In which it is set forth how the life of Saint Gregory corresponded to his doctrine. Argument. 1. With what pursuits Gregory governed the Church entrusted to him. — 2. With what great authorities he fought against the simoniacal and Neophyte heresies. — 3. He commanded a synod to be held on their account. — 4. He foretold that those who did not fight against these same with all their strength would share the lot of Simon Magus. — 5. How wisely he forbade the 'pastellaticum' to be given or received for the use of the Pallium or for the consecration of a bishop. — 6. He noted three kinds of simoniacal giving. — 7. In ordaining bishoprics he spared neither the cardinals of his own Church nor monks. — 8. He advanced absolutely no one by force. — 9.
He restored those who had been promoted by force to their former rank. — 10. He reinstated in their orders those who had been cast down by others through slander. — 11. Cardinals promoted to outlying parishes he recalled to their cardinal seat. — 12. From wherever he could choose better men, he would consecrate bishops; and with what strictness he would examine those to be consecrated. — 13. He would even invite bishops of another diocese to govern the Churches of his own diocese. — 14. In what manner he united bishoprics. — 15. He incardinated vacant bishops into vacant Churches. — 16. He joined ousted prelates to enthroned bishops. — 17. He changed the sites of sees. — 18. On no occasion did he either transfer a pontiff from one Church to another, or permit him to be transferred. — 19.
He consecrated a parishioner of another's Church as his own cardinal. — 20. In what manner he permitted clerics of another Church to be incardinated into others. — 21. He never preferred those ordained later to the earlier clerics. — 22. In what manner he committed the Churches of deceased bishops to neighbouring visitators. — 23. For making an inventory, he decreed that nothing was to be accepted. — 24. He rejected the customary payments or gifts (xenia). — 25. He decreed that bishops should come to the City of Rome only once in a five-year period. — 26. He even refused to accept the price of goods. — 27. He granted to his suffragan bishops what was necessary. — 28. How carefully he sought from them holiness, wisdom, and generosity. — 29. He censured Bishop Marinianus for avarice. — 30.
He rebuked Bishop Serenus for having broken images. — 31. He deterred Bishop Januarius, who was avenging his own wrongs. — 32. He chided the same for ploughing up a harvest. — 33. He reproved Bishop Desiderius for the reading of pagan books. — 34. He reprehended Bishop Natalis for negligence and likewise for banquets. — 35. How wittily he bound the same by his own assertions. — 36. He forbade bishops to be absent from their Church. — 37. He judged that bishops should not wander through various places. — 38. He did not hesitate to commit to memory the fall of his own aunt. — 39. He rebuked Bishop Vitalianus on account of a woman who had changed her religious habit. — 40. He reprehended the defensor Sergius for negligence. — 41.
He restrained Bishop Paschasius over the building of a ship and his own advantage. — 42. He rebukes the negligences of the bishops of Campania and of Victor of Palermo. — 43. How moderately he judges Bishop Andrew concerning a concubine. — 44. He judged that one must abstain from wicked counsellors. — 45. He drove away from the intimacy of bishops those who had lapsed or were criminal. — 46. He decreed that the wrath of prelates should be restrained, and that the fault of one should not be harmful to another. — 47. He forbade free men to be beaten or imprisoned. — 48. How he made public, censuring, the base deeds of judges. — 49. At the devil's instigation, judges raged against him. — 50. He manfully contradicts the Emperor Maurice, who was enacting a most wicked law. — 51.
Concerning the hypocrisy of John, bishop of Constantinople, who claimed himself to be universal. — 52. He refuted the imperial letters that pleaded on his behalf. — 53. He disparages the times and morals of Maurice. — 54. He wisely enfeebles the pride of the hypocrite. — 55. Demonstrating his own constancy, he asserts that he would in no way lose his faith for the emperor. — 56. Why he did not give to the empress the relics she had requested. — 57. Up to those times the Roman pontiff would confer a 'brandeum' (a consecrated cloth) in place of relics. — 58. With how many miracles the garments of Saint John shone forth. — 59. What ought to be thought concerning his garments. — 60. Gregory repelled the plague of the universal title from the whole body of the Church. 1.
With such pursuits the venerable Pope Gregory effectively governed the Church divinely entrusted to him. Already he had recalled to the unity of the holy Church the Ligurians, the Venetians, the Istrians, and others, compelling them, who had confessed their schism under a written declaration, to venerate the Council of Chalcedon. Already he had drawn away from the vanity of practising paganism the Barbaricini, the Sardinians, and the peasants of Campania, corrected both by preachings and by scourgings. Already the heresy of the Donatists in Africa, that of the Manichaeans in Sicily, that of the Arians in Spain, and that of the Agnoetae in Alexandria, had — by the most powerful authorities of his writings and his most insistent embassies, with the Lord's aid — been cut off from the body of the whole holy mother Church. 2.
