Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 319

Gregory to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari. The pastoral zeal itself ought sufficiently to have incited you, so that even without our comfort you might wholesomely and providently protect the flock which you had undertaken, and guard it with diligent circumspection from the crafty stealings of enemies. But because we have found that your Charity, for the increase of its firmness, has need also of the page of our authority, it was necessary for us to strengthen your wavering spirit, by the exhortation of fraternal love, toward the pursuit of religious vigour. It has come to us that you bestow too little protection upon the monasteries of the handmaids of God situated in Sardinia;

and although it had been prudently arranged by your predecessors that certain approved men from the clergy, bearing care for them, should apply themselves to their needs, now it is so utterly neglected that, through public persons, the women dedicated principally to God are compelled to go about for tributes and other levies, and are under necessity of running about through villas and estates to discharge fiscal obligations, and to mingle themselves unbecomingly in manly affairs. This evil let your Fraternity—

—remove by an easy correction, so that you carefully appoint one man, approved in life and morals, whose rank and position casts upon him no depraved suspicion, who may so assist those monasteries in the fear of God that it may no longer be lawful for them, for any private or public causes whatsoever, to wander outside the venerable places against the rule; but whatever is to be done for these matters may be reasonably carried out through him whom you shall have appointed. And let the women themselves, rendering praise to God and restraining themselves, cast no occasion of depraved suspicion upon the minds of the faithful. But if any of them (Gratian, causa 27, q. —

—1, c. 28), whether through earlier licence or through the depraved custom of impunity, has been led into an adulterous lapse, or in the future shall have been drawn into that abyss, this one, after the severity of a fitting punishment, we will to be reduced into another stricter monastery of virgins for penance, so that there she may devote herself to prayers and fasts, and profit herself by doing penance, and afford to the rest a fearful example of a more constricted discipline. But he who shall have been found in any iniquity with women of this kind, let him be deprived of communion, if he is a layman; but if he is a cleric, let him also, removed from his office, be thrust into a monastery, there to bewail continually his excesses.

We also will that the councils of the bishops be celebrated twice a year, as is said to have been the custom of your province, and as is enjoined by the authority of the sacred canons; so that if any among them should be at variance from the form of his purpose, from the quality of his action and morals, he may be reproved by the fraternal rebuke of his fellows, and, for the security of the flock committed and the state of souls, he may be dealt with by paternal circumspection. It has also come to us that the men-servants and maid-servants of the Jews, fleeing for the cause of the faith to the Church, are either restored to their unbelieving masters, or, that they be not restored, their price is given. We exhort you, therefore, by no means to permit so depraved a custom to remain; but whatever slave of the Jews (Gratian, dist. 54, c.—

—16) shall have taken refuge in the venerable places for the cause of the faith, by no means suffer him to sustain any prejudice. But whether he was formerly a Christian, or is now baptized, without any loss to the poor, let him be defended into liberty in all ways by the religious patronage of ecclesiastical piety. Let bishops not presume to sign baptized infants twice on the forehead with chrism; but let the presbyters (Gratian, de Consecratione, dist. 4, c. 119) anoint those to be baptized on the breast, so that the bishops may afterwards anoint on the forehead.

Concerning the founding of monasteries also, which have been ordered to be constructed by various persons, if you perceive that some of those to whom the charge was given are unjustly deferring these by excuse, we will that you diligently press upon them, according to what the laws prescribe, lest the pious wills of the deceased be, which God forbid, made void by your remissness. But concerning the monastery which one Peter is asserted to have formerly commanded to be constructed in his own house, we have foreseen that your Fraternity should subtly inquire into the quantity of the revenues left there (Gratian, causa 16, q. 1, c. 14). And if indeed there is a sufficient measure of substance, then, all things being recollected which are said to have been diminished or dispersed from those very goods, let it be founded with all zeal and without any delay.

But if the resource is either less suitable or actually harmful, we wish you, once everything has been carefully investigated as has been ordered, to report back to us, so that we may know what we can decide with the Lord's help concerning its construction. Let your Fraternity therefore exert itself so diligently in all the aforesaid chapters that you may neither be found to have transgressed the tenor of our admonition, nor, guilty before the divine judgment, prove deficient in zeal for the pastoral office. (Cf. John the Deacon, Book IV, ch. 5.)