CHAPTER IV.
Whosoever being employed in divine offices in a cathedral, or collegiate, secular or regular church, is not constituted in the order of subdeaconship at least, shall not have a voice in the chapter of such churches, even though this may have been freely conceded to him by the others. But those who possess, or shall hereafter possess, in the said churches, any dignities, personates, offices, prebends, portions, and any other manner of benefices whatever, to which various obligations are annexed; such as, that some shall say, or sing, mass, others the Gospel, others the Epistle, they shall be bound, just impediment being wanting, to receive the requisite orders within a year, whatsoever may be their privilege, exemption, prerogative, or nobility of birth; otherwise they shall incur the penalties according to the constitution of the Council of Vienne, which begins. Ut ii qui, which [the synod] by this present decree renews. And the bishops shall compel them to exercise the aforesaid orders in person on the appointed days, and to discharge all the other duties which belong to them in the divine service, under the same penalties, and others even more grievous, to be imposed at their discretion. Nor, for the future, shall any such office be assigned to any others but those who shall be well known fully to have already the age and the other qualifications; otherwise such provision shall be void.
CHAPTER V.
Dispensations out of the Court shall he committed to the Bishop, and be examined by him.
Dispensations, by what authority soever they are to be granted, if they are to be consigned out of the Roman court, shall be consigned to the ordinaries of those who shall have obtained them. And those dispensations which shall be granted as graces, shall not possess their effect, until the said ordinaries, as apostolic delegates, shall have first ascertained summarily only, and extra-judicially, that the terms of the petition do not labour under the vice of surreption or obreption.