In Gaul alone the heresy of the Neophytes, sprouting from as many simoniacal bribes as though from so many roots, had grown up utterly far and wide, and was spreading abroad. Against it the venerable Father fought valiantly before Queen Brunhild, and also before Theodoric and Theodebert, kings of the Franks, until, a general synod having been assembled, he obtained that it should be condemned outright under anathema. Nor did he give the pallium to Syagrius, bishop of Autun, though the queen and the kings begged it with many prayers, until, in the presence of Cyriacus his abbot, they fulfilled what they had been admonished concerning the driving out of the heresies. For, on their behalf, he writes to Queen Brunhild among other things, saying:
'The priestly office has been led there, as we have learned, into so great an ambition that priests are suddenly ordained — which is exceedingly grave — from among laymen. But what will these men do, what will they bestow upon the people, who desire to become bishops not for usefulness but for honour? These men, then, who have not yet learned what they ought to teach, what else do they accomplish but that the unlawful advancement of a few becomes the ruin of many, and the observance of ecclesiastical discipline is brought into confusion, seeing that no regular order is kept? For he who approaches its government improvidently or precipitately, by what admonition shall he build up his subjects, whose example has taught not reason but error?'
'It is shameful indeed, shameful, to command others in that which one does not himself know how to keep. Nor do we pass over even this, which must be scraped away by a like correction; rather we detest it as altogether execrable and most grievous — namely, that there sacred orders are conferred through the simoniacal heresy, which, having arisen first against the Church, was condemned by a strict malediction. Hence therefore it comes about that the dignity of the priesthood is held in contempt, and holy honour lies in disgrace. Reverence utterly perishes, discipline is taken away, because he who ought to have corrected faults commits them, and by wicked ambition the censure of the honourable priesthood is led into depravity. For who henceforth will venerate what is sold? Or who will not deem worthless what is bought?'
'Wherefore I am greatly grieved, and I share the sorrow of that land, because, while they disdain to have the Holy Spirit — whom Almighty God deigns to bestow upon men through the imposition of hands — as a divine gift, but rather acquire Him by payments, I do not think the priesthood there can long subsist. For where the gifts of heavenly grace are judged to be for sale, it is not a life that is sought for the service of God, but rather money is worshipped against God.' (Book IX, indiction 2, letter 109.) The same to the same kings of the Franks, Theodoric and Theodebert, after some other matters:
'It is reported that the simoniacal heresy — which first crept in against the Church of God by a diabolical planting, and at its very rise was struck and condemned by the dart of apostolic vengeance — holds sway within the bounds of your kingdom; since in priests faith together with life must be chosen, and if life is lacking, faith has no merit, as blessed James attests, who says: Faith without works is dead (James 2:26). For what works can there be of a priest who is convicted of obtaining the honour of so great a sacrament by a bribe? From which it comes about that these very men who seek sacred orders strive not to correct their life, not to compose their morals, but busy themselves to amass the riches by which sacred honour is bought.'
'Hence it also comes about that the innocent and the poor, forbidden and despised, shrink back from sacred orders; and while the innocence of a poor man displeases, there is no doubt that there it is the bribe that commends offences, because where gold pleases, so also does vice. Hence therefore a deadly wound is inflicted not only on the soul of the ordainer and the ordained, but even the kingdom of your excellence is burdened by the fault of your bishops, by whose intercessions rather it ought to have been helped. For if he is believed worthy of the priesthood for whom not the merits of action, but the abundance of bribes, gives support, it remains that neither gravity nor diligence defends anything for one in ecclesiastical honours, but the profane love of gold obtains everything;'
'and while vices are rewarded with honour, he who perhaps ought to have been punished is brought into the place of a punisher, and hence priests are shown not to profit but rather to perish. For when the shepherd is wounded, who will apply medicine to heal the sheep? Or how shall he protect the people with the shield of prayer, who exposes himself to be struck by the enemy's darts? Or what fruit will he bring forth from himself, whose root is infected by a grievous rot? Greater therefore is the calamity to be feared for those places, where such intercessors are brought to the place of governance, who rather provoke God's anger upon themselves than, of themselves, ought to have appeased the peoples.'
'Nor does our solicitude suffer to omit negligently this evil also, that certain men, chosen by the prompting of vainglory, suddenly from a lay habit snatch at the honour of the priesthood, and — which it is shameful to say and grievous to keep silent — those who ought to be ruled, are rulers, and those who ought to be taught, are teachers, and they neither blush to be seen so, nor are they afraid. They shamelessly assume the leadership of souls, to whom every way of a guide is unknown, and they are ignorant even of where they themselves should step. How wicked and how rash this is, is shown even by secular order and discipline. For while the leader of an army is chosen only when proved by toil and solicitude, what kind of leaders of souls should they be who desire, with unripe haste, to ascend the summit of the episcopate?'
