Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 778

Gregory to John, bishop of Prima Justiniana. When the evils which ought to be purged by the weeping of penitence are increased by excesses, so much the greater correction must be applied to offenders, that both they themselves may recognize their crime at least by the punishment that avenges it, and that fear of ecclesiastical vengeance may restrain others from unlawful deeds. And so the most beloved bearer of these presents, Nemesion, coming to us, has declared—as also the copies of the acts which he brought hither contained—that Paul, bishop of the city of Doclea, having among other evils fallen into a bodily crime, was accused by his own clerics, and, an inquiry having been held...

...and the inquiry having been held, it became clear—which we cannot say without grief—that it was so; and moreover, that after he had been convicted, he even presented a written statement in which he confessed that those things of which he had been accused were true; on which account, by sentence, that bishop having been deposed, in his place, with the consent of your Fraternity, Nemesion himself was ordained bishop; but that now this same Paul, coming with the aid of secular judges, entered the episcopal residence after the manner of a brigand, and, the goods of the church having been violently carried off, cast him out from it and brought him to the very brink of injury and almost of death.

And since the depravity of so great a wickedness is neither to be connived at nor lightly regarded, let your Fraternity take diligent care to learn all these things thoroughly; and if the truth stands as we have been informed, cause the aforesaid Paul to be compelled by strict execution, that whatever he carried off he restore without any delay or excuse. But if he shall say that he carried off nothing of the Church's but his own property, although it would be grave and iniquitous that he sought this not from you or from his metropolitan, but by rash daring presumed to act with his own hand, nevertheless, if he took anything of his own, it ought under your Fraternity's examination to be established whether it be true.

But that also must be diligently inquired into: whether he has wrongfully squandered anything of the Church's goods, so that out of what he has now carried off he may by all means be compelled to make it good and to render satisfaction. But if he attempt to defer, until he restores to the Church all that he has squandered or taken of its substance, he is to be sent into a monastery, that at least under compulsion he may render back what he did not fear wrongfully to take away.

And if perchance—which we do not believe—after his deposition, shamelessly and with perverse mind he should presume to speak anything concerning the episcopate and again to aspire to it by any presumption whatsoever, let the vigour of your Fraternity be wholly kindled against his wickedness, and let him, deprived of the communion of the Lord's Body and Blood, be thrust into a monastery to do penance until the day of his death, so that he may learn to wash away by worthy weeping the stains of the crime he has perpetrated—stains which he rather wickedly desires to increase to the destruction of his own soul.

But let our aforesaid most beloved brother Nemesion be, without any doubt, restored to his place and to the office of the episcopate; and lest he suffer disquiet and trouble anew from this matter, it is necessary that you be solicitous, since this is established to profit not only for his protection, but also for the correction of others, so that the presumption of depraved men may henceforth in no way dare to attempt anything against the statutes of the sacred canons or ecclesiastical discipline.