Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 393

Gregory to Marinianus, bishop of Ravenna. Just as no effect is to be granted to those who ask unjust things, so the petition of those who desire lawful things is not to be deferred. The priests, therefore, and deacons, and clergy of your Fraternity, in a petition offered to us, have complained that John, formerly your predecessor, in the will he made, prescribed divers burdens upon his Church. And they have petitioned that these should on no account be discharged, to the damage of his Church, the law indeed forbidding it.

And although, after his inheritance and succession has been repudiated, no reason binds you to satisfy these things, nevertheless out of abundance we exhort you by these words, that whatever he disposed, against the statutes of the laws, concerning his Church or concerning property acquired in the episcopate, your Fraternity should neither lend authority to, nor in any way consent to in these matters. But if he willed or decreed anything to be done concerning his own property, which he had before the episcopate, and which indeed he had not previously conferred upon his Church, it is necessary that it obtain firm force in all respects, nor let any of the ecclesiastics attempt, on any pretext, to overturn it against reason. But since, while he lived,

he often sought from us that we should by our authority confirm those things which he had conferred upon that monastery which he himself had built beside the church of Saint Apollinaris, and we promised that we would do this, we have necessarily foreseen that your Fraternity must be exhorted to suffer nothing of those things which he there conferred and established to be in any way diminished, but to strive that all be preserved with firm stability. Of this monastery, therefore, and of the property conferred upon it, because he is known to have made mention in the will he drew up, you must know that we have not confirmed these things because we follow his last will, but because, as we have said, we promised it to him while he was living.

All these things, therefore, let your Fraternity hasten so carefully to fulfil, that both the things which he established in the above-written monastery, and which have been confirmed by us, may be preserved, and those things which he decreed to be given or done, to the damage of his Church, may — the law indeed forbidding — obtain no force at all.