Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 334

Gregory to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari. It would indeed have been fitting that your Fraternity be so solicitous concerning pious affairs that you should have needed nothing at all of our admonitions for their completion; nevertheless, because certain matters have come to us that are chapters needing correction, it is not unfitting if the page of our authority should also be added for you. Wherefore we signify that it has come to us that there was a custom whereby the hostels for strangers established in the district of Cagliari should at each and every season set forth their accounts in detail before the bishop of the city, that is, being to be governed by his protection and care.

Because your Charity is said hitherto to have neglected this, we exhort you that, as has been said, those hostels for strangers which are established among them, or have been, should at each and every season render their accounts in detail to you. And let such men be ordained to be set over them as are found by their life, character, and industry to be most worthy, provided at least they be religious men, over whom vexatious judges have no power to prosecute, lest, if they be such persons as they can summon into their own court, occasion be afforded for the wasting of those poor things which lie there. Concerning which things we wish you to take the utmost care, that none be given without your knowledge, lest, through the negligence of your Fraternity, it come even to their plundering.

Moreover, you know that the bearer of the present letter, the priest Epiphanius, has been criminally accused by the letters of certain Sardinians. Examining his case as we willed, and finding in him nothing of the charges alleged, we absolved him that he might return to his own place. We wish therefore that you diligently seek out the authors of the charge against him. And unless he who transmitted those letters is prepared to prove by canonical and most rigorous proofs what he has alleged, let him in no way approach the mystery of holy communion.

But as for the cleric Paul, who is repeatedly said to have been caught in evil deeds, who, despising his habit, returned to the lay life and had fled into Africa—if it is so, then, corporal punishment first being applied, we have provided that he be put to penance, so that, according to the apostolic sentence, his spirit may be saved through the affliction of the flesh, and that he may be able by constant tears to wash away the earthly filth of the sins which he is said to have contracted by his depraved deeds. But to those who are suspended from ecclesiastical communion, let no religious man be joined, according to the precepts of the canons.

But concerning the ordinations of clerics or their marriages, or concerning those virgins who are veiled, let no one, as is now said to be done, presume to accept any reward, unless they should of their own accord prefer to offer something. Concerning the women who have gone out from monasteries to the lay life and taken husbands, as to what ought to be done, we have conferred more fully with the aforesaid priest of your Fraternity, from whose report your Holiness can be more completely informed. But let religious clerics beware of the assemblies and patronages of laymen, and let them in every way be made subject to your jurisdiction according to the canons, lest, through the remissness of your Fraternity, the discipline of the Church over which you preside be dissolved.

But those who have sinned with the aforesaid women who have gone out from monasteries, and are now said to be suspended from communion—if your Fraternity foresees that they have worthily done penance for such a crime, we wish you to recall them to holy communion.