Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 490

Gregory to Donus, Bishop of Messina. Our son Faustinus, a most eloquent man, coming to us, complained that his father had left to a certain Peltrasius, for the sake of his own burial, some things of your Church which belonged to another's right. And indeed what the laws of the world hold concerning this matter he himself knows, and we have heard: namely, that an heir is compelled to make payment if his testator has bequeathed things belonging to another. But since we know your Fraternity to live by the law of God and not by the law of the world, it seems to me very unjust that a chalice of electrum, and a boy who is said to belong to the church of the diocese of Consentia, situated in the possession of a certain church, should be retained by your Fraternity.

For the most reverend man Palumbus, now a bishop but at that time an archdeacon, has so testified that you ought altogether to have believed his good faith and to have restored the things belonging to another. But as for the golden brooch which the aforesaid man, dying, likewise left, you ought, as I think, to have considered what was the sum total of his substance—whether there was anything from which those whom he had left behind ought to have been sustained—and then to have accepted it for his burial. Although you know our institution: that we have altogether forbidden our ancient custom in our Church, nor do we lend assent to anyone that places of burying a body may be acquired for a price.

For if the Shechemites, gentile men as we suppose, offered to Abraham a burial-place as a gift for the sake of Sarah, dead and to be buried in a place of their own, and were scarcely, by his great insistence, constrained to accept a price for the place of burial (Gen. 23:6), what ought we, who are called bishops, to do about weighing out charges for the burial of the bodies of the faithful? This therefore we commit to the judgment of your Fraternity. And this too the aforesaid most eloquent man complained to us: that Sisinnius, defender of your Church, unreasonably detains slaves belonging by right to him. Concerning whom he asserts that it was defined even by the judgment of Bishop Maximian of holy memory that the holder should restore them, but that he has hitherto willfully deferred their restitution.

We exhort therefore your Fraternity that, if the case has manifestly already been judged, the things which have been decreed be fulfilled; otherwise, that judgment be arranged to be held, through an appointed executor, at the district of our brother and fellow-bishop Secundinus, so that when it has been declared by his sentence to whose right the slaves belong concerning whom the question is raised, neither this man may seem to suffer prejudice, nor that man to sustain hatred. Gregory to Venantius, Bishop of Luna.

By the intimation of your Fraternity we have learned, as is contained in what is subjoined, that within the city of Luna, in your own house, you have founded, out of your devotion, a monastery of the handmaids of God, which you desire to have consecrated in honor of blessed Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and of the holy martyrs John and Paul, and of Hermes and Sebastian.

And therefore, most dear brother, if it is established that no body is buried in that place, once a donation has first been made by your Fraternity in due legal form—that is, one silver chalice weighing six ounces, one silver paten weighing two pounds, two linen cloths, one covering over the altar, ten spread couches, twenty head of copper vessels, thirty head of iron implements, and in landed property the estate called Fallorianum, and Lumbricata, wholly constituted in the territory of Luna, at about the second milestone more or less from that same city, near the river Macra, with two slaves, namely Maurus and John, and only two pairs of oxen, with the municipal records attached—you shall solemnly consecrate the oratory of the aforesaid monastery, without public Masses, and the rest according to custom.

In the month of November, in the first indiction.