith shall not be slaves of such persons, lest by the occasion offered by ownership they should change the sect of the venerable religion. Therefore We order all persons of such ill-omened false doctrine to be banished, unless swift reform shuold come to their aid.
Given on the seventh day before the Ides of July at Aquileia in the year of the eleventh consulship of Our Lord Theodosius Augustus and the consulship of Valentinian.
(trans. Pharr 1952: 479-480)