'Let them at least consider by comparison of this matter, and let them fear to undertake suddenly labours for which they are untried, lest blind ambition for honour be both a punishment to themselves and cast pestilent seeds of error upon others — seeing that they have not learned what they themselves are to teach. Therefore, greeting you with fatherly affection, we ask, most excellent Sons, that you strive to prohibit from the bounds of your kingdom this so detestable an evil, and that no excuse before you, no suggestion against your soul, find place; for without doubt he bears the fault of the doer, who neglects to amend what he is able to correct.' (Book IX, indiction 3, letter 100.) Likewise, on account of the same heresies, to Syagrius, bishop of Autun, and to other bishops:
'A messenger having some time ago passed among us, it was made known that in the regions of Gaul sacred orders are conferred through the simoniacal heresy. And we are afflicted with a vehement weariness of grief, when in ecclesiastical offices money has any place, and that becomes secular which is sacred. Whosoever, therefore, is eager to obtain this by the giving of a price, vainly desires not to be a priest, but only to be called one. What indeed, what else is brought about by this, but that there be no proof of conduct, no solicitude about morals, no examination of life, but that he alone be reckoned worthy who has been able to give the price?'
'From which matter, if it be weighed by the examination of right reasoning, while he wickedly hastens to snatch a place of usefulness for empty glory, by that very fact he is the more unworthy, in that he seeks the honour. But just as he who, being invited, refuses, and, being sought, flees, is to be brought to the sacred altars; so he who of his own accord canvasses for it, or importunately thrusts himself forward, is without doubt to be repelled. For he who thus strives to ascend to higher things, what else does he do but that, by growing, he shrinks, and, ascending outwardly, descends inwardly to the depths?'
'Therefore, most dear brother, in ordaining priests let sincerity flourish; let consent be simple, without venality; let a pure election be preferred, so that one may be believed to have been advanced to the summit of the priesthood not by the votes of sellers, but by the judgement of God. For that it is an altogether grievous crime to acquire the gift of God by a price, or to sell it, the evangelical authority is witness. For our Lord and Redeemer, having entered the Temple, overturned the seats of those selling doves (Matthew 21). What else is it to sell doves, than to receive a price for the imposition of hands, and to sell the Holy Spirit, whom Almighty God bestows upon men?'
'That their priesthood falls before the eyes of God, was plainly signified by the very overturning of the seats; and yet the depravity of wickedness still exerts its powers. For it compels to sell those whom it has deceived into buying. And while heed is not paid to what is enjoined by the divine voice: Freely you have received, freely give (Matthew 10:8), it comes about that the contagion of guilt grows and is doubled in one and the same person — namely, of the buyer and of the seller. And since it is clear that this heresy crept in before all others with a pestilent root, and in its very origin was condemned by apostolic detestation, why is it not guarded against, why is it not pondered that blessing is turned into cursing for him who is promoted to this end, that he become a heretic?'
'Very often, therefore, the adversary of souls, when he cannot filch away what is depraved in things that are open to view, cunningly striving under a semblance as it were of piety, endeavours to supplant; and he persuades, perchance, that one ought to receive from those who have, so that there be something which can be dispensed to those who have not — provided that even thus he may pour in his deadly poisons under the concealed shadow of almsgiving. For neither would the hunter deceive the wild beast, nor the fowler the bird, nor the fisherman catch the fish, if the one were to set his snare in the open, or the other did not have his hook hidden by the bait. Altogether, therefore, the cunning of the enemy is to be feared and guarded against, lest those whom he cannot overthrow by open temptation, he may the more savagely be able to slaughter with a hidden dart.'
'For it is not to be reckoned as almsgiving, if that which is received from unlawful things be dispensed to the poor, because he who wickedly receives with this intention — that he may, as it were, dispense well — is rather burdened than helped. That almsgiving is pleasing to the eyes of our Redeemer which is gathered together not from unlawful things and iniquity, but which is bestowed from things permitted and rightly acquired.'
'Whence also this is certain, that even if monasteries, or hospices, or anything else, be built from the money which is given for sacred orders, it profits nothing toward reward; because, while a perverse man and a buyer of honour is put into a place, and establishes others in his own likeness by the giving of an advantage, he destroys more by ordaining ill than he can build up who received the money of ordination from him. Lest, therefore, under the pretext of almsgiving, we strive to accept anything with sin, Sacred Scripture openly forbids us, saying: The sacrifices of the wicked are abominable to the Lord, which are offered from crime (Proverbs 21:27). For whatever is offered from crime in God's sacrifice does not appease the wrath of Almighty God, but provokes it.'
'Hence again it is written: Honour the Lord from your just labours (Proverbs 3:9). He, therefore, who wrongfully takes away that he may, as it were, well bestow, it is certain beyond doubt that he does not honour the Lord. Hence too it is said through Solomon: He who offers a sacrifice from the substance of the poor is as one who sacrifices a son in the sight of his father (Ecclesiasticus 3:4, 24 [Sirach 34]). But let us weigh how great is the grief of a father, if in his sight his son be sacrificed; and from this we easily recognize how great a grief is aroused before God when a sacrifice from robbery is offered to Him. Exceedingly, therefore, most beloved brother, must we shun, under the pretext of almsgiving, to perpetrate the sins of the simoniacal heresy.'
