Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 812

Gregory to the patrician Rusticiana. As often as anyone comes to us from the royal city, it is our care to inquire about the health of your body; but, my sins bringing it about, I always hear those things which I regret to hear, because they report that, amid such frailty and weakness, the pains of gout still increase in you. But I pray the Almighty Lord that all things which are done in your body may be directed to the salvation of your soul, so that temporal scourgings may prepare eternal rest for you, and that through those pains which are with an end He may grant you joys without end. But I myself live in such groaning and occupations, that I regret having reached the days I am living, and my only consolation is the expectation of death.

Wherefore I ask that you should pray for me, that I may be led out the sooner from this prison of the flesh, lest I be tortured longer with such great pains. Moreover I make known that a certain man here, Beator by name, who wishes to be called as it were count of private affairs, has come, and does many things against everyone, but chiefly against the men of your Excellency, and of your most noble granddaughters, as though seeking public revenues. And we indeed do not permit him to act perversely, but neither can we stand in the way of the public interests. You therefore, before the most pious princes, as you are able, act so that they may forbid him to do wicked things. For with all his uproar neither is the public interest advanced, nor is there any great profit in what he seems to be reclaiming.

My most sweet son, the lord Strategius, I ask to be greeted on my behalf, whom may Almighty God nourish for Himself and for you, and may we always be consoled by His grace and by his life. But concerning your return, what ought I to write, who know how much I long for it? But when I look upon the entanglements of the lawsuits, I am in despair; and therefore I entreat the Creator of all, that wherever you are, wherever you shall be, He may protect you with the outstretched extension of His right hand, and preserve you from all evils.