To the holy Pope Gregory. To the holy lord and father in Christ, the most fair adornment of the Roman Church, as it were a most august flower of all drooping Europe, the distinguished watchman, endowed with divine contemplation as with the spotlessness of holiness — I, Columba, a worthless dove (bargoma) in Christ, send greeting. 1. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ. It pleases me, O holy pope, not to question you in hyperbolic fashion concerning Easter, according to that saying of the Song: 'Ask thy father, and he will declare to thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee' (Deut. 32:7). For though, mere trifler that I am, that excellent remark of a certain wise man might be charged against me — the remark he is said to have made when he saw a woman of ill appearance: 'I do not admire the artifice, but I admire the effrontery' —
that I, a worthless man, in writing to you who are illustrious, might be branded with the like reproach: yet, relying on the confidence of your evangelical humility, I presume to write to you, and to lay before you the business of my grief. For there is no vanity in writing where necessity compels one to write even to one's superiors. What, then, do you say of an Easter kept on the twenty-first or twenty-second of the moon — which (let it be said with your peace) is proved by many calculators not to be Easter at all, but rather a dark thing?
For it is not hidden, as I believe, from your efficiency, how greatly Anatolius — a man of wondrous learning, as holy Jerome says, whose work Eusebius bishop of Caesarea inserted in his Ecclesiastical History as excerpts, and which holy Jerome likewise commended in his Catalogue concerning this very matter of Easter — disputes against this reckoning of the moon's age as a thing to be censured; for against the Gallican computists who, as he says, err concerning Easter, he brought a fearful sentence: 'Surely,' you say, 'if the rising of the moon should be delayed up to the end of the second watch, which marks the middle of the night, then not the light overcomes the darkness, but the darkness overcomes the light;
and it is certain that it is not probable in Easter that any portion of darkness should hold sway over the light, since the solemnity of the Lord's resurrection is light, and there is no fellowship of light with darkness. And if the moon glows in the third watch, there is no doubt that it has risen on the twenty-first or twenty-second, on which the true Easter cannot possibly be offered. For those who define that Easter can be celebrated at this age of the moon not only cannot affirm it by the authority of divine Scripture, but also incur the crime of sacrilege and contumacy and the peril of souls, while they affirm that the true Light can be sacrificed together with some dominion of darkness — which holds sway over all darkness.' Moreover, in the book of holy doctrine we read:
Easter, that is, the solemnity of the Lord's resurrection, cannot be celebrated before the sixteenth, the beginning of the passing of the vernal equinox, namely so that it does not precede the equinox; which indeed Victorius transgressed in his Cycle, and through this long ago introduced error into Gaul, or, to put it more humbly, confirmed an inveterate one. For by what reasoning can both stand together — namely, that the resurrection of the Lord be celebrated before His Passion, which it is even absurd to suppose; or that the seven days appointed in the Law by the Lord's command, in which alone the Lord's Passover was lawfully commanded to be eaten (which are to be numbered from the fourteenth moon up to the twentieth), be transgressed against right and divine law?
But the twenty-first or twenty-second moon is outside the right of light, inasmuch as it has then risen after the middle of the night; and, since the darkness overcomes the light, it is unlawful, as they say, to keep the solemnity of light. 2. Why then do you, so wise — you whose most brilliant lights of sacred genius are diffused throughout the world, as in olden time — keep a dark Easter? I marvel, I confess, that this error of Gaul has not long since been shaved away by you, as though it were a Schyntenean thing; unless perhaps I should suppose — what I can scarcely believe — that, since it is certain it has not been corrected by you, it is approved in your sight.
Yet otherwise and more honorably can your skill be excused — namely, that perhaps fearing to incur the mark of Hermagorian novelty, you are content with the authority of your predecessors, and especially of Pope Leo. Do not, I beseech you, in such a question trust only to humility or to gravity, which are often deceived. 'Better perhaps is a living dog' in the matter under debate 'than a dead lion' (Eccles. 9:4). For a living saint can correct what has not been corrected by another greater than he. Know, then, that to our masters and to the ancient Irish, philosophers and most skilled computists in framing the calendar, Victorius was not accepted, but rather deemed worthy of laughter or indulgence than of authority.
Therefore deign to direct to me, fearful and a stranger rather than a know-it-all, the support of your sentence, and to transmit early the ripe point of your good pleasure for the calming of this tempest that surrounds us; for after so many authors as I have read, the one opinion of these bishops, who say merely 'We ought not to keep Easter with the Jews,' does not satisfy me. Victor the bishop said this long ago; but no one of the Easterns accepted his contrivance; but this lulling to sleep — the thorn of Dagon — drank in this scum of error. What sort of thing, I ask, is this frivolous and so unpolished opinion, supported by no testimonies of divine Scripture: 'We ought not to keep Easter with the Jews'? What does it pertain to the matter?
Are the reprobate Jews to be believed to keep Easter now — being without a temple, outside Jerusalem, Christ being then prefigured and crucified by them? Or rather, is it not theirs that we should rightly believe Easter to fall on the fourteenth moon; and ought we not rather to confess it to be of God Himself who instituted the Passover, and who alone knows in purity by what mystery the fourteenth moon was chosen for the passing-over? Which perhaps may shine forth a little to the wise and to such as you.
