16.2.41
THE SAME AUGUSTI TO MELITIUS, PRAETORIAN PREFECT.
Clerics must not be accused except before bishops. Therefore, if a bishop, a presbyter, a deacon, or any person of inferior rank who is a minister of the Christian faith should be accused by any person whatever before the bishops, since he must not be accused elsewhere, that man, whether of lofty honor or of any other dignity, who may undertake such a laudable type of suit, shall know that he must allege only what may be demonstrated by proofs and supported by documents. If any man, therefore, should lodge unprovable complaints about such persons, he shall understand that by the authority of this sanction he will be subject to the loss of his own reputation, and thus by the loss of his honor and the forfeiture of his status he shall learn that he will not be permitted, for the future at least, to assail with impunity the respect due to another. For, just as it is equitable that bishops, presbyters, deacons, and all other clerics should be removed from the venerable Church as persons attained if the allegations against them can be proved, so that they shall be despised thereafter and bowed under the contempt of wretched humilitation and shall not have an action for slander, so it must appear to be an act of similar justice that We have ordered an appropriate punishment for assailed innocence. Bishops, therefore, must hear such cases only under the attestation of many persons and in formal proceedings.
GIVEN ON THE THIRD DAY BEFORE THE IDES OF DECEMBER AT RAVENNA IN THE YEAR OF THE NINTH CONSULSHIP OF HONORIUS AUGUSTUS AND THE FIFTH CONSULSHIP OF THEODOSIUS AUGUSTUS (=11 December 412, recte 411).
(trans. Pharr 1952: 448; lightly adapted)