recovering from their flight and finally, led by penitence, wishing to return humbly to their cloisters. Certainly, various penalties exist according to the quality and quantity of the transgressions, whether according to the holy fathers or statutes; yet, abbots and magistrates, not content with the penalties expressed in the sacred Canons and the rule of their order against such runaways, do not fear to impose heavier and almost unbearable penalties upon them in their return, or—what is worse—inhumanely refuse to admit those same persons who, however humbly, petition for the cloisters from which they departed. Since, therefore, penalties are not to be amplified but lessened by law, and it is far safer to render an account of mercy than of cruelty—especially since the Lord has promised through the mouth of the prophet, saying: "At whatever hour the sinner shall turn and lament, I will no longer remember all his iniquities" Ezekiel 18:21—we, noting that where the head of a family is a generous dispenser, it does not befit the household to be stingy, and wishing to preclude the material and occasion for sinning for such people, through provident deliberation establish, decree, and order by this present statute: That the abbots and prelates of monasteries, abbesses, provosts, priors, and magistrates of any order subject to us, shall strive to open the bosom of mercy liberally to those brothers and sisters who have fled from their monasteries in the manner mentioned above, or who have fallen into apostasia apostasy/abandonment of the religious life for any reason, and who desire and seek return with humility and devotion. We command them to act in the manner of the pious head of a family who received the prodigal son and subsequently the penitent son with fatherly love. They shall receive and admit such persons wishing to return—no matter how grave or enormous their excesses may have been—without contradiction, according to the discipline of each order or observed custom of the rules. Provided, however, that neither food nor clothing shall be taken away from them on account of their excesses, but let them be otherwise punished regularly, as is set forth. We impose upon those prelates, abbots, abbesses, provosts, priors, and magistrates who refuse to obey this, the sentence of suspension from divine services, having first provided a canonical warning of six days, if they wish to avoid the penalty in these writings.

Concerning nuns

Demanding that the sacred apostolic constitutions be duly executed, we inhibit by this our statute that nuns of any religion or order of our City and Diocese, who are commanded to remain in their monasteries under perpetual clausura enclosure in the aforesaid apostolic constitutions, so that none of them who have tacitly or expressly professed religion, for any reason or cause—unless perhaps it were established that any of them suffer from such a disease that she could not live with the others without grave danger or scandal—shall have the faculty of leaving the monasteries themselves. Henceforth, they shall not leave their monasteries without the license of their superiors, which we wish to be granted only for the aforesaid cause or when inevitable necessity demands it, if they wish to avoid the penalties and canonical vengeance of the said constitutions. Furthermore, so that the nuns themselves may be able to serve God more freely, separated from public and worldly sights, and with the opportunity for wantonness removed, and may be able to guard their souls and bodies in all holiness more diligently, we interdict and forbid all and singular ecclesiastical and regular persons subject to our jurisdiction from entering the monasteries of nuns themselves without reasonable and manifest cause and without the special license of the superiors to whom it pertains, under the penalties of suspension for ecclesiastical persons and excommunication for secular persons, and we shall proceed against them as we are able by law.

Concerning Lollards