CANON 20
Text. We do not deny to kings and princes the authority (facultatem) to dispense justice in consultation with the archbishops and bishops.
Comment. The three foregoing decrees are clearly only one, as is evident from canon 13 of the Synod of Clermont, with which they are identical and which Innocent here renews.[1] Arson was one of the crying evils resulting from those petty strifes and private wars that raged among the princes of Europe. Hatred and revenge frequently found expression in the destruction of crops and dwellings by fire, at times also of churches, thus reducing helpless and innocent people to misery and dire want, which often proved detrimental not only to their bodies but to their souls as well. In the ancient canon law, in addition to the obligation of repairing the loss, the incendiary was punished with severe public penances. The destruction of profane buildings or crops by fire was subject to a penance covering a period of three years, and the similar destruction of a church called for a penance of fifteen years.
CANON 21
Summary. Sons of priests must be debarred from the ministry of the altar.
Text. We decree that the sons of priests must be debarred from the ministry of the altar, unless they become monks or canons regular.
Comment. To put an end to clerical incontinence various kinds of disabilities were enacted and as far as possible enforced not only against the wives but also against the children of ecclesiastics. Wives and concubines were liable to be seized as slaves by the overlord, while the children were relegated to the category of servile rank, debarred from sacred orders, and declared incapable of exercising hereditary rights, because saepe solet similis filius esse patri. The Synod of Toledo (655) in canon 10 decreed that the sons of clerics in major orders are to be held forever as serfs of the church which their father served.[2] In 1031 the Synod of Bourges in canon 8 decreed that the sons of priests, deacons, and subdeacons, born after the reception of these orders, are excluded from the clerical state, because they and all others born of illegitimate unions are stigmatized by the Sacred Scriptures as semen maledictum. They are deprived of all
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