By the Rev. Canon W. H. Jones. 279 



schismata." Such a "council" was required to be consulted by 

 him, not only in cases of presumed clerical delinquency, but in all 

 questions of importance. So intimate, indeed, were the duties and 

 rights of canons, that one of the complaints made to Innocent III. by 

 the chapter of Angouleme against their bishop was to this effect, that 

 " he treated of difficult causes without the assent of his canons — 

 " causas difficiles tractaret sine canonicorum assensu." Moreover a 

 few years before that time, in the year 1180, Pope Alexander III., 

 writing to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who had made certain ap- 

 pointments without consulting his chapter, asked whether he did 

 not know, '^ how he and his brethren were one body ; so that he was 

 the head, and they the members." Wherefore he adds, " it is not 

 becoming that thou, leaving out the members, shouldest use the 

 counsel of others in the business of thy church ; a course without 

 doubt at variance with thine own plain duty {lionestati turn), and the 

 institutions of the holy fathers." ^ 



Such a " court spiritual " was among the institutions of olden 

 days. As lately as the year 1710, in the time of Bishop Sherlock, 

 a chapter was held at Sarum before the Bishop, sitting judicially, 

 for the trial of a canon. It was, indeed, one of the rights and pri- 

 vileges of a canon that he should be judged by his Bishop and 

 brother-canons. In one of the original documents relating to the 

 foundation of his cathedral. Bishop Osmund thus distinctly states 

 it — " Dignitas decani et omnium canonicorum est ut episcopo in 

 nullo respondeant nisi in capitulo, et judicio tantum capituli pare- 

 ant."2 A great change no doubt has taken place, but on this, and 

 its consequences, it would be out of place to comment in these pages. 

 One result, however, may be described in the words of the Bishop 

 of Lincoln, who says that episcopal authority, exercised individually 

 and apart from the advice of its council of canons, has become rather 



* The whole passage, which is from the Decretals, Lib. III., Tit. x., cap. iv., 

 is as follows : — " Novit tuse discretionis prudentia, qualiter tu et f ratres tui unum 

 corpus sitis, ita quod tu caput, et illi membra esse probantur. Unde non decet 

 te, omissis membris, aliorum consilio in ecclesise tuse negotiis uti ; cum id, non 

 sit dubium, et honestati tuse, et sanctonim patrum institutionibus, contrarium." 



* Osmund Eeg. f ol. xxiv., in a document, dated 1091, and headed, " Alias ordi- 

 nationes per dominum Osmundum in ecclesia Sarum." 



