Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 499

Gregory to Columbus, bishop of Numidia. From the disposition of our own mind which we bear toward you, we gather how greatly we ought to presume upon the charity of Your Fraternity. Nor do we judge that you love the Apostolic See otherwise than it loves you. Hence it is necessary that those whom we recognize to be, as is fitting, devoted within the Church of the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, we should commend more especially to you, whose life and priestly dignity adorns your action, and of whose sincerity we already hold a firm proof from the past. Therefore our brother and fellow-bishop Paul, the bearer of the present letter, recalls that it is not hidden from Your Holiness by what great storms and by what great adversities he is buffeted there.

Since he asserts that the complaints which you signified had reached you concerning him are not true, but are stirred up against him by the instigation of his adversaries, and since he trusts that, with truth as his patron and with your acknowledgment, he is able by the Lord's help to overcome all things, we exhort you, most beloved brother, that in those matters in which the ground of justice shall have been made manifest to him, you should fittingly extend to him the hand of solace and help him with priestly compassion. Let therefore no affair, no power of persons, suspend you from the zeal of equity. But leaning upon the Lord's commands, despise all that is contrary to rectitude. Insist constantly upon defending the cause of justice. Do not refuse to endure hatreds for truth's sake, if there be any;

so that at the coming of our Redeemer you may find so much the greater fruit of reward, the more that, not neglecting His commandments, you shall have spent yourself in favour of justice and in its defence. In the month of March, in the first indiction. (See above, book VI, letter 61; book VII, letter 2; and letter 12 of this book.) Gregory to Boniface, concerning the privileges of defenders. Those who faithfully labour for the utility of the Church are to be attended with the benefit of a fitting recompense, so that we may seem worthily to have responded to their services, and that they, from the granted favour of consolation, may become more useful. Since therefore the office of defenders is known to labour in the causes of the Church and in the service of the pontiffs, we have provided that they should enjoy this granted prerogative of recompense:

decreeing that, just as in the school of notaries and of subdeacons, through the granted bounty of the pontiffs of long ago, there have been established regionary officers, so also among the defenders, seven who by the shown utility of their experience shall have given satisfaction should be honoured with the regionary rank. And we decree that these should have licence to sit in the assembly of the clergy during the absence of the pontiff on any occasion whatsoever, and should obtain in all things the privileges of their honour.

Moreover, if anyone coming to the place of the senior officer should perhaps for his own advantage reside in another province, it is necessary that he take care of the primacy in all respects, so that he may be able to be the senior of all the defenders who, even before the place of the seniority, did not cease by his assiduous presence to remain in the ecclesiastical utilities and services of the pontiff. These decrees, then, of our constitution (Gratian, cause 25, question 2, canon

7) which have been ordained and disposed for the privileges and ordering of the defenders, we decree to be observed with perpetual stability and without any gainsaying, both those which we have decreed in writing, and those which in these matters seem to have been disposed in our presence; nor do we decree that they be plucked away in whole or in part by any pontiff on any occasion whatsoever, or be changed. For it is too harsh, and especially hostile to the good morals of priests, for anyone to strive by any excuse of reasoning both to rescind things that are well ordained, and by his own example to teach others sometimes to dissolve after them the things they themselves have established. In the month of April, in the first indiction.