Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 408

Gregory to Cyprian the deacon. Just as your Charity zealously laboured on behalf of the person of our brother and fellow-bishop John, that he should, God being the author, have been ordained in the Church of Syracuse, so now it is necessary that through the exertions of your Charity the comforts of governance also be ministered to him. For he alleges that he had a certain priest of his own, who nevertheless is said to have been ordained by our brother and fellow-bishop Leo in the Church of Catania.

And because he is going to a new Church, and it is necessary that he have his own men there, so that when he is pressed by the tumults of cases he may find in his private retreat where he may rest, you ought gently and sweetly to persuade the aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Leo that he ought quickly to grant him the aforesaid priest, lest he seem perhaps to abandon one already ordained whom he benignly yielded up for ordination.

But just as our brother and fellow-bishop John, as far as I have learned of his mind, does not forget that Leo is his archdeacon, even on account of the episcopate he has undertaken, so the oft-mentioned brother and fellow-bishop Leo ought to have regard for him as his own, and to minister to him his supports not only in the person of a single priest, but in whatever matter he shall have need of his comfort. In the month of November, in the 14th indiction. (Cf. John the Deacon, book 3, no. 20.)