Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 437

Gregory to Brunhild, queen of the Franks. The series of your letters, which contained a religious mind and the zeal of a pious protectress, not only made us praise the purpose of your will, but also gladly invited us to grant your requests. For it did not befit us to deny what Christian devotion and the desire of a right heart demanded, especially when we recognized that those things were requested and embraced with the whole mind, which could both greatly protect the faith of believers, and no less work and preserve the salvation of souls. And therefore, saluting your Excellency with fitting honor, we make known to the bearer of the present letter, Leuparic,

whom you wrote to be a presbyter, and through whom we received the words of your letters—that we have furnished the relics of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, according to your Excellency's petition, with that veneration which is worthy. But that in you a laudable and religious devotion may be able more and more to shine forth, it must be provided by you that the benefits of the saints be laid up with reverence and due honor, and that those serving there be afflicted with no burdens and no molestations, lest perchance, with necessity pressing from without, they be rendered useless and slothful in the service of God, and, which God forbid, sustain injury and neglect of the benefits conferred by the saints.

Let your Excellency therefore provide for their quiet, so that, while by your benefit they shall be kept free from all disquiet, they may both with secure mind render praises to our God, and to you may increase reward unto eternal life. Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ. Since it were better not to begin good things than, from those that have been begun, to turn back in thought, it behooves you, most beloved sons, with the utmost zeal, to fulfill the good work which, with the Lord's help, you have begun. Let neither the labor of the journey, therefore, nor the tongues of slanderous men deter you; but with all urgency and all fervor, with God as author, accomplish what you have begun, knowing that the glory of eternal recompense follows great labor.

But to Augustine your provost, on his return—whom we have also constituted your abbot—obey humbly in all things, knowing that this will profit your souls in every way, whatever shall be fulfilled in you at his admonition. May Almighty God protect you with His grace, and grant me to see the fruit of your labor in the eternal fatherland. So that, even if I cannot labor together with you, I may be found together in the joy of recompense, because, namely, I am willing to labor. May God keep you safe, most beloved sons. Given on the tenth day of the Kalends of August, in the reign of our lord Maurice Tiberius, most pious Augustus, in the fourteenth year, after the consulship of the same our lord in the thirteenth year, in the fourteenth indiction.