'For it is one thing to give alms on account of sins, another to commit sins on account of alms.' This also, which has come to us, we embrace with a not dissimilar detestation as worthy of it: that certain men, puffed up with the desire of honour, upon the death of bishops are tonsured and suddenly become priests from laymen, and shamelessly seize the leadership of the religious profession, who have not yet learned even to be soldiers. What, do we suppose, will these men bestow upon their subjects, who, before they touch the threshold of discipleship, do not dread to hold the place of mastership? Wherefore it is necessary that, however blameless anyone's merit may be, he first be exercised in ecclesiastical offices through the distinct orders.
'Let him see what he is to imitate, let him learn what he is to teach, let him be shaped in what he is to hold, so that afterwards he who is chosen to show the way to one who errs may not himself go astray. Let him therefore long be polished by religious meditation, so that he may please, and so that the lamp set upon the lampstand may so shine that the adverse force of the winds rushing upon it may not extinguish the kindled flame of erudition, but increase it. For since it is written, Let one first be tested, and so let him minister (1 Timothy 3:10), much more must he be tested beforehand who is taken up as intercessor of the people, lest evil priests become the cause of ruin to the peoples.'
'There can therefore be no excuse against this, no defence, because it is clearly known to all what solicitude of a holy and excellent teacher there is in the diligence of this matter, who forbids a neophyte to approach sacred orders. Now just as he was then called a neophyte who was at the beginning planted in the instruction of the holy faith, so now he is to be held a neophyte who, suddenly planted in the habit of religion, has crept in to canvass for sacred honours. In an orderly manner, therefore, must one ascend to the orders. For he courts a fall who, the steps being set aside, seeks an ascent to the highest heights of the office by precipices.'
'And since the same Apostle teaches, among other institutions of sacred order for a disciple, that hands are not to be too quickly imposed upon anyone, what is swifter than this, what more precipitate, than that the beginning should arise from the summit, and that before he begins to be a disciple, he be a master? Whosoever, therefore, desires to attain the priesthood not for the pomp of exaltation but for usefulness, let him first measure his own strength against the burden which he is about to undergo, so that both the unequal may abstain, and even he who reckons himself sufficient may approach it with fear.' We do not act beside the point if, toward a reasonable argument, we gather the practice of irrational things.
'For timber fit for buildings is cut down from the forests, yet the weight of a building is not laid upon it while it is still green, unless a delay of many days has dried up its greenness and rendered it fit for the necessary use. And if perchance this observance be neglected, being placed underneath too soon they are the sooner broken by the mass laid upon them, and the thing provided for help begets ruin. For hence too physicians, who have the care of bodies, do not offer to the one in need certain remedies formed of a still recent preparation, but leave them to be matured over time. For if anyone administer them prematurely, there is no doubt that the means of health becomes the cause of peril.'
'Let priests therefore learn, let them learn to keep in their own office — priests to whom the care of souls has been entrusted — that which men of the various arts observe, reason teaching them, and let them restrain themselves from precipitate ambition, and if not by fear, at least by shame. But lest perchance anyone should wish still to defend himself by the pretext of a depraved custom, let your fraternity's discretion coerce them with the bridle of reason, and not permit them to slip into unlawful things: because whatever is worthy of punishment ought to be brought forward not for imitation, but rather as an example of correction.' And after a few words: 3. 'Concerning those things, therefore, which have been said above, we wish, God being the author, that your fraternity assemble a synod:'
'and in it, through the mediation of our most reverend brother Aregius the bishop and of our most beloved son Cyriacus the abbot, let all those things which, as we have said before, are contrary to the sacred canons, be strictly condemned under the imposition of anathema: that is, that no one presume to give any advantage for the obtaining of ecclesiastical orders, or to receive anything for what has been given; nor let anyone dare suddenly from a lay habit to arrive at a place of sacred governance; nor let women dwell with priests except those who are permitted by the sacred canons.' 4.
Seeing these pestilent heresies, the most prudent teacher Gregory, perceiving that through the connivance or silence of priests they, by bribes ever more widely spread, could like a pestilent cancer not only corrode the weak parts, but even corrupt the strong members with the blade of the fairest things, being moved with divine zeal, pronounced a general sentence to Bishop Victor, saying: 'Whosoever, out of consideration for his office, shall not have vehemently burned to amend this crime (namely, of simony and the heresy of the neophytes), let him not doubt that he has a share with him from whom this expiatory outrage first took its beginning.' (Register, book XIII, letter 29.) 5.
But when he came to know that certain men, in order to avoid the crimes of the simoniacal heresy, cunningly called the bribes of pestilent trafficking 'pastellaticum,' wishing by a changed name of this sort to cover the avarice of their cupidity, the most prudent teacher Gregory once again put forth the sentence which at the outset of his pontificate he had promulgated before a synod, saying: 'Following the ancient rule of the Fathers, I ordain that nothing whatsoever is ever to be received for ordinations: neither from the giving of the Pallium, nor from the delivery of documents, nor from that appellation of 'pastellum' which a new dissimulation through ambition has invented.'
