Article 5

The Supreme Pontiffs receive in their own name and that of the Roman Church the dominion of those things of which it is licit for the Friars to have the use. The Friars Minor are not capable of inheriting since in these things dominion passes to the heirs. The Friars cannot receive annual returns nor possessions nor their use.

Hence since the holy man expressing the manner of poverty professed in the rule said in the same: “The Friars are not to appropriate anything to themselves, neither house, nor place, nor any thing: but as pilgrims and foreigners in this age, in poverty and humility waiting upon the Lord, let them go about confidently for alms”: and so it stands declared by some of Our Predecessors the Roman Pontiffs, that this expropriation ought to be understood as much in particular as also in common, on account of which They receive in Their own name and that of the Roman Church the property and dominion both of all the concessions, offerings, and donations to the Friars (those things the enjoyment of which and the use in fact of which certainly is licit to the Order and to the Friars), it having been given over to the Friars themselves in those things only to the extent of use in simple fact.

Those things had been conveyed to Our examination which in the Order were said to be done, and seemed to be repugnant to the aforesaid vow and the purity of the Order: clearly, I have established to pursue these further according to the things themselves which We believe stand in need of a remedy, that the heirs not only sustain but take care of themselves:

• likewise that the Friars receive the annual returns sometimes in a very notable quantity, on which thenceforth the inhabitants of the convent live entirely:

• likewise that when business is conducted even for temporal goods in the law courts, they attend with lawyers and procurators, and present themselves personally in the same matter to instigate them:

• likewise that they take up the execution of last wills, and conduct them, and introduce themselves whenever dispositions or restitutions are to be made concerning their use, or worse, their removal:

• likewise that in some places they have not only excessive gardens, but even great vineyards, from which much is harvested from olive trees and grapevines to be sold:

• likewise that at the seasons of grain and grape harvest so copiously are grain and wine gathered by the Friars begging or selling other things, and both stored up in cellars and granaries, with which throughout the remainder of the year they can even pass their life without begging them:

• likewise that they build churches or other buildings or take care to have them made in quantity and curiosity of figure and form, and in a notably excessive sumptuosity, so that they do not seem to be little dwellings of the poor, but of magnates: they even have so many ecclesiastic vestments in very many places, and so notably precious, that they exceed the great church cathedrals in these things: moreover they receive indistinctly horses and arms offered to them in funerals: however the community of the Friars and especially the rectors of the Order itself asserted, that the aforesaid things, or many of them are not done in the Order, that even if the things are discovered to be such they are rigidly punished: and also that something be done against such things, very many statutes in the Order have been made quite strict from ancient times.

Desiring therefore to provide for the consciences of the Friars themselves, and to remove all doubts (as much as is possible to Us) from their own hearts, We shall respond to the aforesaid things, in order, which follow: