Pius IV, 1559-1565

conduct in imitation of the saints, and be stimulated to adore and love God, and to cultivate piety. But if anyone should teach or maintain anything contrary to these decrees, let him be anathema.

988. If any abuses shall creep into these holy and salutary observances, the holy Synod earnestly desires that they be entirely abolished, so that no representations of false dogma and those offering occasion of dangerous error to uneducated persons be exhibited. And if at times it happens that the accounts and narratives of the Holy Scripture, when this is of benefit to the uneducated people, are portrayed and exhibited, let the people be instructed that not for that reason is the divinity represented, as if it can be seen with bodily eyes, or expressed in colors and figures. . . .

Decree Concerning Indulgences¹

989. Since the power of granting indulgences was conferred by Christ on the Church, and she has made use of such power divinely given to her, [cf. Matt. 16:19; 18:18] even in the earliest times, the holy Synod teaches and commands that the use of indulgences, most salutary to a Christian people and approved by the authority of the sacred Councils, is to be retained in the Church, and it condemns those with anathema who assert that they are useless or deny that there is in the Church the power of granting them. . . .

Clandestinity Invalidating Matrimony²

[From Session XXIX Chap. (I) "Tametsi" on the reformation of matrimony]

990. Although it is not to be doubted that clandestine marriages made with the free consent of the contracting parties, are valid and true marriages, so long as the Church has not declared them invalid; and consequently that they are justly to be condemned, as the holy Synod condemns those with anathema, who deny that they are true and valid, and those also who falsely affirm that marriages contracted by minors without the consent of parents are invalid, and that parents can make them sanctioned or void, nevertheless the holy Church of God for very just reasons has always detested and forbidden them. But while the holy Synod recognizes that those prohibitions by reason of man's disobedience are no longer of any use, and considers the grave sins which have their origin in such clandestine marriage, especially, indeed, the sins of those who remain in the state