Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 620

Gregory to Constantius, bishop of Milan. Although the scourge of blindness upon Philagrius, the bearer of the present letter, greatly invites your fraternity to keep justice for him, nevertheless, because he wished you to be made more ready through us to restore the things which he asserts are prejudicially withheld from him, we have provided that the present letter be directed to you. He has complained that a field, together with his vineyard, has been unreasonably seized by the men of your Church.

If it is so, although before judgment the possession which had been violently taken from him ought to have been restored, yet because our common son Eventius, your deacon, with the consent of the aforesaid bearer, has stipulated that he can prove by five witnesses that the portion belongs to your Church, and therefore is of the right of that same Church—let not your fraternity make the aforesaid Philagrius labour against justice, but by whatever means it can, diligently inquire into the truth. And if it can be plainly proved, as he here has stipulated, that it is of your right, satisfaction must for God's sake be quickly made to this man, so that he may depart from his suit without toil.

Otherwise, before all contention, let his property be given back under your safe provision, so that afterward the full cognizance of ownership may remain to each party. But because, for the reason that he departed thence without your knowledge, he thinks he has offended your minds, let your fraternity show him the sweetness of your charity, that he may recognize that he has believed of a priest far otherwise than he ought. But since, as he says, he often desires to present himself at the thresholds of the holy apostles, as often as he shall wish to come, let him have no one's hindrance, but rather your solace in this part. The aforesaid bearer has furthermore indicated that a collection having been made among the other inhabitants of the city of Genoa, he too is compelled to give equally.

And we marvel that he who is more worthy of mercy is, while you are present, the more burdened. If it is so, let your holiness not permit that it be exacted from him again by anyone whomsoever, because it is exceedingly inhuman to afflict with a levy one whom his blindness burdens, for whom, if there were great need, one ought out of a collection to have mercy. But because he complains that his boy is unjustly detained by the Church of Dertona, let your fraternity take care to write to the bishop of the aforesaid city, that, if it is so, he restore him without any contention. And if perchance he answer that it is otherwise, this cause must be examined, either before you or before arbiters, without any excuse.

For the same Philagrius has made known that his maidservant, with her sons and grandsons—concerning whom, as he says, there is no question—followed as her husband this same boy of his, Maurus by name. From which it has come about that through the one about whom there is contention, others also, about whom there is no question, are held. But if this subsists in truth, the maidservant with her sons and grandsons must be given back without any altercation; and then, the question concerning the aforesaid Maurus having been ventilated, let it be concluded as reason shall counsel. But if perchance concerning his wife also some contention is said to exist, let this too be so finished by the intervention of judgment, that, you being present there, the aforesaid bearer may have no necessity of returning to us again concerning the said causes.

To the holy lord and father in Christ, the Roman pope, the fairest ornament of the Church, as it were the most august flower of all wilting Europe, the excellent watchman, endowed with the—as it were divine—contemplation of chastity, I, Bargoma, a lowly dove in Christ, send greeting. Grace to thee and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ. It pleases me, O holy pope, that there should be no hyperbolic questioning with thee about the Pascha, according to that of the Canticle: Ask thy father, and he will declare to thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee (Deuteronomy 32:7). For although it may be branded upon me, a mere trifler indeed, that of a certain

famous saying of the Wise Man, which he is reported to have spoken, seeing a certain woman painted up: I do not admire the art, but I admire the effrontery—this can be branded upon me, an obscure man, by writing to thee, an illustrious one; nevertheless, relying on the confidence of thy evangelical humility, I presume to write to thee, and I lay upon thee the business of my grief. For there is no vanity of writing where necessity compels one to write, even to superiors. What then dost thou say about a Pascha of the 21st or 22nd moon, which (be it nevertheless said with thy leave) is now proved by many to be no Pascha at all, being indeed shadowy? For it is not hidden, as I believe, from thy efficacy, how greatly Anatolius, a man of wondrous

learning, as holy Jerome says—whose excerpts Eusebius bishop of Caesarea inserted in his Ecclesiastical History, and holy Jerome praised this same work on the Pascha in his catalogue—disputes in condemnation of this age of the moon; who, against the Gallican Rimarii, erring, as he says, about the Pascha, brought forth a dreadful sentence, saying: Assuredly, if until the end of the two watches, which marks the middle of the night, the rising of the moon has been delayed, it is not light that overcomes darkness, but darkness that overcomes light; which is certain not to be probable in the Pascha, that any part of darkness should have dominion over light, because the solemnity of the Lord's Resurrection is light, and there is no fellowship of light with darkness.

