text: Spondent quas non exhibent (sometimes referred to as Spondent pariter) is a papal decretal promulgated in 1317 by Pope John XXII forbidding the practice of alchemy. The rationale provided for the ban in the decretal is not a specifically theological one, but instead a moral condemnation, with the Pope expounding how fraudulent alchemists exploited the poor and charging them with knowingly engaging in falsehood.