Those who raise this objection — though without authority they reproach God — asking why He did not by His foreknowledge guard beforehand against the contumacy of the Jews, so that, if He did not wish us to keep Easter along with them, He should have prescribed nine days of unleavened bread in the Law, that at least the beginning of our solemnity might not exceed the end of theirs. For if Easter is to be celebrated on the twenty-first or twenty-second, nine days will be reckoned from the fourteenth up to the twenty-second; seven, namely, prescribed by God, and two added by men. But if it is lawful for men to add of themselves anything to the divine ordinance, I ask whether it may not perhaps seem contrary to that sentence of Deuteronomy: 'Behold,' it says, 'the word that I give thee: thou shalt neither add to it, nor take away from it' (Deut. 4:2). 3.
But writing these things more pertly than humbly, I know that I have woven for myself a most difficult turn of presumption, which I shall have to sail through unwittingly. For it is neither of my place nor of my rank that anything should be cast at your great authority as though by way of disputing, and that the Western letters should ridiculously trouble you concerning Easter — you who lawfully sit upon the chair of Peter the apostle and key-bearer. But you should consider, not me so worthless in this matter, but the many masters, both dead and living, who confirm these same things which I have noted; and believe that you are, as it were, drawing into converse with them: for know that I open my chattering mouth piously, though, I admit, by leaps and hyperbolically.
Therefore either excuse or condemn your Victorius, knowing that if you praise him, there will be a matter of faith between you and the aforesaid Jerome, who indeed praised Anatolius, who is contrary to him; so that he who has followed the one cannot accept the other. Let your vigilance therefore consider that, in proving the faith of the two aforesaid authors who are contrary to one another, there be no discord between you and Jerome in the opinion to be put forward; lest straits be upon us on every side, so that we must consent either to you or to him. Spare the weak in this, lest you display the scandal of diversity.
For I confess to you plainly that whoever goes against the authority of holy Jerome will, among the churches of the West, be a heretic or one to be rejected: for in all things they accord an unwavering faith to him in the divine Scriptures. But let these things concerning Easter suffice. 4. As for the rest, what do you judge, I ask, concerning those bishops who are ordained contrary to the canons, that is, for gain — the simoniacs, whom you, O author, have written to be a 'Giltan' (i.e. ruinous) plague? Are we to communicate with them? For — what is more grievous — many in this province are known to be such; or concerning others who, having been defiled in the diaconate, are afterward chosen to the rank of bishop?
For there are those whose consciences in these matters we know; and conferring this with our littleness, they wished to know for certain whether after this they may be without peril — that is, either after a rank bought with coin, or after adultery in the diaconate: yet I mean a hidden adultery with their dependents — which among our masters is reckoned to be of no lesser crime. In the third place of inquiry answer further yet, I beg, if it is not burdensome, what is to be done concerning those monks who, kindled for the sake of God and out of desire for the perfection of life, going against their vows, abandon the places of their first conversion, and, against the abbots' will, driven by the fervor of monks, are either relaxed or flee to the deserts.
Vennianus the author questioned Gildas concerning these matters, and he replied to him most elegantly; but nevertheless to one zealous for learning an ever greater fear keeps growing. 5. More humbly and more purely all these things, and many more which the brevity of a letter does not admit, should have been inquired into by my presence — had not bodily infirmity and the care of my fellow-pilgrims at home bound me from going to you, to draw from that spiritual vein of the living fount, and the living wave of knowledge flowing down from heaven and leaping up into eternal life.
And if the body followed the mind, Rome would again endure the matter of her own contempt, so that — as we read, with learned Jerome narrating, how certain men came of old to Rome from the farthest bounds of the Gallic shore, and, marvelous to say, then sought something beyond Rome — so I too now, not desiring Rome, would seek you out, saving the reverence due to the ashes of the saints; for, though I confess myself not wise, but thirsting, I would do this same thing if I had leisure. I have read your book containing the Pastoral Rule, brief in style, copious in doctrine, packed with mysteries; sweeter than honey to one in need, I confess it to be a needful work; therefore to me thirsting bestow your writings, I pray — those little works which, as I have heard, you have wrought upon Ezekiel with wondrous genius.
I have read Jerome's six books on that prophet; but he did not expound even the half. But, if you deign, transmit to us some of your writings re-read in the city — namely, transmit the last parts of the book expounded — and the Song of Songs, from that place where it says... 'I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense' (Cant. 4:6, 16), to the end; or I beg for short treatises of others' or of your own sentences; and that you expound the whole obscurity of Zechariah, make plain what is hidden, that the Western blindness in these matters may give you thanks. I demand untimely things, and inquire after great ones — who would not know it? But you too, having great things, since you well know that from little, less, and from much, more, ought rightly to be lent at interest.
Charity persuades you to write back; let the roughness of the paper not hinder you from expounding, for the bronze was in error, and the honor due is from me to be given to your heart: mine it was to provoke, to question, to ask; yours, if you do not deny things received by grace, to lend the talent at interest, to give the bread of doctrine to me asking it of you, Christ commanding it. Peace to you and to yours; forgive, I pray, this rashness of mine, that I have written thus boldly, blessed pope, and I beseech that for me, a most worthless sinner, you would even once in your holy prayers pray to our common Lord. I think it more than superfluous to commend my companions to you, whom the Savior decrees are to be received as walking, as it were, in His own name; and if, as I have heard from your holy Candidus,
you should wish to answer this — that what is strengthened by the antiquity of time cannot be changed — manifestly it is an ancient error; but the truth which reproves it is always more ancient still.