'For since in ordaining a bishop the pontiff imposes his hand, and the minister reads the lesson of the Gospel, and the notary writes the letter of his confirmation: just as it does not befit the pontiff to sell the hand which he imposes, so neither ought the minister or the notary to sell his voice or his pen at the ordination. For the ordination, therefore, or the use of the pallium, or the documents, and the 'pastelli,' I altogether forbid that the same one who is to be ordained, or is being ordained, give anything. If anyone presume from the aforesaid things to exact or perchance to demand any advantage under this title, he shall lie under guilt in the strict examination of Almighty God.' (Roman Synod, chapter 5, at the end of the Letters.) 6.
Likewise to John, bishop of the Corinthians, after many things: 'Your fraternity knows,' he says, 'that formerly the pallium was not given unless an advantage were given. And since this was unfitting, a council having been held before the body of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, we forbade under strict interdiction to receive anything, both concerning this and concerning ordinations. It behoves you, therefore, neither through advantage, nor through favour, nor through the supplication of certain persons, to consent or permit any to be brought to sacred orders.' (Register, book V, letter 57.) But the cunning iniquity of a most base cupidity, not enduring to be straitened out of such great advantages, however base — nay, most perilous — devised a sufficiently artful contrivance:
namely, whereby to exalt to the priesthood those who ought to have been the more subject to him after their consecration, in proportion as they themselves would without doubt reckon that they had been promoted not by divine, but rather by human judgement. Wherefore Gregory, the herald of Almighty God, disputes in his Treatises on the Gospels — namely, so that it might the more frequently be read or heard — saying: 'There are some who indeed do not receive rewards of money from ordination, and yet bestow sacred orders for the sake of human favour: and from that same largess they seek only the recompense of praise. These men, without doubt, do not freely bestow what they freely received: because for the office of holiness expended, they seek out the coin of favour.'
Hence the prophet, when he well described the just man, says: 'He who shakes his hands free from every bribe' (Isaiah 33:15). For he did not say, 'He who shakes his hands free from a bribe,' but he added, 'from every': because a bribe of service is one thing, a bribe of the hand another, a bribe of the tongue another. For a bribe of service is compliance rendered where it is not owed; a bribe of the hand is money; a bribe of the tongue is favor. He therefore who confers sacred orders shakes his hands free from every bribe when, in divine matters, he seeks not only no money, but not even human favor (Homily on the Gospels).
(Homily 4 on the Gospels.) These are the pronouncements of Gregory, the most learned pope, concerning simoniacs and unlawful ordinations, which he himself is shown to have observed with the utmost devotion, in that, from the very beginning of his consecration, throughout his whole diocese he most zealously ordained as bishops the better men whom he could find from any quarter. And whenever the necessity of ordaining a priest arose, he by no means excused either the cardinals of his own Church or the monks of his own monastery from committing to them the government of a Church, if they were the ones who could the better edify it by example and word alike.
For, to touch on a few things among many, from the cardinal presbyters of his own Church he consecrated as bishops Bonifacius of Rhegium, Habentius of Perusia, and Donus of Messina in Sicily. From among the subdeacons he consecrated Gloriosus of Istria, Festus of Capua, Peter of Trecae, and Castorius of Ariminum. But from among the monks of his own monastery he ordained as prelates Marinianus of Ravenna, Maximianus of Syracuse, and Sabinus of Callipolis. Moreover he commanded that Augustine be ordained by the bishops of Gaul among the English. Through him, nonetheless, monks of the same father were at different times advanced to the episcopate among that same nation: Mellitus, Justus, Laurentius, and Paulinus. Only the deacons of the Apostolic See he in a certain manner spared in this respect:
of whom, since he abounded with a full number of nineteen, he himself consecrated Bonifacius, Florentius, and Epiphanius. Nor did he separate any of them from office, save Laurentius the archdeacon, for pride and his other crimes, in the Lateran basilica which is called Golden, where he soon appointed Honoratus as archdeacon. 8. And when Gregory, on a fitting occasion, would quite willingly advance the cardinals of his own Church, provided they consented, he by no means strove to promote anyone by force, however great the necessity that compelled him, lest under an occasion of this kind he should seem to be deposing anyone by casting him out. Hence, writing to Scholasticus, judge of Campania, he says:
«While we were being quite grievously distressed over the care of the city of Naples, deprived of the comfort of a bishop, the bearers of the present letter arrived with a decree drawn up in favor of our subdeacon Florentius, and had found for us some measure of relief amid so great a weight of anxiety; but when our aforesaid subdeacon, fleeing the city itself, tearfully avoided his ordination, know that our sadness has grown, as it were, out of a greater despair. And therefore, greeting you, we exhort your greatness that, calling upon the leading men, or the people of the city, you take thought concerning the election of another, who, being worthy, may be advanced to the priesthood for the comfort of Christ's flock.
