invocation of the divine judgment. Let those also, to whom the government or administration of the aforesaid places shall be committed, be bound to make oath after the manner of guardians and curators, and to draw up inventories regarding the goods of the places themselves, and render an account of then: administration every year to the ordinaries or others, who have such places under them, or to those to be deputed by them. But if any one shall attempt to act otherwise, we decree that the collation, provision, or the ordination itself is destitute of all validity. But we by no means wish that the matters premised should extend to the hospitals of military orders, or of other religious persons. The rectors of which hospitals we command, in virtue of holy obedience, that they take care to provide for the poor therein, according to the institutes of their orders and the ancient observances, and to afford in them the due need of hospital attendance, to which they should be constrained by severe strictness, any statutes or usages soever notwithstanding. But it is part of our intention, that if any hospital, having an altar or altars, or cemetery, from a remote period, and officiating priests, and persons ministering the ecclesiastical sacraments to the poor, or if the parochial rectors should have been wont to officiate in them, the ancient custom premised may be preserved with respect to exercising and administering the aforesaid spiritual matters.
Eugenius IV.
From lib. 5, Extravagantium communium, tit. VII. de privilegiis, cap. 3.
(This is abrogated in Sess. xxiii. de reform, cap. 1, and Sess. xxiv. de reform, cap. 11.)
Placed by the will of the divine clemency on the conspicuous watch-tower of the Apostolic See, we readily direct our attention to those things, through which the officials of the aforesaid see may, in obedience to it (to which, as. the mother of all the faithful, the multitude flock from different parts of the world, to seek the salvation of souls and to attain justice), be more securely and peaceably enabled to show themselves alert. Hence it is that we, moved by certain reasonable causes, treading in the footsteps of
