[27.] Furthermore, all matters before the clerical judges, especially in Constance,* should be carried out and should proceed in German, and should be written in German, as is the custom in many other bishoprics, so that we laypeople can also hear and understand what is being discussed.
[28.] ITEM, concerning courtiers** who seize endowments, our firm ordinance and conviction is that it should not be allowed in any location for one person to seize another's endowment in this way. And if such Roman scoundrels should come and attempt to seize the endowments, they should be imprisoned and punished in such a way that we may be secure from them afterwards.***
[29.] ITEM, we have also deliberated, and it is our conviction, that if anyone, male or female, should be sick or lie at death's door, then no clerical person, whether priest, monk, nun, beguine, or otherwise, shall come to them and urge or encourage the patient to make a will or a provision for his goods without the presence of the legal heirs. And if a sick person should wish to make a will, testament, or provision out of his own desire, then it should take place before three male lay witnesses, or according to the customs of each location, preserving everyone's privileges.****
[30.] ITEM, we also desire and have ordained that if an ordained clerical person should come into conflict and dispute with a layperson, or a layperson with a cleric, then both parties, the priest as well as they layperson, shall respect and maintain the peace if the peace is called out,***** according to our common lands' custom.
[31.] ITEM, until now some of the clergy have behaved very dishonorably, [and] carried out evil misdeeds and actions, so that if they had been laypeople, they would have been physically punished or executed; but when such miscreants were handed over to the bishop as their ordained superior, they were sometimes lightly punished, and most of them were let out of prison and released. And because their crimes and criminality increased, and we have only more division and unrest from them, and so that evil may be punished, we have therefore ordained that if any priest or other ordained person, male or female, should commit any bad actions, evil deeds, or things that merit the death penalty, then each secular authority under whose jurisdiction such a clerical miscreant was seized should punish the same clerical person for his misdeeds in limb and life, like a layperson, without regard to his ordination.
[32.] ITEM, since great unrest has arisen among the common people concerning their faith because of the printing press and the pamphlets printed by the Lutherans and Zwinglians and their followers, it is our order that no one should print or sell such pamphlets in our cities, lands, and districts. Rather, if anyone is caught with such books, he should be seriously punished, and anyone who saw such books on sale, and took them from the seller and tore them up or threw them in the privy, shall not have committed a crime thereby.
Part III
[33. Preamble to part III] ITEM, since up to this point, the poor common man has been treated in a hard and harsh manner, notably by clerical prelates and monasteries, also by noble and non-noble lords and in some places by the Confederation, with dues for marriage and death dues and with other lordly rights and jurisdictional rights.
* Constance, which was itself outside the Confederation, was the seat of the bishop's court with jurisdiction over much of the Swiss Confederation – trans.
** The German word, "Curtisanen", also suggests courtesans – trans.
*** The printed version has three additional articles, quite radical in content, that are missing from the German transcription: one concerns marriages between Septuagesima and Fasnacht, to be allowed without a fee; another bans the sale of Roman indulgences; and a third demands that whatever dispensations can be obtained by money from a bishop or from Rome should equally be available for free from any parish priest – trans.
**** The last phrase is standard in all sorts of agreements and ordinances, and acknowledges the validity of any existing privileges pertaining to the matter at hand – trans.
***** "Calling out the peace" ("friden rufen, friden vordern") was an important legal concept intended to forestall open violence. In most towns and villages, any citizen could "call out the peace" if a dispute threatened to become violent, after which any injury or violence would be treated as a particularly severe crime – trans.
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