And thus, once the decree has been solemnly made and transmitted to this city, may the ordination at length be accomplished there, with Christ's help.» (Register, book 3, letter 15.) 9. Those also who had been promoted by force by others, he would recall to their former grades. Hence, writing to the subdeacon Antoninus, he says: «Honoratus, archdeacon of the Church of Salona, had, through a petition sent to my predecessor of holy memory, requested that he should in no way be compelled, against custom, to be advanced unwillingly by his bishop to the order of a higher grade. For he declared that this was being done to him not for the sake of promotion, but out of ingratitude.
For which reason our predecessor of holy memory had then already, by his writings, forbidden Natalis, our brother and fellow-bishop, to promote the aforesaid archdeacon Honoratus against his will, and to retain any longer in his heart the resentment of the ingratitude he had conceived. And when these same things had been most earnestly forbidden to him by me as well, he—not only neglecting God's commands but also despising our writings—attempted, as though advancing the aforesaid archdeacon to a higher honor, cunningly and craftily to degrade him. Whence it came about that, having removed him from the office of the archdiaconate, he summoned another who could conform to his ways.
And we judge that this archdeacon Honoratus could have displeased his bishop for no other reason than that he forbade him to give the sacred vessels to his own kinsmen. This cause we, both my predecessor of holy memory then, and I now, resolved to investigate carefully by inquiry. But he himself, conscious of his own deeds, declined to send a representative to the trial. Therefore we have determined that your diligence should be strengthened by the authority of the present precept, so that, coming to Salona to meet Natalis, our brother and fellow-bishop—admonished at least by so many writings—you may strive to exhort him to receive back the above-mentioned archdeacon at once into his own place.
But if perchance he obstinately delay to do this, as has been his custom, then, by the authority of the Apostolic See, forbid him the use of the pallium which has been granted him from this See. And if you should perceive that, even after losing the pallium, he still persists in the same stubbornness, you shall likewise deprive that same bishop of participation in the Lord's Body and Blood. But him who, contrary to the rule of justice, consented to be advanced to another's place, we command to be deposed from the honor of that archdiaconate; and if he should presume to minister any longer in that same place, we deprive him of participation in holy communion. For it is just that those should feel the harshness of justice, whom he despises when they stand toward him in charity.
Therefore, once the archdeacon Honoratus has been restored to his own place, let the aforesaid bishop, at your compulsion, direct hither an instructed representative, who by his allegations may be able to show me that his intention is, or was, just. But we also command that the same archdeacon come to us, so that, once the assertions of both parties are known, we may decree whatever is just, whatever is pleasing to almighty God. For we defend no one out of personal affection, but, with God as our author, we preserve the standard of justice, setting aside respect for any person whatsoever.» (Register, book 2, letter 20.) 10. Likewise to Honoratus of Salona, now brought back from presbyter to the diaconate:
«Some while ago, indeed, a directive both of our predecessor and of ourselves had run to your beloved self, in which you had been both absolved of the charges laid against you by way of calumny, and we ordained that you be restored, without any dispute, to the order of your grade. But because, again not long ago, coming to the city of Rome, you complained of certain things done there improperly, and of the alienation of the sacred vessels; and while, on account of this matter, we were awaiting in this city the persons who might have answered your objections, Natalis, your bishop, departed from this life:
we judged it necessary to confirm by the present writings, henceforth, those same directives, both of our predecessor and our own, which some while ago, as has been said, we transmitted for your absolution. Wherefore, absolving you more fully from all the charges laid against you, we will that you remain in the grade of your order without any dispute; so that no question whatsoever raised by the aforesaid man may on any occasion prejudice you.» (Register, book 3, letter 32.) Likewise in another letter, after many things: «But even now I say: either receive those same persons, namely John of Chalcedon and Athanasius, presbyters of Isauria, in their orders, and grant them peace;
or, if perhaps you are unwilling to do this, then, setting aside all dispute, keep within the bounds established for their case by the elders or by the canons. But if not, we for our part are unwilling to bring a quarrel; yet we do not shun one coming from you. As for what the canons say concerning bishops who wish to be feared by beatings, your brotherliness well knows. For we have been made shepherds, not smiters. And the eminent preacher said: 'Reprove, entreat, rebuke, with all patience and doctrine' (2 Timothy 4:2). New indeed and unheard-of is that preaching which exacts faith by blows.» (Register, book 3, letter 53.) 11. Likewise Gregory recalled cardinals who had been forcibly ordained in outlying parishes back to their former cardinal see.
