Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 170

Gregory to Venantius, former monk, patrician of Syracuse. Many foolish men have supposed that if I were raised to the order of the episcopate, I would refuse to address you and to visit you frequently through letters. But it is not so, because by that very necessity I am now compelled, so that I ought not to be silent. For it is written: Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet (Isa. 58:1). And again it is written: I have given thee a watchman to the house of Israel; thou shalt hear the word from my mouth, and shalt announce to them from me (Ezek. 3:17). From which announcement, whether retained or displayed, what follows the watchman or the hearer is at once intimated:

If, when I say to the wicked man, 'Thou shalt surely die,' thou dost not announce it to him, nor speak so that he may turn from his wicked way and live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thy hand. But if thou announce it to the wicked man, and he be not converted from his iniquity and from his wicked way, he indeed shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul. Hence also Paul says to the Ephesians: 'My hands are this day clean from the blood of you all. For I have not shrunk from declaring to you all the counsel of God' (Acts 20:26-27).

He would not therefore have been clean from the blood of all, had he been unwilling to announce God's counsel to them; for whoever refuses to rebuke transgressors, without doubt slays them as a shepherd by keeping silence. Compelled therefore by this consideration, willing or unwilling, I am going to speak, because with all my strength I desire either that you be saved, or that I be delivered from responsibility for your death. For you recall in what habit you were, and, setting aside the reflection of the supreme severity, you acknowledge from what state you have fallen. Weigh therefore your fault while there is time; while you are able, dread the strictness of the Judge to come, lest you then feel it bitterly, when you can no longer escape it by any weeping. Weigh what is written: 'Pray that your flight be not in winter or on the Sabbath' (Matthew 24).

(Matthew 24) For in winter the numbness of cold hinders walking, and according to the precept of the Law it is not permitted to walk on the Sabbath. He therefore strives to flee in winter or on the Sabbath, who then seeks to escape the wrath of the strict Judge, when it is no longer permitted him to walk. While there is time and while it is permitted, flee the severity of so great a terror; weigh what is written: 'Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly; for there is neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom in hell, whither thou hastenest' (Ecclesiastes 9:10). By the witness of the Gospel, you know that the divine severity holds us accountable for idle speech, and subtly demands a reckoning for every useless word (Matthew 12:36).

Weigh therefore what He will do concerning a perverse deed, if He condemns some men in His judgment on account of mere speech? Ananias had vowed his money to God (Acts 5:2ff.), which afterwards, overcome by diabolical persuasion, he withdrew (Cause 17, q. 1, can. 3). But by what death he was punished, you know. If therefore he was worthy of the peril of death, who took away from God the coins that he had given, consider of how great a peril in the divine judgment you will be worthy, who have withdrawn from Almighty God not coins, but your very self, whom you had vowed to Him under the monastic habit.

(Consider the judgment of God, which he deserves who has vowed himself to God, and then, at once ensnared by the desires of the world, has proved false to what he vowed.) Wherefore, if you shall be ready to hear the words of my correction, you will recognize at the end how gentle and sweet they are. Behold, I confess, I speak grieving, and, weighed down by sorrow at your deed, I am scarcely able to bring forth words; and yet your own soul, conscious of its own action, scarcely suffices to bear what it hears—it blushes, is confounded, is opposed. If therefore it cannot bear the words of dust, what will it do at the judgment of the Creator? Yet I confess that I believe it to be the greatest mercy of the supernal grace, that He beholds you fleeing life, and yet still reserves you for life; that He sees you growing proud, and endures it;

that through His unworthy servants He administers to you words of rebuke and admonition. It is only necessary that you should carefully weigh what Paul says: 'We exhort you, brethren, that you receive not the grace of God in vain; for He says, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee. Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation' (2 Corinthians 6:1-2ff.). But I know that when my letter is received, at once friends gather, dependents are summoned by letter, and concerning the cause of your life counsel is sought from the abettors of your death: who, while they love not you, but your possessions, speak to you nothing but what may please for the moment.

For such, as you yourself remember, were once your counsellors, who led you to the commission of so great an offence. That I may speak to you somewhat from a secular author: all things are to be discussed with friends, but first concerning the friends themselves. But if in your own cause you seek a human counsellor, I beg you, take me as your counsellor. None can be more faithful to you for counsel than one who loves not your possessions, but you. May Almighty God make known to your heart with how great affection and charity my heart embraces you—yet only so far as the divine grace be not offended. For I so pursue your fault that I love your person; I so love your person that I do not embrace the vice of your fault. If therefore you believe that you are loved by me, present yourself at the thresholds of the Apostles.

