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

290 LETTER OF ARCHBISHOP OF LYONS [afp.
consecration to the episcopal honour, where for some years
we, though unworthy, exercised episcopal functions, has the
very ample jurisdiction which you call ‘barony,’ as well within
the limits of the Empire as in those of the kingdom of the
Franks, because the metropolitan district belonging to that
place is enclosed within the limits of both states; nor do we
think that any other church will readily be found which
enjoys in two states the prerogative of so great liberty.
Accordingly we exercised the duty pertaining to the honour
and responsibility imposed upon us on this wise. I [sic] had a
seneschal to whom I entrusted the responsibility for and care
of legal business, who according to the nature of the business
dealt not merely with pecuniary causes but saw to the punish¬
ment of crimes and serious offences in accordance with the
custom of the country ; in order that, as you remarked in
jour letter, wicked men should not by impunity be encouraged
to greater boldness in transgressions. But if the nature of
the offence inferred either the penalty of the gibbet or the
cutting off of members, I took care that not a word about
this was brought to me. It was he with his assessors who
decided about such matters, since it was done without con¬
sulting me; of course I knew that it was I who gave him
authority both to take up such cases and to decide them.
But it gave me some confidence in ignoring the fact, that the
holy men who were my predecessors in the see had followed
this usage without being blamed for it. Nor will you any¬
where in the Latin world find so many holy martyrs1 and con¬
fessors as are associated with the greater of our two churches;
as you will easily be able to make out from the Martyrology
of the Venerable Bede the Presbyter or hiscontinuator Osward,2
1 The archbishop’s boast about the numbers of martyrs connected with the
church of Lyons was not unreasonable. Some fifty Christians, including their
bishop, St. Pothinus, were martyred at Lyons in 177 a.d. ; in 202-8 some
19,000 Christians were reported to have perished here and hereabout at the
bands of the heathen, St. Irengeus being one of them, according to the tradition.
2 Bede’s Martyrologium is usually printed cum auctario Fieri et aliorum ;
Oswardus or Usuardus (Husward) was not so much a continuator as author of
a new Martyrologium, based on Beda-Florus and others, which became the
martyrology of the Middle Ages. It was by command of Charles the Bald that
in 858 Usuardus sacerdos et monachus, a Benedictine of St. Germain-des-Pres,