Canons of the Council of Vaison (442)

Contents

1. 1Bishops travelling within the Gallic provinces need not be examined if no one has barred them from communion.
2. 2Penitents who die suddenly before reconciliation are to have their offerings received and to be commemorated in the liturgy.
3. 3Presbyters are to fetch the chrism each year before Easter from their own bishop, in person or through a subdeacon.
4. 4Those who withhold bequests made by the dead to the church are excommunicated as defrauders of the poor.
5. 5One who rejects his bishop's sentence may appeal to the synod.
6. 6The council adopts from the letter of Clement to James the rule that the faithful should shun those whom their bishop treats as enemies, even without being told.
7. 7Bishops are to restrain accusations against one another: a bishop may be entreated to forgive a brother after rebuke, but a charge of crime must be properly examined.
8. 8A bishop who alone knows of another's secret crime must not accuse him publicly while he cannot prove it, but should rebuke him privately.
9. 9Whoever takes in an exposed infant is to proceed through the church, with a period of ten days from the exposure; the details are unreadable in the edition used.
10. 10Anyone who afterwards reclaims or slanders a foundling taken in under this procedure is punished as a murderer.