Anonymous: Statuta

These short synodal statutes for the province or diocese of Sens are printed in Migne under the name of Walter, archbishop of Sens, who died in 923. They order that abbots and conventual priors who neither attend the synod nor excuse themselves be suspended from entering church for eight days. Because of scandals arising from the conduct of nuns, the Benedictine nuns are forbidden to receive deposits, especially chests of clerks or laymen, without the bishop’s leave; they must eat in the refectory and sleep in the dormitory, and private chambers are to be destroyed. Other statutes require canons to maintain the divine office day and night and to observe the precepts of the general council concerning their dress.

The references to a general council’s rules on clerical dress and the concerns of the statutes point to the thirteenth century, after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, rather than to the tenth; the attribution to the early archbishop Walter is therefore unlikely, and the author is not known. The statutes are a typical example of the synodal legislation by which bishops of the period sought to apply the decrees of Lateran IV to monasteries, nunneries and chapters.