Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 353

Gregory to John, bishop of Ravenna. I find Your Fraternity greatly grieved because you are prohibited by the censure of reason from putting on the pallium in the litanies. But through the most excellent patrician, and through the most eminent prefect, and through other noble men of your city, you importunately demand that this be granted. But we, carefully inquiring of Adeodatus the deacon, once of your Fraternity, have learned that it was never the custom for your predecessors to use the pallium in the litanies except on the solemnity of blessed John the Baptist, of blessed Peter the Apostle, and of blessed Apollinaris the martyr.

To him indeed we ought by no means to have given credit, since many representatives from the city of Your Fraternity have often been present who rejoice that they never saw any such thing. And in this matter one ought rather to believe many than one attesting something for his own Church. But because we do not wish Your Fraternity to be grieved, nor the petition of our sons to be in any way frustrated with us, we grant the use of the pallium, until we come to know something more subtly, in the solemn litanies, that is, on the birthday of blessed John the Baptist, of blessed Peter the Apostle, and of blessed Apollinaris the martyr, and in the celebration of your ordination.

But in the sacristy, according to the former custom, when the sons of the Church have been received and dismissed, let your Fraternity put on the pallium, and so proceed to the solemnities of the Masses, and presume to arrogate nothing more to himself out of rash presumption, lest, while in outward dress something is disorderly seized upon, even those things which might have been lawful be orderly lost. Given in the month of October, in the thirteenth indiction.