Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 710

Gregory to Marinianus, bishop of Ravenna. When a certain man of Ravenna came, I was smitten with most grievous sorrow, because he related that your Fraternity was sick with a vomiting of blood. On which account I have anxiously and one by one caused to be sought out those physicians whom we know here to be learned by their reading, and what each of them felt, or what they prescribed, I have transmitted in writing to your Holiness. Yet they above all prescribe rest and silence, which, whether your Fraternity can have it in your own Church, I am very doubtful.

And therefore it seems to me that, the Church there having been set in order — appointing either those who can perform the solemnities of the Masses, or those who can bear the care of the episcopate and exhibit hospitality and receptions, or those who can preside over the guarding of the monasteries — your Fraternity ought to come to me before the summer season, that I may specially, as far as I am able, take care of your sickness and guard your rest, since the physicians vehemently say that the summer season is dangerous to this sickness. And I greatly fear lest, if you have any cares along with the adversity of the season, you be the more endangered from that same distress. I too am myself very weak, and it is altogether useful that, with God's grace, you return in health to your Church;

or at least, if you must be called away, that you be summoned amid the hands of your own; and I, who see myself near to death, if Almighty God should will to call me before you, that I may pass away amid your hands. But if the condition of the season should hinder your coming, then, some small gift being given, it can be arranged at the crisis that he himself send his man with you all the way to Rome. If, therefore, you feel yourself weighed down by this same sickness, and dispose to come, you must come with a few, since, remaining with me in the episcopal residence, you will have daily services from this Church.

Moreover, I neither exhort nor admonish, but strictly command, that you by no means presume to fast, since the physicians say it is very contrary to this ailment — unless perchance a great solemnity require it, in which case I concede five times in the year. From vigils also you must abstain; and the prayers which are wont to be said over the paschal candle in the city of Ravenna, or the expositions of the Gospel which are made by the priests around the Paschal solemnity, let them be said by another. And let your Charity by no means impose upon yourself a labour beyond your strength. But these things I have said so that, if you feel yourself better and defer your coming, you may know what you ought to observe according to my command.