Canon 12 Church and monastery lands may not be alienated

If any bishop, or abbot, is found alienating any of the demesne lands of the episcopal residence or of the monastery into the hand of a ruler, or making them over to another person, the conveyance is to be void, according to the canon of the holy Apostles which says: Let the bishop have the care of all the ecclesiastical things, and let him administer them as with God overseeing; but let it not be permitted him to appropriate anything of them, or to give the things of God to his own relatives; and if they be poor, let him supply them as poor, but let him not, on their pretext, sell off the things of the church. And if they plead that the field causes loss and is of no profit at all, not even so are they to make over the place to the local rulers, but to clerics or to farmers. And if they use wicked cunning, and a ruler buys the field from the cleric or the farmer, even so the sale is to be void, and it is to be restored to the episcopal residence or to the monastery; and the bishop or the abbot who does this, let him be driven out: the bishop from the episcopal residence, and the abbot from the monastery, as wickedly scattering what they did not gather.