Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/383

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DECREE OF 1059.
363

sources; as we know the blessed Gregory to have done before his consecration.

But if any one, contrary to this our decree promulgated by a synodal vote, shall, through sedition or presumption or any wile, be elected or even ordained and enthroned: by the authority of God and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul he shall be subjected, as Antichrist and invader and destroyer of all Christianity, to a perpetual anathema, being cast out from the threshold of the holy church of God, together with his instigators, favourers and followers. Nor at any time shall he be allowed a hearing in this matter, but he shall irrevocably be deposed from every ecclesiastical grade, no matter what one he had previously held. Whoever shall adhere to him or show any reverence to him, or shall presume in any way to defend him, shall be bound by a like sentence. Whoever, moreover, shall scorn the import of this our decree, and shall attempt, contrary to this statute, presumptuously to confound and perturb the Roman church, shall be condemned with a perpetual anathema and excommunication and shall be considered as among the impious who do not rise at the Judgment. He shall feel against him, namely, the wrath of Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and shall experience in this life and in the next the fury of the holy apostles Peter and Paul whose church he presumes to confound. His habitation shall be made a desert, and there shall be none to dwell in his tents. His sons shall be made orphans and his wife a widow. He shall be removed in wrath, and his sons shall go begging and shall be cast out of their habitations. The usurer shall go through all his substance and strangers shall destroy the results of his labours. The whole earth shall fight against him and all the elements oppose him; and the merits of all the saints at rest shall confound him, and in this life shall take open vengeance against him. But the grace of Almighty God will protect those who observe this our decree, and the authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul will absolve them from the bonds of all their sins.

I, Nicholas, bishop of the holy catholic and apostolic Roman church, have signed this decree promulgated by us as it stands above. I, Boniface, by the grace of God bishop