Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 273

Gregory to Antoninus the subdeacon, rector of the patrimony in Dalmatia. Rumour, running through those parts, has spread abroad that Natalis, our brother and fellow-bishop of the Church of Salona, has died. If this be true, let Your Experience with all urgency and all solicitude hasten to admonish the clergy and people of that same city, that with one consent they ought to elect a priest to be ordained for them; and, a decree having been made in favour of the person who shall have been elected, you shall take care to transmit it to us, that he may be ordained with our consent, as was the practice in former times. That indeed

—let it above all things be your care, that in this election neither any giving of rewards intervene in any manner whatsoever, nor the patronage of any persons prevail. For if anyone should be elected through the patronage of certain persons, when he has been ordained he is compelled, reverence demanding it, to obey their wishes, and so it comes about both that the goods of that Church are diminished, and that ecclesiastical order is not preserved. Such a person, therefore, ought they, you being present, to elect for themselves, as may serve the wish of no unfit person, but, adorned in life and character, may be able to be found worthy of so great an order. And concerning the goods and adornment of that same Church, cause an inventory of the things to be faithfully drawn up, you being present.

And lest anything of those goods themselves should be able to perish, admonish Respectus the deacon and Stephen the chief of the notaries that they altogether take custody of those very goods, threatening them that they shall make satisfaction out of their own substance, if anything therefrom should through their negligence be diminished. But Malchus, our brother and fellow-bishop, we wish you to charge, that he in no wise mix himself in this affair. For if we should be able to learn that anything has through him been done or attempted against our will, let him know that no small blame and peril pertains to him. But take care also to admonish him, that he ought to be solicitous to render and complete the accounts of our patrimony, which he administered;

for the doing of which also let him hasten to come to us from the parts of Sicily, all excuse laid aside. In the affairs, therefore, of the Church of Salona let him by no means presume to mix himself, lest he be either the more liable, or able to be culpable. For he is said to have many of the goods of the aforesaid Church, and rumour asserts that he stood forth as almost the author in the sale of its goods or in other unlawful acts. But if it should appear by manifest truth to be so, as it is said, let him be assured that it shall by no means remain here unavenged. But let the expense which shall have been necessary be disbursed by the steward who was found at the time of the death of the aforesaid bishop, so that he himself, as he knows, may set forth his accounts to the future bishop.

All the things indeed which we have charged you to do, it is assuredly necessary that you carry out with the counsel of the magnificent and most eloquent Marcellus, our son, so that you may be able carefully and diligently to fulfil all things which this page of instruction contains, in such wise that no fault of neglect may regard you. Gregory to Peter, subdeacon of Campania. Although it has come to our ears that Secundinus committed crimes too horrible and execrable, yet this alone can suffice for his condemnation, that he himself is said to have confessed concerning himself. For we have learned it was stated by him, that while he was third from the abbot in the grove, he fell from the state of his habit into a lapse of the flesh;

and although, stained by so great a crime, he ought by no reason to advance to the order of abbot, yet because, being detained after that daring deed and so great a defilement, he unworthily seized upon it, we command Your Experience, by the tenor of this authority, that, the above-written Secundinus being removed from the office of abbot, you cause Theodosius, whom that congregation itself has asked to be ordained for them, to be solemnly ordained abbot in the monastery of Saint Martin, through him whose province the provision is, so that he may in the care of the congregation subject to him, God aiding, be able with careful solicitude to keep watch. But the possessions and estates of that same monastery, defend by ecclesiastical protection, in so far as reason allows.