And if the moon shine forth in the third watch, there is no doubt that the moon has risen on the 21st or 22nd, on which the true Pascha cannot possibly be immolated. For those who define that a Pascha can possibly be celebrated at this age of the moon, not only can they not affirm it by the authority of divine Scripture, but they incur both the crime of sacrilege and of contumacy and the peril of souls; while they affirm that the true light can be immolated with some dominion of darkness, which has dominion over all darkness. Moreover, in the book of holy dogma we read: The Pascha, that is, the solemnity of the Lord's Resurrection, cannot be celebrated before the passing of the vernal equinox's beginning, namely so that the equinox does not precede it;

which Victorius indeed transgressed in his cycle, and through this long since brought error into Gaul, or, to say it more humbly, confirmed an inveterate one. For by what reasoning can both stand together, namely that the Lord's Resurrection should be celebrated before His Passion—which it is even absurd to suppose; or that the seven days sanctioned by the Lord's command in the Law, in which alone the Phase of the Lord was commanded to be lawfully eaten (which are to be numbered from the 14th moon up to the 29th), should be transgressed against right and divine ordinance? For the 21st or 22nd moon is outside the right of light, inasmuch as it has then risen after the middle of the night; and, with darkness overcoming the light, it is unlawful, as they say, for the solemnity of light to be kept.

Why then dost thou, so wise—thou indeed whose most illustrious lights of sacred genius have, as of old, been poured throughout the world—keep a shadowy Pascha? I marvel, I confess, that this error of Gaul, as if a Schynteneum, has not long ago been scraped away by thee; unless perchance I should suppose what I can scarcely believe, that, since it is agreed that it was not corrected by thee, it stands approved in thy sight. Yet otherwise, and more honourably, thy skill can be excused, while, fearing perhaps to incur the mark of Hermagorian novelty, thou art content with the authority of thy predecessors and especially of Pope Leo. Do not, I beseech thee, in such a question trust only to humility or gravity, which are often deceived. Better perhaps in this problem is a living dog than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4).

For a living saint is able to correct what has not been corrected by another of greater authority. You should know that among our own teachers and the ancient Irish, philosophers and men most skilled in the reckoning of the computus, Victorius was not accepted, but was reckoned rather worthy of laughter or of pardon than of authority. Therefore direct to me — a timid pilgrim rather than a smatterer — the support of your judgment, and do not disdain to send in good season the point of your good-will to calm this tempest that surrounds us; for I am not satisfied, after so many authors as I have read, by this single opinion of those bishops who say merely: 'We ought not to keep the Pasch with the Jews.'

This too Victor the bishop once said, but none of the Easterns accepted his invention; rather this Dagon fell asleep upon its face, and drank in the moisture of error. What sort of thing, I ask, is this frivolous and so unpolished a claim, supported, that is, by no testimonies of divine Scripture: 'We ought not to keep the Pasch with the Jews'? What has it to do with the matter? Are the reprobate Jews to be believed capable of keeping the Pasch now — seeing that they are without a temple, outside Jerusalem, Christ having then been prefigured and by them crucified? Or is it rightly to be believed that the Pasch is theirs, or the Pasch of the moon;

and ought it not rather to be confessed as belonging to God himself, who instituted the Pasch, and who alone knows by what pure mystery the moon was chosen for the passing-over? This perhaps may shine forth a little to wise men such as yourself. Those who object to this — though without authority — are as it were reproaching God: why did he not, by his foreknowledge, then guard beforehand against the obstinacy of the Jews; so that, if he wished us not to keep the Pasch together with them, he might have prescribed in the law nine days of unleavened bread, so that the beginning of our solemnity should not exceed the end of their solemnity? For if the Pasch is to be celebrated on the 21st or 22nd, from the 14th up to the 22nd nine days will be counted — seven, that is, prescribed by God, and two added by men.

But if it is lawful for men to add of themselves anything to the divine ordinance, I ask whether it may not seem contrary to that sentence of Deuteronomy: 'Behold,' it says, 'the word that I give thee; neither add to it, nor take away from it' (Deut. iv, 2). But writing these things more boldly than humbly, I know that I have entangled myself in the strait of a most difficult presumption, and that, unknowing, I must sail through it. For it is neither the place nor the fitting order that anything should be inflicted, as though by way of disputing, upon your great authority, and that Western letters concerning the Pasch should ridiculously trouble you (who, of course, lawfully sit upon the chair of the apostle Peter and key-bearer). But you ought to consider not so much me, worthless in this matter,

as rather the many, both dead and living, who confirm these same things which I have noted; and believe that you are, as it were, drawing conversation together with them. For know me to be piously — though by leaps and hyperbolically — opening a swollen mouth. Therefore either excuse or condemn your Victorius, knowing that, if you praise him, there will be a matter of faith between you and the aforesaid Jerome, who indeed praised Anatolius, who is contrary to Victorius; so that whoever has followed the one will not be able to accept the other.

