Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 318

Gregory to Gennadius, patrician and exarch of Africa. We sufficiently believe that the mind of your religious Excellency is kindled, by the emulation of divine love, chiefly against those unfitting things which are done in the Churches. The more, therefore, do we gladly press upon you the correction of ecclesiastical causes, the more we trust in the pious intention of your mind. Let your Excellency, then, know that it has been brought to us by certain persons coming from the parts of Africa that many things are being committed in the council of Numidia against the path of the Fathers and the statutes of the canons.

Since we could by no means any longer endure the frequent complaints concerning these matters, we have committed them to be investigated to Columbus, our brother and fellow-bishop, of whose gravity the very reputation which has spread abroad does not permit us any longer to doubt. Wherefore, greeting you with paternal affection, we exhort your Excellency, in all things that pertain to ecclesiastical correction, to lend him the strength of your aid, lest, if what is done ill be not sought out and punished, it grow, through the usurpation of long times, with greater licence into future excesses.

But I know, most excellent son, that if you seek victories, if you treat of the security of the province committed to you, nothing else avails you more toward this than to be zealous for the lives of the priests, and to quell, as far as is possible, the intestine wars of the Churches. Gregory to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari. We indeed judge that your very order of office impels you toward the diligent fulfillment of pious matters. But lest the intervention of anyone's remissness soften your zeal, we have judged that you too should be specially exhorted concerning these things. It has come to us that your Stephen, departing from this light, commanded by the decree of his last will that a monastery be founded.

The fulfillment of his desire is said to be, up to now, drawn out and delayed by Theodosia, an honourable woman, his heiress. Wherefore we exhort your Fraternity to bestow the greatest zeal on the aforesaid cause, and to admonish the aforenamed woman that within the space of a year she ought to establish the monastery, as was commanded, and to construct everything according to the will of the deceased without wrangling.

But if within the limit of the aforesaid time she should, through any negligence or cunning, put off completing it—whether the case be that it cannot be established in the place where it had been appointed, or, if it cannot be there, it is pleasing that it be established elsewhere—and it is neglected with delay intervening, then we will that it be built up by the zeal of your Fraternity, and, all things being arranged, that the property and revenues which have been left be associated by you to that venerable place itself without any diminution. For thus you will both escape a sentence of remissness before your dread Judge, and, according to the most pious laws, will supply by episcopal zeal the deferred pious wills of the deceased.