Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/362

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SELECT HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.

wicked is nothing else than to foster them, and since he is not without suspicion of secret collusion who desists from opposing a manifest crime: we will and command that, against their persons and lands, ecclesiastical severity shall be exercised by the prelates of the churches.

13. Moreover we excommunicate and anathematize those false and impious Christians who, against Christ Himself and the Christian people, carry arms, iron, and wood for ships to the Saracens. Those also who sell to them galleys or ships and who, in the pirate ships of the Saracens, keep watch or do the steering, or give them any aid, counsel or favour with regard to their war machines or to any thing else, to the harm of the Holy Land;—we decree shall be punished with the loss of their own possessions and shall be the slaves of those who capture them. And we command that on Sundays and feast days, throughout all the maritime cities, this sentence shall be renewed; and to such the lap of the church shall not be opened unless they shall send all that they have received from such damnable gains, and as much more of their own as aid to the aforesaid Land; so that they may be punished with a penalty equal to the amount of their original fault. But if by chance they be insolvent, those guilty of such things shall be otherwise punished; that through their punishment others may be prevented from having the audacity to presume to act similarly.

14. We prohibit, moreover, all Christians, and under pain of anathema, interdict them from sending across or taking across their ships to the lands of the Saracens who inhabit the oriental districts, until four years are past; so that, in this way, greater means of transport may be prepared for those wishing to cross to the aid of the Holy Land, and the aforesaid Saracens may be deprived of the by no means smell advantage which has, as a rule, accurred to them from this.

15. Although, indeed, in different councils, tournaments have been generally forbidden under penalty: inasmuch as at this time the matter of the crusade is very much impeded by them, we, under pain of excommunication, do firmly forbid them to be carried on for the next three years.