Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 394

Gregory to the clergy and people of the Church of Ravenna. It has come to us that certain men, possessed by the instigation of a malignant spirit, have wished by false speech to corrupt your minds against the reputation of our brother and fellow-bishop Marinianus, saying that this same brother of ours venerates the holy Council of Chalcedon less than is fitting. Concerning which matter he himself, being present, gives satisfaction to you all as to the integrity of his faith, and we testify in all respects that he, nurtured from his cradle in the bosom of the holy universal Church, has held the right preaching of the faith with the attestation of his life.

For he venerates the holy Council of Nicaea, in which Arius was condemned; that of Constantinople, in which Macedonius; the first of Ephesus, in which Nestorius; and the holy Council of Chalcedon, in which Dioscorus and Eutyches were condemned. But if anyone ever presumes to speak anything against the faith of these four councils, and against the Tome and definition of Pope Leo of holy memory, let him be anathema. Accordingly, receiving fullest satisfaction, love your pastor with entire charity and a pure heart, that the intercession of the same pastor, poured out more purely before God, may be able to profit you. Gregory to Maximus, the usurper of the Church of Salona.

As often as anything is said to have been done contrary to ecclesiastical discipline, lest the guilt of connivance convict us before God, we dare not leave it uninvestigated. It has therefore come to us that you were ordained through the simoniac heresy. But many other things also have been said of you here, of which one especially was such that we found it necessary in the highest degree, by our writings, to forbid you to celebrate the solemnities of the Masses, until we could learn more truly what the matter was. Lest, therefore, the churches should seem long to be without a pastor, and lest these things which are said, if they remain undiscussed, should spread a fault of this kind among many, we exhort that

you hasten to come to us, laying aside all excuse, so that, justice being observed, we may be able both to know these things and to bring them to an end according to the canonical institutions, Christ revealing. But so act that you interpose no further delays in coming, lest your very absence assign you as guilty of the things which are said, and lest this matter compel us to bear judgment upon you from a council more severely — namely, as upon one contumacious — not only because of the alleged crimes, which you evade purging, but also because of the fault of disobedience.