Id. Aug. (13 Aug.) St. Peter's, Rome. (f. 294r.) |
To the abbot of St. Marys, Newry (de Viridi ligno), in the diocese of Dromore, and Thomas Macbruyn and Mark Macgin’, canons of Dromore. Mandate, as below. The pope has been informed by Donatus Obin’, priest, of the diocese of Down (Dunen.), that Raffarrus Orwonaga, a brother of the house of St. John Baptist of the English, Down, of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, made a bargain with the late Thady, bishop of Down, and the then temporal lord of the place, that if the said bishop made him provision of the mastership or priorship of the said house, and if the said lord helped him to obtain possession thereof, he would give them certain gifts (munera), thereby incurring simony and sentence of excommunication, etc., in pursuance of which bargain the said bishop made him collation and provision by his ordinary authority, and the said lord helped him to get possession, both of them having accepted the said gifts. The said collation and provision being therefore without force, and the said mastership or priorship being still void as above, the pope hereby orders the above three, if the said Donatus (who was lately dispensed by papal authority on account of illegitimacy, as the son of a priest and an unmarried woman, to be promoted to all, even holy orders and [receive and] retain a benefice even with cure, in virtue of which he has had himself made a clerk) will accuse the said Raffarrus before them, to summon the latter and others concerned, and, if they find the foregoing to be true, to declare the said collation and provision to be without force, and in that event to receive Donatus as a brother of the said hospital, give him the regular habit thereof, and receive his profession, and thereupon to collate and assign to him the said mastership or priorship, yearly value not exceeding 4 marks sterling, removing the said Raffarrus. The pope further specially dispenses him to receive and retain it, notwithstanding [the said defect], etc. Consuevit apostolice sedis circumspecta benignitas. [7 pp. In the margin: ’Sep (tembris).’] |