Note 331 — Chapter IV

Ordonnance générale des états assemblés à Orléans, p. 5; Isambert, XIV, 65. In pursuance of this legislation the cardinal of Lorraine resigned a few of his pluralities. He gave the bishopric of Metz to his brother, the cardinal of Guise, and retained for himself the archbishopric of Rheims, with the Abbeys of St. Rémy and St. Denis (Claude Haton, I, 234). On April 1, 1561, the action of the States-General was affirmed in a royal edict which commanded the bishops to return to their dioceses and there reside under pain of seizure of their temporalities, and in every bailiwick in France inventories were to be made of the whole revenues of the priest (Isambert, XIV, 101). It was followed by an edict dealing with the administration of the hospitals and support of the poor (ibid., 105), designed to put an end to corrupt practice on the part of unprincipled and avaricious priests who did not wish to reside at home and so sold their cures to presbyters. Those who had numerous benefices found means to excuse themselves from residence in their cures, in virtue of an article of the edict, which provided that ecclesiastics who had numerous cures, which they held par dispense, or other benefices or charges requiring actual residence in some other church, and who could not by this means reside in their parishes, by residing in one of the parishes or other churches in which they had a benefice or office requiring residence, were exempt from residing in their other cures, provided that they committed them to the care of capable vicars. In virtue of this article they were permitted the enjoyment of their revenues after having satisfied the king’s officers in each bailiwick. Cf. Claude Haton, I, 221, 222. The revenues of hospitals were assumed control of by the government, and the administration thereof was committed to the care of special administrators. Local judicial officers instead of the clergy, as formerly, were to supervise the distribution of money, wood, wine, and provisions, to priors, monks, nuns, and the poor.