Therefore let your vigilance consider that, in the matter of approving the faith of the two aforesaid authors who are mutually contrary, there be no discord between you and Jerome in the opinion to be brought forth, lest we be in straits on every side — so that we must consent either to you or to him. Spare the weak in this, lest you display a scandal of divergence. For I confess to you simply that whoever comes against the authority of Saint Jerome will, among the Churches of the West, be reckoned a heretic or one to be rejected; for they accommodate to him an undoubted faith in all things concerning the divine Scriptures. But let these things about the Pasch suffice. As for the rest, concerning those bishops I ask what you judge, who are ordained against the canons — that is, those whom you, an authority against such plagues, have written of as Simoniacs and Gildas.

Are we to have communion with them? For — what is more serious — many in this province are known to be such; or concerning others who, having been defiled in the diaconate, are afterwards chosen for the rank of bishops? For there are those whose consciences in these matters we know; and, conferring with our littleness about it, they wished to know for certain whether they might, without peril, after this exercise ministry — that is, whether after a rank bought with coin, or after adultery in the diaconate (yet a hidden adultery, I say, with dependents), which among our teachers is reckoned to be a crime of no less gravity.

In the third place of my questioning, answer still, I pray, if it is not troublesome, what is to be done about those monks who, kindled for the sake of the vision of God and the desire of a more perfect life, coming against their vows, forsake the places of their first conversion, and, against the will of their abbots, driven by the fervor of monks, are either relaxed or flee to the deserts. Finnian the author questioned Gildas about these things, and he wrote back to him most elegantly; yet nonetheless upon one eager to learn a greater fear always increases.

More humbly and more purely all these things, and many more which the brevity of a letter does not admit, ought to have been asked through presence, were it not that infirmity of body, and the care of my fellow-pilgrims, hold me bound at home — eager to come to you, that I might draw that spiritual vein of the living fountain and the living wave of knowledge flowing down from heaven and springing up unto eternal life. And if body followed soul, Rome would again endure the affront of its contempt;

so that, just as, with the learned Jerome relating it, we read that certain men once came to Rome from the farthest bounds of the Gallic shore, and — wonderful to say — sought something else beyond Rome, so I too now would seek you, not desiring Rome (saving the reverence due to the holy ashes); for although I confess myself not wise, but thirsting, I would do this same thing if I were free. I have read your book containing the Pastoral Rule — brief in style, ample in doctrine, stuffed with mysteries; I confess it to be to one in need a work sweeter than honey. Therefore to me, thirsting after yours, grant, I pray, the little works which — as I have heard — you have fashioned upon Ezekiel with wondrous genius. I have read the six books of Jerome upon him; but he did not expound even the half.

But if you deign, send us some of your works left behind in the city — that is, transmit the exposition of the final portions of the book — and the Song of Songs from that place (Cant. iv, 6) where it says: 'I will go to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense,' up to the end; treat it, I beg, either with others' opinions or briefly with your own; and expound the whole obscurity of Zechariah, lay open what is hidden, that Western blindness may give you thanks for these things. I ask importunate things and inquire after great things — who does not know it? But you too, having great things, know well that from a little less, and from much more, ought to be lent at interest.

May charity persuade you to write back; may the roughness of my paper not hinder you from expounding — for I have erred out of error, and the honor due is given by me to you from the heart. It was mine to provoke, to question, to ask; yours, if it be freely received, not to deny; to lend the talent at interest; to give the bread of doctrine to you who ask, as Christ commands. Peace to you and to yours; pardon, I beg, my impudence, that I have written thus boldly, O blessed pope; and I pray that for me, a most vile sinner, you may pray even once in your holy prayers to the common Lord. I think it more than superfluous to commend my companions to you, whom the Savior decrees are to be received, as walking, as it were, in his own name;

and if, as I have heard from your holy Candidus, you should wish to answer this — that a thing strengthened by the antiquity of time cannot be changed — then it is manifestly an ancient error; but always more ancient is the truth which reproves it.