Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 306

Gregory to Italica the patrician lady. We have received your letters full of sweetness, and the hearing of the good health of Your Excellency has gladdened us. Concerning which the sincerity of our mind is so great that our paternal affection permits us to suspect nothing hidden of enmity in the tranquility of them. But may almighty God grant that, just as we feel good things concerning you, so your mind may respond good things to us, and that you may exhibit in works the sweetness which you bestow in words. For a most glorious health and beauty on the surface of the body profits nothing, if a wound lies hidden within. And that discord is the more to be guarded against, to which an exterior peace furnishes escort.

But as to that which, in the aforesaid letters, Your Excellency studiously strives to recall to our memory, know that it was written to you that we wish to define nothing with you concerning the causes of the poor, either with scandal or with forensic uproar. This we remember to have written; and we know that we ourselves, with the Lord's help, restrain ourselves from the litigation of causes by ecclesiastical moderation, and, according to that apostolic sense, endure the plundering of our goods with joy. But this we believe you know, that our silence and patience will not create a prejudice against the pontiffs to come after me in the matter of the goods of the poor. Wherefore we too, fulfilling the above-mentioned promise of ours, have already provided that we should keep silence concerning those very causes;

nor do we desire, in those matters in which we feel that the dealing is less than kindly done, to involve ourselves in the business through our own selves. But lest perhaps from these things you conjecture, glorious daughter, that we still altogether refuse those things which pertain to concord, we have enjoined our son Cyprian the deacon, coming to the parts of Sicily, that if you decide to order anything of these matters wholesomely and without sin to your soul, he may, by our authority, define it with you, and that we may no more be vexed with those businesses whose effect is dispensed with meekness.

But may almighty God, who well knows how to bend to possibility those things which are altogether impossible, breathe upon you, both to dispose your causes with an intention of peace, and, for the reward of your soul, to provide for the poor concerning the goods of this Church that are suitable for them.