ister within the space of two
months he is to be avoided by all as excommunicate, and if he should
presume to try the effect of patronage in no case should {427} he be
heard. On his return to the cloister he must always be the last of
the brothers in the choir and unless by the special indult or
permission of the Holy See must lose hope of all promotion."

_The Council of Paris, A.D. 1212,_ Second Part, Canon XX.

"Since certain of the members of the regular orders under the
pretense of caring for the bodies of ailing brother members and of
more faithfully managing ecclesiastical affairs, to use the words of
the Lateran Council, have not hesitated to go out of their cloisters
to learn mundane law and give themselves to the study of physical
problems in order to give their time to jurisprudence and medicine
and on account of that are lacking in the interior life because they
are devoting themselves to care for external things, we walking
closely in the footsteps of that council decree that unless within
the space of two months such students of law and medicine return to
their cloisters, in spite of the permission of their abbot, which he
is not empowered to give, they are to be excommunicated and avoided
by all; and in no case if they should endeavor to use patronage to
aid them are they to be admitted.

"We prohibit also anyone who enters the cloister for the sake of
religion to go out of it in order to go to school; whatever a student
may wish he should learn in the cloister. Those who are now in the
schools should within two months return to the cloister."

_Decree of the Council of Montpellier held under Pope Alexander
III, 1162._

Since the proceedings of this Council are not extant the records of it
are preserved in two monuments. One an Epistle of Pope Alexander to
the Bishop of Verona and the other the decrees of the Council of
Montpellier held in 1195 which enacted similar legislation.

Cap. 15. "The Council prohibited besides under the full severity of
ecclesiastical discipline any monk or canon regular or other member
of a religious order to take up the study of secular laws or
medicine. Anyone violating this statute must be canonically
published by the diocesan Bishops according to the decree
promulgated in this matter under Pope Alexander in the Council of
Montpellier."

It has been suggested that this exclusion of monks and religious from
the study of m