Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 642

Gregory to Fortunatus, bishop of Naples. If you had been willing to attend diligently to the tenor of our writings, you ought either of your own accord to have restored what you took away, or at least to have sent a representative according to our admonition to plead the case. And while you strive to excuse yourself in a certain manner, asserting that in those things which were done against your fraternity by the opposing party, you involved yourself not voluntarily but constrained by great conspiracies, you have as it were deferred understanding what we wrote, and you have indicated that the magnificent men Faustus and Dominicus were sent not by you but by certain others of yours, and by this means that, while others litigate, you yourself might retain what you had taken.

But the opposing party, learning the text of your letter, began to press us with frequent representations that those things which you had taken away be returned, saying that it was prepared to respond if the aforesaid magnificent men should wish to move anything against it in their own name or in the name of others.

Since this did not seem to us to dissent from the order of reason, especially after you, having been admonished, neglected to send an instructed representative to plead the case, we therefore exhort your fraternity that, as soon as it receives the present writings, it restore without any contention to Theodorus, the magnificent man, keeper of the greater gates of the people, and to Rusticus, the most illustrious man, the elder, the aqueduct; nor let it interpose in this matter any delay or any excuse, lest it incur the fault of indiscretion, if it should think that a thing which it ought to have done of its own accord, after being admonished, should be deferred by any lot whatever. When these things, therefore, have first been restored to the said men, you shall be free, if you wish, afterward to move any case against them here before us.

But if it is not you yourself, but your sons, as you assert, who complain that they have a case whereby they ought to prosecute them by public judgment, they are free to conclude the business of their case, lawfully brought against them, in whatever place they may wish.