and make use of me as your counsellor. But if perhaps I am thought too excessive in the cause of God, and am suspect on account of the ardour of my zeal, take counsel of the whole Church together in this dispute, and whatever it pleases all to be done salutarily, I contradict in nothing, but what is decreed in common I gladly fulfil and subscribe to. May the divine grace preserve you in fulfilling what I have counselled. (Cf. John the Deacon, book III, ch. 44 and 48.) That the place formerly granted to the Jews be restored to them. Those at variance with the Christian religion are to be won over kindly. Gregory to Peter, bishop of Terracina. Joseph (Ivo part I, cap.), a Jew,

the bearer of the present letter, a Jew, has intimated to us that from a certain place in which the Jews dwelling in the fortress of Terracina were accustomed to assemble for the celebration of their festivals, your Fraternity has expelled them; and that with your knowledge and consent they migrated to another place, likewise for the observance of their festivals; and now they complain that they have again been expelled from that same place. But if it is so, we wish that your Fraternity refrain from a complaint of this kind, and that it be permitted them, as was their custom, to gather at the place which, as we have said, they obtained with your knowledge for assembling there. For those who are at variance with the Christian religion must be gathered to the unity of the faith by gentleness,

by kindness, by admonishing, by persuading, to the unity of the faith, lest those whom the sweetness of preaching and the foreseen terror of the Judge to come might have invited to believe, should be repelled by threats and terrors. It is fitting therefore that they should assemble kindly to hear from you the word of God, rather than dread a harshness stretched beyond measure. Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Peter, subdeacon. As you set out for Sicily, the memorandum which I gave you must be diligently reread, that I may take the greatest care concerning the bishops, that they be not involved in secular affairs, except insofar as the necessity of defending the poor compels. But concerning the monks and clerics, those things which are inserted in the same memorandum

I by no means judge should now be stirred up. But let your Experience guard these things with as great observance as may avail to fulfil my desire in this matter. Moreover, it has come to me that from the times of Antoninus the defensor down to now, throughout this decade, many have suffered certain acts of violence from the Roman Church, so that some publicly complain that their lands have been violently invaded, their slaves carried off, and even their movable goods taken away by force, without any judgment. In all these matters I wish that your Experience keep vigorous watch, and whatever it finds to have been violently taken away during this decade, or to be unjustly held under the name of the Church, this let it restore, by the authority of my present precept, to him whose it shall recognize it to be;

lest he who suffered the violence be compelled to come to me, and to undertake the labour of so great a journey, when here it cannot be ascertained by me, after due consideration, whether he speaks the truth. Considering therefore the majesty of the Judge to come, restore all that has been taken away with sin, knowing that you bring me great gain, if you gather for me reward rather than riches. But we have learned that very many complain of lost slaves, saying that if perchance the slave of anyone, fleeing his master, professed himself to be of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the agents of the Church straightway held this man as a slave of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, conducting no trial, but defending the word of the slave with force. This displeases me as much as it is abhorrent to the judgment of truth.

Wherefore I wish that whatever such deeds your Experience shall discover to have been done, it correct without delay; and that such slaves also, if any are now held under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, since they were taken without judgment, be restored before judgment; so that, if anything lawfully belongs to the holy Church in regard to them, then their possessors may be pursued by an ordered action. Correct all these things irrevocably, for then you will truly be a soldier of the blessed Apostle Peter, if in his causes you keep the guardianship of truth, even without partiality toward him. But if you perceive that anything can justly belong to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, beware ever to strive to defend it by force;

especially since I have established, even by a decree under interposition of anathema, that title-deeds should never be imposed by our Church upon urban or rustic estate; but whatever by right belongs to the poor, ought also by right to be defended, lest, while a good matter is not well handled, that which is justly sought by us should before Almighty God be arraigned for injustice. But the noble laity and any glorious man—I beg for humility's sake—let them love you, not shudder at you for pride. And yet, when perhaps you come to know that they are committing some injustice against any of the needy, turn your humility straightway into uprightness, so that you may always be both subject to those acting well, and an adversary to those acting ill.

But so act that neither your humility be lax, nor your authority rigid; so that both uprightness may season your humility, and humility may render your very uprightness gentle. Moreover, as it was the custom for the bishops to assemble for the anniversary of the pontiff, forbid them to come to the day of my ordination, because foolish and vain superfluity gives no delight. But if it is necessary for them to assemble, let them assemble on the anniversary of blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles, that they may render thanks to him from whose bounty they are shepherds. Fare you well. Given on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of April, in the ninth year of the emperor Maurice. Gregory to John, bishop of Ravenna.

If we attend to the profession of our order and to the place whose ministry we bear, it behoves us to succour the afflicted, insofar as we can, with justice accompanying us. Since therefore we have learned that the glorious man Maurilio, formerly prefect, resides innocent within the ecclesiastical precincts, let your Fraternity hasten to bring him aid, insofar as possibility permits. Not that—far be it—we doubt the justice of the most excellent man the lord George, prefect, or think that in any respect he departs from the path of reason, a man whom we have found tried and true in all good things in the administration of so great a dignity;

but so that both the glorious man Maurilio, formerly prefect, may set forth his case without suspicion of oppression, and the aforesaid most excellent man the lord George, prefect, may prosecute his case without any tearing of his reputation.