Works & Councils of Toledo 64

The same Augustus to John, most glorious praetorian prefect throughout the East, twice former consul ordinary and patrician.

While writing very many sacred laws, both concerning the bishops beloved of God and all the rest of the priesthood, and also concerning the most reverend monks—and lately enacting this, in which we wish that the most reverend monks bring their suits before only the bishops of the city under whom their monasteries are—we were petitioned by Mennas, archbishop of this most happy city beloved of God, and universal patriarch, to grant this privilege to the most reverend clerics: that if anyone has against them any pecuniary case, he first go to the archbishop beloved of God under whom he is constituted, and appeal to him, and obtain judgment by an unwritten procedure.

And if this be done, let him not disturb him, nor drag him to the civil tribunals, nor make him absent himself from the sacred ministry, but let the matter be examined by an unwritten procedure without losses, and let him receive perhaps even a written form, if the parties wish this also and demand it, and let them be freed from mutual contention.

But if, either on account of the nature of the case, or on account of some difficulty perhaps, it should not be possible for the bishop beloved of God to decide the matter, then let there be liberty to go also to the civil judges, with all the privileges preserved which the sacred constitutions afford to the most reverend clerics, and to litigate, and to have the examination made, and an end imposed upon the suit, and so the case to be made free, with the most renowned judges, according to our constitutions or laws, being zealous to decide the suits with magnanimity and swiftly, so that they be not removed from sacred observances on account of cases of this kind;

and that, when God ought to be appeased and seemly things be done by the priests, they not be detained in the courts and their crowds, and, clinging to the tumult of litigants, do harm to their souls. If however they be impleaded concerning crimes, then for civil cases let the competent judges here, but in the provinces their governors, be the judges: the suit not exceeding the space of two months, from the time the joinder of issue is made, so that a short term may be imposed upon the case. This is plain, that if the governor of the province judges him who is impleaded to be guilty, and judges him worthy of punishment, this man is first to be stripped by the bishop beloved of God of his priestly dignity, and so to come under the hand of the laws.

But if it be an ecclesiastical offence, needing ecclesiastical chastisement and penalty, let the bishop beloved of God decide this, the most renowned judges of the province in no way taking part. For we do not wish that civil judges should know of such matters at all, since such things ought to be examined ecclesiastically, and the souls of offenders amended through ecclesiastical penalty according to the sacred and divine canons, which our laws also do not disdain to follow.

But if certain suits have previously been joined in issue, let these remain in their own posture, receiving a swift end, with all those things which have already been enacted by us, whether concerning the most holy churches, or concerning the bishops beloved of God, or concerning clerics, or concerning monks who possess their proper virtue. Let your Eminence therefore make manifest to all, through your own edicts, the things which have pleased us and have been declared through this sacred law, and be zealous that they be safeguarded in perpetuity. Given on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of April at Constantinople, in the reign of our lord Justinian, Pius, Perpetual, Augustus, Arion the most distinguished man being consul.