Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 288

Gregory to Libertinus, prefect of Sicily. From the very beginning of your administration, God willed you to advance to the vindication of His cause, and He propitiously preserved this reward for you together with praise. For it is reported that a certain most wicked man of the Jews, Nasas, has under the name of blessed Elias, with a temerity that must be punished, constructed an altar, and has there deceived many of the Christians by his sacrilegious seduction into adoring it; but he has also, as it is said, purchased Christian slaves, and assigned them to his own services and uses. Whereas, therefore, most severely he ought to have been punished for such great crimes, the glorious Justinus, soothed—as has been written to us—by the medicament of avarice, deferred to avenge the injury done to God.

But let your Glory investigate all these things by strict examination; and if it shall have found this to be manifestly so, let it hasten so most strictly and bodily to take vengeance upon that same wicked Jew, that from this cause it may both conciliate for itself the grace of our God, and by these deeds show itself worthy of imitation to posterity for its own reward. But the Christian slaves (Gratian, dist. 54, c. 13), whatever ones it shall be evident that he purchased, lead them to liberty, according to the precepts of the laws, without ambiguity; lest—which God forbid—the Christian religion, made subject to Jews, be polluted.

So then, most strictly and with all haste correct all these things, that we may not only render you thanks for this discipline, but may also, where it shall be necessary, offer testimony concerning your goodness. (Cf. John the Deacon, bk. V, c. 43.)