oath before them to fulfil their duty.
If a father had named none, the bishop took part in the choice of them; the
act was deposited among the church documents. If the children of an insane
father wished to marry, the bishop had to determine the dowry and the
nuptial donation. In the absence of the proper judge, the bishop of the
city could receive complaints from those who had to make a legal demand on
another, or to protect themselves from a pledge falling overdue. The proofs
of a wrong account could, in the accountant's absence, be made before the
bishop, and had legal force. If the ground-lord would not receive the
ground-rent, the feoffee should consign it at Constantinople to the
Praetorian prefect or the patriarch, in the provinces to the governor, or
in his absence to the bishop of the city where the ground-lord who refused
to receive it had his domicile. Whoever found no hearing, either in a civil
or criminal matter, before the judge of the province, was directed to go to
the bishop, who could either call the judge to him, or go in person to the
judge, to invite him to do justice to the complainant according to the
strict law, in order that the bishop might not be obliged to carry the
refusal of justice by appeal to the imperial court.[167] If the judge was
not moved by this, the bishop gave the complainant a statement of the whole
case for the emperor, and the delinquent had to fear severe penalties, not
alone because he had been untrue to his office, but because he did not
allow himself, even at the demand of the bishop, to do what, without it,
lay in the circle of his duties. But this referring to the bishop was not
arbitrary--that is, not one which it lay in the will of the complainant to
use or not, but necessary, so that anyone who appealed to the imperial
court without this endeavour incurred, whether his complaint was founded or
not, the same punishment as the judge who refused to give a decision at the
bishop's request. Even if the complainant only suspected the judge, he was
bound to apply to the bishop to join the judge in examining the matter, and
to bring it to a strict legal issue. In the face of such honourable
confidence which was placed in the bishops, and which was also justified in
general by a happy result, we ought not to be surprised if either the
emperor himself or inferior magistrates committed to them the termination
of entangled processes, in which they exercised just such a jurisdiction a