Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 776

Gregory to Bishop Victor. By as much as it is a joy to us to learn that our brethren are duly solicitous toward their sons with fatherly charity, by so much do we account it a matter of sorrow when neither reverence for their other brethren nor consideration of their priesthood avails to restrain them from unlawful things. How grave and harsh, therefore, is the complaint against our brother Paulinus, bishop of the city of Tegesta, on the part of his clergy or of those set in sacred orders, cannot be unclear to your Fraternity, since what reached us from afar could not lie hidden from you nearby.

And since it must be very carefully guarded against, lest that of which they complain—that he wrongfully exceeded the bounds against them by bodily injury—be either lawfully presumed upon, or be made worse through connivance, manifest excesses are always to be restrained by canonical moderation, so that one and the same act may be both the correction of things past and a rule for things to come. Accordingly, together with our most beloved common brother, Bishop Columbus, or the other priests whom you may foresee, it behoves you to sift out with subtle inquiry the case between our aforesaid brother and his clerics. And if the complaint of the petitioners subsists in truth, correct this by regular amendment in such a way that he may both acknowledge how evil is the thing he has done, and learn henceforth not to go beyond the limits of his office.

Nor should you suffer the rank of your place to be diminished by him, as is said, lest his contempt turn to his peril and to your fault. For whatever is committed by an inferior looks back upon the person set in the higher place, unless it be carefully corrected. But that which our same brother Paulinus is reported to confer ecclesiastical orders for a reward must be inquired into by you the more subtly and altogether strictly. And if it become clear that it is so—which we do not wish—let your zeal, for God's sake, be so kindled to avenge this, that both the ordainer's avarice may be turned to his punishment, and the unlawful ordination, being void of effect, may not enjoy the desire of its ambition.

Wherefore we exhort you and above all admonish you, that your Fraternity so strive to be solicitous, that, before the wickedness of the simoniacal heresy there gathers strength through the vice of one man, it be cut off at the root by the scythe of your sentence, the deed being cut off from its very work by the council. For whosoever shall not, out of consideration of his office, burn vehemently to correct this crime, let him not doubt that he has a share with that very man from whom this peculiar disgrace first took its origin. And therefore, as we have said, we must act with kindness and diligence, that your council—which until now, God guarding it, has been preserved without any such depraved reputation—the poisons of this wickedness may neither be able to pollute nor to destroy.

Moreover, we have charged our chartulary Hilarus that, if the matter should require it, he not delay to be present with you. Wherefore, if it be necessary, signify to him by your letters that he ought to come to you, so that all these things you may healthfully, with God's help, settle together with him.