Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 409

Gregory to Peter, bishop of Otranto. Pastoral care constrains us to provide with anxious consideration for Churches destitute of the guidance of a priest, lest, on the proper rector departing, anything contrary—which God forbid—arise against the rules of the Fathers. Since therefore we have learned that the Churches of Brindisi, Lippiae, and Gallipoli, their pontiffs having died, are altogether destitute, we have for that reason deemed the care of their visitation to be enjoined upon your Fraternity. This it behoves you so to discharge that you suffer nothing of the promotions of the clergy, the revenue, the ornaments, and the furnishings, or whatever there is in their patrimony, to be diminished by anyone.

And therefore your Fraternity will hasten to go to the aforesaid Churches, and by assiduous exhortations make haste to admonish the clergy and people of those same Churches that, all partisanship removed, with one and the same consent they may seek to have set over them such priests as both may be found worthy of so great a ministry, and may in no way be rejected by the venerable canons. When these shall have been requested, with the solemnity of a decree strengthened by the subscriptions of all, and with the testimony of your Charity's letters, let them come to us to be consecrated; you providing above all that no lay person of any manner of life or merit presume to aspire to this, and that you—which God forbid—incur the peril of your order.

But if there be any monasteries established in their parishes, we concede that they be under your care and disposition, until a proper bishop shall have been ordained there, so that by the vigilance of your solicitude they may respond by action befitting their purpose, God helping. (In the month of January, in the 14th indiction.)