CHAPTER 4. - Forgers and Those Who Counterfeit Seals. In It Are 4 Articles.

1. If someone himself criminally writes a charter [purporting to be] from the sovereign to himself; or by his own design rewrites something in a genuine royal charter or in any other chancellery communications, without a decree from the sovereign or a decision from the boyars; or forges the signatures of counselors, and chancellery officials, and scribes: or makes for himself a seal like the sovereign's seal: after investigation, punish such a person with death for such offenses.

2. If someone feloniously proceeds to remove the sovereign's seals from the sovereign's charters, or from any other chancellery communications, and proceeds to affix these sovereign's seals to any fraudulent documents; or if someone feloniously proceeds to concoct documents and letters and alters chancellery communications without the sovereign's decree: punish that person with death also, and do not believe his counterfeit documents in any matter.

3. If the person who manufactured such documents dies; and after his death those documents appear in the possession of his relatives or of his stewards; and his relatives and stewards on the basis of those documents proceed to petition the sovereign about some case: investigate them, by what usage those documents came into their possession, where they got them, and whether they knew that those documents were counterfeit. If [others] testify about them in the investigation, or they themselves confess that they knew about the fact that the documents were felonious and counterfeit, but they retained them in their possession for their own profit and greed: similarly punish those people with death.

4. If [others] testify about them in the investigation that they retained those counterfeit documents in their possession not knowing that they were feloniously compiled: do not punish them with death for that. But do not believe those counterfeit documents in any matter. Do not grant a trial on the basis of them against anyone.