Wherefore, writing to John, bishop of Syracuse, he says: «It has reached us by the report of certain persons that Cosmas—who, from being a monk of the monastery of Saint Lucy, was made a subdeacon in the Church of Syracuse by your predecessor Maximianus of venerable memory, and was afterward ordained by you a presbyter on the estate which is called Juliana—is so grievously afflicted both by excessive sorrow and by the nature of the place that he reckons his life a punishment, and seeks in flight a remedy for his contrition. And therefore, because we ought to be toward our subjects such as we, if we had been subjects, would have wished our superiors to be toward us:
it would be a mark of great kindness if your holiness would strive to bring him back to the Church where he exercised the office of subdeacon, and there to appoint him a cardinal presbyter. And this, as we judge, you ought to do, if there is nothing that justly exasperates your mind against him. But if there is any fault, let your brotherliness inform us of it by your own letters, that we may be able to know it.» (Register, book 13, letter 28.) 12. With what great solicitude Gregory sought out suitable men for the governance of destitute congregations, I shall briefly indicate: so that so great a man may probably be gathered to have been a true father of the Lord's flock, not only in his teachings but also in his deeds. For he says in a letter to Maximianus, bishop of Syracuse:
«Felix, a most illustrious man, the bearer of the present letter, has informed us that there is in those parts a certain presbyter who, by the merit of an approved life, appears worthy to be advanced to the order of the episcopate. Let your brotherliness therefore cause him to be brought before you; and, as I am certain you will, examine him diligently on account of the peril of the soul. And if you perceive him worthy to be advanced to this grade, strive to send him to us, so that, with the Lord disposing, we may be able to ordain him shepherd for a place for which we shall have made provision.» (Register, book 3, letter 24, indiction 10.) Likewise to Cyprian, deacon: «Your beloved self's most bitter letters concerning the death of Master Maximianus I received in the month of November. And indeed he has attained to his desired rewards;
but the unhappy people of the city of Syracuse are to be mourned, who did not deserve to have such a shepherd for long. Therefore let your beloved self take care that in that same Church there ought to be chosen for ordination such a one as, after Master Maximianus, may seem not unworthy or undeserving to obtain the place of that same governance. And indeed I believe that the greater part will choose Trajan the presbyter, who, as it is said, is of good disposition; but, as far as I suspect, he is not suitable for governing that place. Nevertheless, if a better cannot be found, and he himself is entangled in no crimes, condescension may be made toward him, since extreme necessity compels. But if my will is sought regarding this election, I indicate to you secretly what I wish:
that no one in that same Church, after Master Maximianus, seems to me so worthy as John, archdeacon of the Church of Catania. If it can come about that he be chosen, I believe that a very fitting person will be found. But he too must first be secretly inquired of by you concerning the crimes that might impede him; and if he be found free of these, he can lawfully be chosen. And if this be done, our brother and fellow-bishop Leo must also make a cession to him, so that he may be found free to be ordained.» (Register, book 4, letter 17.) Likewise to Clementina, a Patrician lady: «Know, glorious daughter, that Amandus the presbyter has been elected by the people of Surrentum to the episcopate.
Since we have written that he ought to be sent hither, you should not be saddened at his absence, for he who is with you in mind is not believed to depart. And since, to those seeking a shepherd, he who once pleased you is welcome, blessing almighty God, rejoice rather in this with Christian devotion. And that he may come to us the more quickly, to profit others, strive cheerfully; for it is a mark of sincere charity to exult when he who is loved is called to this—that he may grow.» (Book 10, letter 18.) Likewise to Passivus the bishop: «Your brotherliness well knows how long a time Aprutium has been destitute of pastoral solicitude. There we long sought who ought to be ordained, and could by no means find him.
But because Opportunus is greatly praised to me in his character, in his zeal for psalmody, in his love of prayer, and is said to lead in every way a religious life, we wish that your brotherliness cause him to come to you, and admonish him concerning his soul, so that he may grow in good pursuits. And if no crimes—such as by the rule of the sacred law are punished with death—stand in his way, then he is to be exhorted to become either a monk, or a subdeacon under us; and after some time, if it please God, he himself ought to be promoted to pastoral care.» (Book 12, letter 15.) Likewise to Venantius, the Panormitan patrician, who requested that a certain presbyter be consecrated bishop for him, he writes back among other things, saying:
«Let your excellency know that to give this presbyter is altogether difficult for us: for the necessity of persons—for ordaining to other places destitute of shepherds—straitens us not lightly.» (Book 13, letter 15.) But because he recalled that he was straitened by the necessity of persons to be ordained, lest he be thought to have promoted anyone without examination, he seems fit to be instructed by a single example. For he says in a letter to John the bishop: «Lest the incautious ordination of those who are chosen to the episcopate be allowed to proceed, it must be inquired into with vigilant solicitude concerning their persons.
For it has been indicated to us that Florentius, archdeacon of the Church of Ancona, who had been elected to the episcopate, does indeed have knowledge of sacred Scripture, but is so worn out by the old age of his years that he cannot rise up to the office of governance; they add moreover that he is so tenacious (stingy) that a friend never enters his house for a meal of charity. Rusticus, however, deacon of the same Church, who had likewise been elected, is said to be a watchful man, but, as is asserted, is ignorant of the Psalms. As for Florentius, deacon of the Church of Ravenna, who is reported to have been elected by all, we know him to be diligent, but what he is like inwardly we altogether do not know.
