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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 122.: Innocent III to a Bishop, Forbidding Laymen to Demand Tithes of the Clergy, 1198. - A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age

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Collection: Primary Sources
Subject Area: History

122.: Innocent III to a Bishop, Forbidding Laymen to Demand Tithes of the Clergy, 1198. - Oliver J. Thatcher, A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age [1905]

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A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905).

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122.

Innocent III to a Bishop, Forbidding Laymen to Demand Tithes of the Clergy, 1198.

This letter does not differ materially from the bull “Clericis laicos,” no. 162. See the introductory note to it.

Since it is improper and contrary to reason that laymen, who are bound to pay tithes to the clergy, should presume to extort tithes from them, to the utter confusion of the established order of things, we grant your petition, and give all the monasteries, churches, and clergy of your diocese the permission to refuse to pay any tithes which may be demanded of them by laymen, no matter under what pretext such a demand may be made. And if laymen, contrary to this writing, shall attempt to collect such tithes by violence, you shall put them under ecclesiastical interdict and deprive them of the right to appeal.