Question Two. What is to be Done about an Exposed Child

163. Following on from these are certain questions plain without arguments.

First, what is to be done about an exposed child.

164. And I say that either certain signs are found on him that he is not baptized, in the way working women have been wont to put salt with him, as with those who have to be carried to baptism; and then he is to be baptized absolutely without any hesitation. Or no such sign is found with him, and yet because such a sign cannot be had about him from the vicinity, nor a testimony worthy of belief, that he is baptized, then he is to be baptized; however it is safer to use the form from Decretals III tit. 42 ch.2, Gregory IX, ‘About baptism and its effect’ [“Let those, about whom there is doubt whether they have been baptized, be baptized with these words as preface, ‘If you are not yet baptized, I baptize you etc.’”].

165. And of this case Pope Leo [the Great] speaks, Gratian p.3 ‘On Consecration’ d.4 ch.113, “Those about whom,” he says, “no marks are discernible among those nearby or in the vicinity whereby they may be shown to have been baptized, one must act so that they be reborn, lest they perish; and because no outward bearing appears in them, reason does not permit [the baptism] to seem to have been reiterated.”