In the canon wherein they provided against the alienation of their lands, among other charitable exceptions to this restraint they particularize the purchase of liberty[43].

In their transactions with the great the same point was always strenuously labored.

When they imposed penance, they were remarkably indulgent to persons of that rank; but they always made them purchase the remission of corporal austerity by acts of beneficence.

They urged their powerful penitents to the enfranchisement of their own slaves, and to the redemption of those which belonged to others; they directed them to the repair of highways, and to the construction of churches, bridges, and other works of general utility.[44] They extracted the fruits of virtue even from crimes; and whenever a great man expiated his private offences, he provided in the same act for the public happiness.

The monasteries were then the only bodies corporate in the kingdom; and if any persons were desirous to perpetuate their charity by a fund for the relief of the sick or indigent, there was no other way than to confide this trust to some monastery.