168 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



their sin, shall deserve the benefit of absolution. (12) Since often in this 

 diocese many priests celebrate clandestine marriages, some at daybreak, 

 others at midnight, without publication of banns according to the form of the 

 Church, it is enacted that priests and contracting parties so acting shall be 

 severely punished at the will of the bishop in accordance with the canons. 

 (13) Anyone in public or in private maliciously charging his neighbour, 

 especially if he be a clerk, and most of all if he be in holy orders, with crimes 

 and enormities, so as to injure his character, shall incur the greater excom- 

 munication. (14) The foregoing statutes and synodals having been ordained 

 by brother Eichard (Ledred), Bishop of Ossory, with the express consent of 

 the larger and saner part of the chapter of the cathedral church of St, Canice 

 of the diocese of Ossory, with the assent of the greater part of the clergy of 

 the whole diocese, he demands that all his subjects shall observe them, and 

 they shall be recited every year at a synod to be held on the Tuesday after 

 St, Michael's Day (29 September) in St, Canice's, by the bishop, or archdeacon, 

 or the bishop's official. And he decrees that offenders against these statutes, 

 where no fixed penalty is assigned therein, shall be punished at the will of 

 the ordinary. Each rural dean shall procure a transcript thereof within a 

 month, and, within six months thereafter, the rectors and vicars shall obtain 

 copies through the deans for preservation in their churches, (15) Though 

 bishops and priests have always in all nations been had in honour', yet 

 inasmuch as some in this diocese seek to interfere with their exercise of 

 ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and threaten to harass them in the secular coui'ts, 

 it is therefore ordained, with the unanimous consent of the chapter and 

 clergy, that anyone who does Adolence to the bishop, or who spoils bishop, 

 priest, rector, vicar, or clerk of goods, movable or immovable, in life or in 

 death, or despoils the bishop in the episcopal manors or impedes his jurisdic- 

 tion, or who aids and abets others in any of these things, shall i]3so facto 

 incur the greater excommunication, from which he shall not be absolved till 

 he has made full restitution and satisfaction. They shall also be without 

 any ecclesiastical liberty or immunity, in their persons or their goods, in life 

 and death, and shall not receive ecclesiastical burial. Priests who give them 

 ecclesiastical burial shall incur the greater excommunication; and if a priest 

 buries one of them in ignorance, when he learns the truth, he shall cause the 

 body to be exhumed, and to be removed from sanctuary and cast upon a 

 dunghill. Otherwise the church and cemetery are placed under interdict till 

 the body is removed. (16) The custom of Catholics in the article of death 

 and making disposition of their goods is to offer, in the first place, that which 

 belongs to God and the Church, and to pay debts due to their neighbours, 

 and to apply the remainder to good works, and for obtaining the aid of 



