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XI A CREDIBLEREFUTATION OF THE AFORESAID CANONS Let us return to the beginning of that fallacious chapter whichreads: (1) "A priest without the vowofa monk who sins with ayoung girl ora prostitute shall do penancefor two years." Now who is sodull, who can be found so insane as to believe that a priest caught in fornication should receive a penance worth two years? Anyone who has even a minimal knowledge ofcanonical authority or a superior knowledge (we can be silent about the stricter judgments), knows clearly that a priest who has fallen into fornication is judged to be deserving of at least ten years penance.57 Moreover, this penance of two years for fornication not only is not to be applied to priests, but not even to lay persons, for the judgment is three years when they turn away from this ruin to satisfaction. Then it is added: (2) If he sins "with a female servant of God or with a male (understood to be a priest), a fast is added, that is, of five years if it is habitual." (3) "Similarly deacons, if they are not monks, shall do penance for two yearsjust like monks who are without rank." One thing I see at once at the head of this senseless opinion which I am exposing and I gladly take note of it. Undoubtedly it says, (2) "If with a female servant of God or with a male." See, O good Sodomite man, in your own scripture which you singularly love, which you eagerly love, which you fasten to yourself as a shield of defence, see before your own eyes that it makes no difference whether one sins with 57 See Burchard, 17.56 (PL 140, 931D). 51 52 Book of Gomorrah a female servant of God or with a male. Equal sins are believed to be judged equally. Now, there is nothing to fight about with me in this, nothing you can rightly dissent from in my allegations. But who isso madly insane, who is in such dark and profound blindness that he would think a penance of five years is to be imposed on a priest for sinning with a female servant of God, that is, with a nun, or two years on a deacon or a monk? Is this not an insidious snare for those on the road to destruction? Is this not a snare for erring souls? Who could not give the lie to what is said: (4) "A cleric without the vow of a monk who fornicates with a young girl shall do penance for half a year"?And who is soversed in the knowledge of sacred scripture, so keen with the sharpness of dialectical subtlety, that he can both presume to condemn the law with [another] law and put forward as praiseworthy what can be adjuged to be the prejudice of a detestable authority? Why is three years given to a lay man while a cleric is ordered to do penance for half a year? So the blessed clerics who fornicate, if judged by the judgment of sodomists, in fact mete out to others in the same measure that they desire to be measured themselves. The greedy author of this error is satisfied to win souls for the devil and while he is zealous to destroy monks, he extends his perverse teaching to the order of clerics. While the murderer of souls was not able to satisfy the stomach's gluttony for malice with the death of monks alone, he desired to satiate himself from another order. Now let us see what follows: (5) "If anyone has sinned as the Sodomites, some say ten years of penance; if he is in the habit, more must be added; if he has ecclesiasticalrank he is to be degraded, and do penance as a lay person." (7) "A man who commits femoralfornication shall do penance for one year; if he repeats it, two years." (8) "However , if he commits anal fornication he shall do penance for three years." And since to sin asthe Sodomites do, asyou yourself advance, is none other than to perform anal fornication,why is it that your canons are found to contain in only one statement such differences and variations, so that they enjoin the weight often years on those who sin as Sodomites, but for anal fornicators, which is the same, they reduce the lament of penance to the brevity of three years? Are these not deservedly to be compared to...

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