Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 551

Gregory to Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards. That your Excellency has, as is your wont, devoted yourself zealously and kindly to the making of peace, we have learned from the report of our son the abbot Probus. Nor indeed ought we to have expected otherwise of your Christian faith, than that in the cause of peace you would show your labour and goodness in every way. Wherefore we give thanks to Almighty God, who so governs your heart by His own mercy, that as He granted you the right faith, so also He grants that you should ever work what is pleasing to Him. For do not believe, most excellent daughter, that you have earned but a small reward concerning the blood that was to have been shed on either side.

For which reason, giving thanks for your goodwill, we implore the mercy of our God, that He may repay you with a recompense of good things, in body and in soul, both here and in the time to come. Greeting you moreover with fatherly love, we exhort you so to act with your most excellent husband, that he may not reject the fellowship of the Christian commonwealth. For, as we believe you too to know, it is useful in many ways if he be willing to enter into friendship with it. You therefore, after your manner, ever be zealous in what pertains to the favour and reconciliation of the parties, and where the cause of reward offers itself, labour, that you may commend your good deeds still more before the eyes of Almighty God. Gregory to Felix in Sicily.

Since the gravity of our most reverend brother, Bishop John, is well known to us, the letter of your Glory made us marvel greatly, in that it indicated that he had been unwilling to do anything according to our admonition. And indeed it seemed hard to us either not to believe you, or to suspect such things of him, seeing that his character and conduct, known to us, did not permit us to hold such a judgment. When therefore our mind hung in doubt about both, we found that he had wished there to be a hearing between you and his Church, but that it was rather your Glory that had put it off. Which even your man, the bearer of these presents, could not deny.

And we were saddened that your Glory, who refused the hearing, should be willing to complain against him, since it is established that in what was reasonable he obeyed even of his own accord, as we have written. Nor was it necessary to write to him again, lest he should seem to have put it off first according to his own wish. But lest perhaps we should seem to sadden you, we have out of abundance again provided to write. And since we are certain that whatever equity ordains he will not refuse to do, it behoves that your Glory should not kindle your spirit against ill-will toward him, but should strive to enter into a hearing, in which by one and the same investigation the question both of possession and of ownership may be distinguished.

For we cannot write anything prejudicially to one who desires to come to a hearing, because it befits us so to lend our ear to one party that nevertheless, without doubt, we reserve the matter wholly intact for the other, especially when its allegation has not yet been heard. And therefore act, as we have said, so that, the truth being known, the censure of the hearing may determine the merits of your affairs. For while we wish no one to suffer prejudice, much more do we wish that what is just be preserved for you, as truly for our sons.