Series 1 > Statutes of the Scottish Church, 1225-1559

MANDATE OF INNOCENT IV.
213
them the wholesome principles with which his father’s affection,
while he was yet alive, had prudently supported him—neither
manage the kingdom in accordance with justice and judgment
nor even maintain it in its integrity, since the same new
counsellors, by new schemings and machinations, attack the
i liberty of the church, which they must clearly be held to
| infringe who do violence to the power of princes, through
which the Catholic faith flourishes and the royal majesty itself
\ is guided.
Amongst other things which the ministers of the kingdom
f and the lords of territories are said to be trying, under
this king of tender age, to the subversion of church power
. in these parts, now that that king of Scots, of famous
memory, is dead, in whom the faith and liberty of the church
had a most Christian defender ; everybody must see it to be
incongruous and absurd, and deserving the censure of both
divine and human justice that when the prelates of churches
/ have issued against their subjects for contumacy or offences
| sentences of excommunication or interdict or suspension, these
courtiers should launch against them letters under the king’s
name commanding them to revoke such sentences, and unless
they obey the precept, they are compelled thereto by the
sacrilegious confiscation of their goods, as is said to have
E actually happened to several bishops of that kingdom. And
in respect of properties and effects which the pious liberality
of devout persons has bestowed so as to be under divine
authority, the clergy are dragged, contrary to clerical privi¬
lege, before the secular court, and are not listened to when
‘ they invoke public laws in their defence; and so by the inequit-
j able procedure of a judge who has no competence in the case,
the churches are sometimes despoiled of their property. And
furthermore, in the case of certain properties bestowed by lay¬
men on the churches in perpetual alms, on which the donors have
reserved to themselves nothing but [their share of the contribu¬
tion for maintaining] the army for defence of the kingdom and
the common aid; these ministers and other laymen supported
by their favour, thinking that by this qualification the said
properties have been [partially] laicised, treat them as in all
respects under the same conditions as the properties of laymen,