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June 17. Lyons. Pope Innocent IV writes to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, deans, archdeacons, chapters, other prelates the churches and the rest of the faithful in the Kingdom of England, noting the special importance of the church of Bethlehem because of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, but relating that, while he has learned that it was once built with noble walls, now it has been almost totally destroyed by those ‘who did not know the way of the Lord’. Wishing to have it restored, for the next decade the pope is relaxing one year and forty days of enjoined penance to all those who lend a helping hand to its repair. To increase the temporal and spiritual results of his effort, the pope orders the addressees to admit the nuncios who come to them for this purpose, to allow them to speak words of exhortation to their subjects to support this repair, with the archbishops and bishops granting them letters with fitting indulgences, and, when asked, to invite their subjects to extend the hand of charity for the repair of the church.