It is not for the purpose of opposing ecclesiastical canons, or merely to contradict civil enactments, that We have rendered the following decision against the ravisher of a virgin, but because We have noticed that it is more advantageous that the ecclesiastical law, through its mildness, as it were, encourages the evil, while the civil law, as We admit, is too severe in its suppression. The latter provides that not only one who has carried away and ravished a young girl shall be put to death and deprived of all his property, but also that his accomplices in the crime shall be subjected to the same penalty, and that it makes no difference if the girl voluntarily submitted to her ravisher. Moreover, the law declares that if the father knew of the rape, he shall be punished by deportation, and even if he was not aware of it at the time it was committed, but learned of it afterwards, and attached very little importance to the violation of his daughter, and pardoned the guilty party, or even gave his daughter to him in marriage, he will be equally liable to deportation as a penalty for his neglect. These are the rules adopted by the ancients. But Our Father, of eternal memory, paying less attention to the rape itself than to the circumstances with which it was accompanied, regulated his opinion accordingly, and decreed that if the offence was committed with arms, that is to say with swords, or any other lethal weapons, the culprit should be punished with death, because when they were employed, the act implied homicidal intent. So far as those who aided in its perpetration, or harbored the criminal, are concerned, he decided that they should have their noses cut off, be scourged, and shaved. If, on the other hand, the rape was committed without weapons, the ravisher was not punished with death, because he did not have any intention to inflict it, but he would be condemned to have his hand amputated, and those who assisted him, or had any share whatever in the commission of the crime, were condemned to be scourged, shaved, and deported. So much for the corporeal punishment; and with reference to the pecuniary penalty, no change is made in former laws, which shall remain in full force. These are the matters which Our Father decreed, and which We approve, and order that they shall always preserve their authority and effect.