Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 569

Gregory to Januarius, bishop of Sardinia. It has reached us that certain of your frenzied clerics, puffed up with a spirit of arrogance—what is grievous to say—put off obeying the commands of your Fraternity, and, occupying themselves rather in the services and labors of others, desert the duties of the Church where they are needed. In which matter we greatly wonder why you do not hold to the rule of ecclesiastical discipline over them, nor restrain them—wandering dissolutely into byways—with the bridle of strict moderation, to the norm of the office they have undertaken. It is also said that some of these same contumacious clerics, that they may be able to be defended against you, flee to the patronage of Vitalis, our defensor. Whence we have directed our writings to him,

that he should not dare again to defend, unreasonably, any of your clerics against you; but if the occasion of a fault arises, and it is not grave but such as merits pardon, he ought to approach you rather as an intercessor than as a defender. Take precaution, therefore, lest anything of the sort concerning the contempt of your subordinates reach us henceforth. We have also learned that a certain widow left her substance to the monastery of Saint Julian; and that by a cleric of yours—who managed the affairs of that same deceased woman while she yet lived—that very substance was seized, and now he shows himself cunning about restoring it.

We exhort you, therefore, that if, as is said, it shall have appeared to be true, you should cause him to be constrained by strict enforcement, so that he may hasten to restore the goods left to the monastery without diminution, and that what he ought not to have dared, if the purity of his faith had been preserved, he may be compelled to restore even to the loss of his own honor. But how shameful it is that we should seem to have to admonish your Fraternity to restrain your own cleric with the vigor of discipline, I believe that your same Fraternity, silently, considers this itself. Against the worshippers of idols also, and soothsayers and diviners (Gratian, Cause 26, q. 5, c.

10), we more vehemently exhort your Fraternity to keep pastoral watch, and to make a public discourse among the people against the men of this practice, and to call them back by persuasive exhortation from the taint of so great a sacrilege, from the threat of the divine judgment, and from the peril of the present life. But if you find any who are unwilling to amend and correct themselves from such things, we wish you to lay hold of them with fervent zeal; and if indeed they are slaves, to chastise them with beatings and torments by which they may be able to come to amendment. But if they are free, they are to be directed into penance by worthy and strict confinement;

so that those who scorn to hear salutary words that call them back from the peril of death may at least have the torments of the body avail to lead them back to the desired soundness of mind. It has also been indicated to us (Gratian, dist. 89, c. 5) that, committing the care of your patrimony to certain laymen, you afterward found them caught in plunderings of your peasants and, through this, in their expulsions, and that they put off restoring the goods which they improperly hold as things had—as though of their own dominion, since they are not subject to your management—and disdain to render you an account of their doings. If this is so, it is fitting that it be strictly examined by you, and that the case between them and the peasants of your Church be inquired into more subtly.

And whatever fraud shall be found in them, let them be compelled to make restitution together with the penalty established by the laws. But for the rest, your Fraternity must take care lest ecclesiastical goods be committed to secular men and to those not living under your rule, but to clerics proven of your own office. In whom, if any depravity can be found, since they are subordinates, you may be able to amend what shall have been done unlawfully—men whom their office among you may better befit than excuse. (Cf. John the Deacon, book II, c. 89.)