Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 321

Gregory to Maximian, bishop of Syracuse. Formerly indeed it had been committed to your Fraternity by our authority that, if anything in Sicily were being neglected in a Church and in the other venerable places, or were being carried on improperly, you should correct it in our stead. But since after this a complaint has reached us concerning certain matters neglected hitherto, we have again seen fit that your Fraternity be specially stirred up to their correction. For we have learned that concerning the newly acquired revenues of the Churches the canonical arrangement of the fourths by no means occurs, but that the bishops of the places distribute only the fourth of the ancient revenues, while now retaining the newly acquired ones for their own uses.

Wherefore let your Fraternity hasten vigorously to amend this depraved and surreptitiously introduced custom, so that, whether from past revenues or from those which have now accrued or shall accrue, the fourths may be dispensed according to the canonical distribution. For it is unfitting that one and the same substance of the Church be reckoned as it were by a double right, that is, of usurpation and of the canons. Priests, deacons, and the other clerics of whatever order who serve the Churches, do not permit to be abbots over monasteries; but either, the clerical service being laid aside, let them be promoted to the monastic orders; or, if they resolve to remain in the office of abbot, let them by no means be allowed to hold the clerical service.

For it is quite unfitting that one whom someone cannot diligently discharge by reason of its magnitude should be judged suited to both, and thus in turn the ecclesiastical order should hinder the monastic life, and the monastic rule the ecclesiastical utilities. This also we have taken care to admonish your Charity: that if any of the bishops departs from this light, or — which God forbid — those who are at variance in this place. (We have preferred five: Norman, Rheims, Corbie, Vatican B and D, and Tours. In the last two, however, is read "excideretur" for "excederetur," by a slip of the pen. In Vatican A and C is found "exiderunt." Michael in the Register agrees, "exciderat.")

In this single word the manuscripts disagree, yet in the printed editions there are many things that deviate from the true reading and appear in none of the manuscripts; for thus it is read: "If any Churches in Sicily should be neglected, and the other places" (here, note 3). When for his excesses he shall have been removed, with suitable hierarchs and all the elders of the clergy present, and making an inventory of the Church's goods in his presence, let everything that is found be carefully described; nor, as was formerly said to be done, let any kind of item or anything else from the Church's goods be taken as if for the labor of making the inventory.

For thus we desire that those things which pertain to the maintenance of the poor from the Church's resources be carried out, so that absolutely no occasion of venality be left in their goods to ambitious men. Let the visitors of the Churches, and their clerics, who are wearied together with them through the parishes of a city not their own, receive some support for their labor, at your disposal; for it is just that they obtain a stipend there where they are found to lend their service for a time. We most vehemently forbid that young women be made abbesses.

Therefore let your Fraternity permit no bishop to veil any virgin except one sixty years of age, whose age and character shall have required it — so that, both the earlier chapters and the present one having been corrected by the earnestness of your strictness with the Lord's help, you may hasten to bind again with canonical bonds the long-dissolved condition of these venerable matters, and that divine affairs may be able to be ordered not by the unfitting wishes of men, but with due strictness. In the month of October, in the twelfth indiction. (Cf. John the Deacon, Book IV, ch. 34; Book II, ch. 54; Book III, ch. 23.)