Council of Trent: Session XIII, Reformation, Chapter V

CHAPTER V. The bishop shall take summary cognizance of graces whereby a sin, or a punishment, is remitted.

And because it sometimes happens that, under false pleas, which notwithstanding seem probable enough, certain persons fraudulently obtain graces, whereby the punishments inflicted on them by the just severity of their bishops are either wholly remitted, or are mitigated; and whereas it is a thing not to be borne, that a lie, which is so exceedingly displeasing to God, should not only itself go unpunished, but even obtain for him that tells it, the pardon of another crime; the Synod hath for this cause ordained and decreed as follows: That a bishop, resident in his own church, shall of himself, as the delegate of the Apostolic See, take cognizance even summarily of the surreption or obreption of any grace, obtained under false pretences, for the absolution of any public crime or delinquency, into which he himself had instituted an inquiry; or for the remission of a punishment to which he has himself condemned the criminal; and he shall not admit the said grace, after that it shall have been lawfully ascertained, that it was obtained by the statement of what is false, or by the suppression of the truth.

Translation: J. Waterworth, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (1848), Hanover Historical Texts Project transcription (1995).