Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 651

Gregory to Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria. A year having passed, I received the most sweet writings of your holiness, to which, on account of the excess of my sickness, I have not until now been able to reply. For behold, nearly two years are now being completed during which I am confined to my little bed, and afflicted with such pains of gout that scarcely on feast days am I able to rise for the space of three hours to celebrate the solemnities of the Mass. Soon, however, when I am driven by grievous pain to lie down, so that I may endure the torment with an interrupting groan. This pain is at times slow with me, at times excessive. But neither so slow that it may depart, nor so excessive that it may kill. Whence it comes to pass that I who am daily in death am daily driven back from death.

Nor is it any wonder, since I, a sinner, am held long shut up in the prison of such wicked corruption. Whence I am compelled to cry out: Bring my soul out of prison, that I may confess to Thy name (Psalm 141:8). But because by my prayers I do not yet merit to obtain this, I ask that the prayer of your holiness afford me the aid of its intercession, and render me free from the burden of sin and corruption into that liberty of the glory of the sons of God which you well know.

But your most sweet and ever-to-be-honored beatitude wrote to me that our common son Anatolius the deacon had written from the city of Constantinople that certain monks had come to me from the region of Jerusalem, who were to inquire of me something concerning the error of the Agnoetae; and you say that he asked that your holiness should write to me what he ought to think concerning that same inquiry. But neither did monks come to me from the region of Jerusalem inquiring anything, nor could that same common son have written to you anything other than what was the case; but I suspect that the interpreter erred in his letters.

For the same deacon wrote to me already two years ago that monks came from the aforesaid regions to the city of Constantinople making such inquiries, and he sought to inquire of me what I thought. To him, long before I received your writings, I replied against that same heresy the very things which afterward I found in the letter of your holiness; and I rendered great thanks to Almighty God, that concerning all the inquiries the Fathers of the Romans and of the Greeks, whose followers we are, have spoken with one spirit. For in many things I found your same letter to be as if I were reading the writings of the Latin Fathers against the aforesaid heresy.

And how much I could love and praise the good in my most holy brother, weigh well—in whose mouth I recognized the venerable Fathers whom I greatly love. Let there therefore be praise to Him, let there be glory in the highest, by whose gift even now in the See of Peter the voice of Mark cries out; from whose outpouring of the spirit, when the priest enters to scrutinize the mysteries, namely into the holy of holies, in the holy Church, as in the tabernacle, the spiritual bells resound from the words of preaching. Right therefore and greatly praiseworthy is your preaching. But we entreat the Almighty Lord that He may long preserve you even in this life, so that from the organ of God, which you are, the voice of truth may sound more widely in this world.

But for me, I ask, intercede, that the way of this pilgrimage, which has become harsher for me, may be finished with speed; so that I who cannot by my own merits, may by yours be able to attain to the promises of the eternal fatherland, and to rejoice with the citizens of heaven.