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BISSAT, or BISSART, PETER, professor of the
Canon Law in the University of Bononis, was born in Fife in the reign of
James V., being a descendant of Thomas Bissat, who was Earl of Fife in the
reign of David II. He received instructions in grammar, philosophy, and
the laws, at the University of St Andrews, and afterwards perfected his
education at that of Paris. Having then traveled into Italy, he was
honoured by the University of Bononis with the degree of Doctor of Laws,
and shortly after became professor of the Canon Law in that seminary, in
which situation he continued for several years, "with great
applause."
Bissat appears to have been a man of
general accomplishment – a poet, an orator, and a philosopher; but his
forte lay in the Canon Law. His various writings were published at Venice
in 1565, in quarto, under the title, "Patricii Bissarti Opera Omnia, viz.,
Poemata, Orationes, Lectiones Feriales, et Liber de Irregularitate."
The last of these compositions was a commentary on that part of the Canon
Law which gives the reasons assigned by the Church of Rome for excluding
certain laymen from the clergy.
[Of these, as detailed by Bissat, an
abstract may be interesting to the British reader, now happily so little
familiar with the systems of the Catholic Church. The primitive
Christians, in admitting the clergy, observed exactly the rules laid down
by St Paul in the first epistle to Timothy. Yet sometimes, as we learn
from St Cyprian, at the pressing instance of the people, persons of noted
merit, who refused through humility, were compelled to enter. By the
canons, however, a man required to be a deacon before he could be a
priest, and a priest before he could be a bishop. It was a general
principle of the church, that the clergy should be chosen from the most
holy of the laity, and, therefore, all liable to any reproach in their
lives and conversations, were excluded. Agreeably to this principle, which
agreed with the injunction of St. Paul, that they should be blameless and
without reproach, the first council of Nice excluded all those,
specifically, who, after baptism, had been guilty of any sort of crime,
such as heresy, homicide, or adultery; nor was penance any palliative,
seeing that the memory of the offence always remained; while it was to be
expected that those whose lives were without stain should be preferred to
those who had fallen. Thus all persons who had performed penance were
excluded. Those also were deemed irregular, and not entitled to
admittance, who had killed any person, by accident or in self-defence, or
who had borne arms even in a just war; who had twice married or married a
widow; or who engaged much in worldly affairs; all of which circumstances
were held as derogating in some degree from the necessary purity of the
individual. The only other moral disqualification was ignorance: the
physical disqualifications were almost equally numerous. All deaf, dumb,
or blind persons were excluded, as unable to perform their functions in a
proper manner. All persons who were lame, or had any deformity calculated
to create an aversion in the people, were declared unfit for orders.
Madness and self-mutilation were disqualifications. All persons born out
of wedlock were excluded, because, however innocent the individual in his
own person, the associations which the sight of them was calculated to
awaken, were not favourable to virtue. Slaves, servants, children, and
monastic clergy without the consent of the superiors, were
excluded.]
Bissat died in the latter part of the year
1568.
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