Council of Trent: Session XXII, Reformation, Chapter II

CHAPTER II. Who are to be promoted to Cathedral Churches.

Whosoever is, hereafter, to be promoted to a cathedral church shall not only be fully qualified by birth, age, morals, and life, and, in other respects, as required by the sacred canons, but shall also have been previously constituted in sacred Order, for the space of at least six months. And information on these points, if the individual be only recently, or not at all, known at the court (of Rome), shall be derived from the Legates of the Apostolic See, or from the Nuncios of the provinces, or from his Ordinary, and in his default, from the nearest Ordinaries. And, besides the things above-named, he shall possess such learning as to be able to discharge the obligations of the office that is about to be conferred upon him; and he shall, therefore, have been previously promoted by merit, in some university for studies, to be a master, or doctor, or licentiate, in sacred theology, or in canon law; or shall be declared, by the public testimony of some academy, fit to teach others. And, if he be a Regular, he shall have a similar attestation from the superiors of his own order. And all the above-named persons, from whom the information, or testimony, aforesaid is to be derived shall be bound to report on these matters faithfully and gratuitously; otherwise let them know, that their conciences will be grievously burthened, and that God, and their own superiors, will punish them.

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