Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 396

Gregory to Brunhild, queen of the Franks. The goodness of your Excellency, worthy to be preached and pleasing to God, is attested both by the helm of your kingdom and made manifest by the upbringing of your son. For whom you have with provident solicitude preserved not only the unimpaired glory of temporal things, but have also provided the rewards of eternal life, in that you have, as was fitting, planted his mind in the root of the true faith by a maternal and praiseworthy instruction. Whence not undeservedly it has come to pass that he surpasses all the kingdoms of the nations, since he both purely worships and truly confesses the Creator of those same nations.

But that faith with works may shine forth in him more praiseworthily, let the words of your exhortation kindle him, so that, just as royal power shows him exalted among men, so may the goodness of his conduct make him great before God.

But because the experience of many things admonishes us to trust in the Christianity of your Excellency, therefore, greeting you with fatherly affection, we beseech that, for the love of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, whom we know you love with your whole heart, you would, by the aid of your patronage, favour our most beloved son Candidus the priest, the bearer of these presents, together with the little patrimony to whose governance we have sent him; so that, strengthened by the grace of your power, he may both administer that little patrimony itself, which is established to profit at the expense of the poor, wholesomely, and, if anything has been taken from it thence, may be able to restore it to the right of that little patrimony.

For it is not without an increase of your praise that, after so long a time, a man proper to the Church has been sent for the governance of that same patrimony. May your Excellency, therefore, so willingly deign to expend yourself in the things we ask, that blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, to whom the power of binding and loosing was given by the Lord Jesus Christ, may both grant that your Excellency rejoice here in your offspring, and, after the courses of many years, may cause you, absolved from all evils, to be found before the sight of the eternal Judge.