Therefore let your brotherliness, together with our brother and fellow-bishop Armenius, visitor of the above-written Church of Ancona, hasten to go thither, and diligently inquire concerning the life and character of each: or whether they are conscious to themselves of no crime that forbids them to accede to this office. Likewise it must be inquired whether that which was said of the aforesaid archdeacon—that a friend has never entered his house—thus holds true; and whether he is such out of necessity or out of stinginess; or whether he is so old that he cannot rise up to govern; or whether, having touched the most holy Gospels, as has been reported to us, he swore an oath that he would never accede to the episcopate.
But concerning Rusticus the deacon also, it must be scrutinized how many Psalms he holds too little (fails to know). As for Florentius, deacon of Ravenna, if there is no crime, as we have said, that stands in the way, it is necessary to work upon his bishop that he ought to grant him a cession—yet not by our mandate or word, lest he seem to grant it against his own will.» (Book 14, letter 11.) 13. And indeed Gregory, prudently recognizing that the whole body of the Church stands happily through good bishops as much as it falls unhappily through bad ones, invited into the episcopate of his own diocese not only clergy of various orders from various nations, but even vacant bishops. Hence he writes, among other things, to Sebastian, bishop of Sirmium, saying:
«Rendering the due address of greeting, I indicate that it has reached me, by the report of Bonifacius the defensor, that the most holy man our brother lord Anastasius, patriarch, wished to commit to you the governing of a Church in one of his cities, and you were unwilling to consent. Which good sense and wisdom of yours I most gladly embraced, and vehemently praised; and I deemed you happy, and myself unhappy, who in such a time as this consented to undertake the governance of a Church. Yet if perhaps your mind, condescending to the brethren and intent on works of mercy, should ever resolve to consent to this, I beg that you set no other before my love.
For there are in the island of Sicily Churches vacant of bishops; and if it please you, with God as author, to govern a Church near the thresholds of the blessed Apostle Peter, with his help you can do so the better. But if it does not please you, stand happily, and pray for us unhappy men.» (Register, book 5, letter 42.) 14. Meanwhile Gregory, with places fortified and bishops appointed, was uniting scattered Churches. Wherefore he writes to Bacauda, bishop of Formiae, saying: «Both the necessity of the time urges us on, and the diminution of persons demands, that we ought to succor destitute Churches with a wholesome and provident arrangement. And therefore, since we have learned that the Church of Minturnae is utterly destitute, forsaken both of clergy and of people:
and providing that your petition on its behalf—namely, that it ought to be joined to the Church of Formiae, in which the body of the blessed martyr Erasmus rests, and over which your brotherliness presides—is pious and most just:
we have judged it necessary, taking counsel both for the desolation of that place and for the poverty of your Church, that the revenues of the above-mentioned Church of Minturnae, or whatever could or can by any reckoning belong to it by ancient or modern right or privilege, should by the authority of this our precept pass over to the right and power of your Church; so that from the present time you ought to think of it as of your own Church, and to dispose it by your fitting provision, to the end that henceforth what could hitherto perish may profit the advantages of the poor of your Church and of the clergy.» (Register, book 1, letter 8.) Likewise to Benenatus the bishop:
«Both the character of the time and the nearness of the places invites us to unite the Churches of Cumae and of Misenum: since these are separated from each other by no long interval of journey; nor, our sins bringing it about, is there so great a multitude of people that they ought to have individual priests, as once was the case. Since, therefore, the priest of the fortress of Cumae has completed the course of this life, know that we have by the page of the present authority united both Churches and committed them to you, and know yourself to be the proper bishop of both Churches;
and whatever concerning their patrimony, or the ordination or promotion of clergy, shall seem good to you to arrange and dispose according to the statutes of the canons, you shall have—as truly their own priest—free license, by the consent and permission of our authority. But where you shall foresee it to be more convenient or more useful, there dwell; yet in such wise that you dispose the other Church, from which you are for the present bodily absent, with solicitous and provident care, so that the divine mysteries may there be solemnly performed, the Lord helping. Let your brotherliness therefore ever keep watch with care in exhortations and in the winning of souls, so much the more solicitous, as it knows itself to have undertaken the burdens of the governance of united Churches.» (Book 2, letter
45.) 15. But indeed Gregory took care to incardinate the bishops of desolated cities into vacant cities. Hence, writing among other things to Martin, bishop of Corsica: «Since,» he says, «the Church of Tamita, in which your brotherliness had some while ago been adorned with the honor of the priesthood, has—our sins bringing it about—been so occupied and destroyed by hostile ferocity that no hope of returning thither has remained:
we, by this authority, constitute you, according to the measure of your petition, as cardinal priest—without doubt—in the Church of Aleria, which has already for a long time been destitute of a bishop's help. Therefore, with vigilant zeal and with the love of God, according to the precepts of the canons, so dispose and order all things, that both your brotherliness may rejoice to have obtained its own desires, and the Church of God may be filled with mutual joy at having received you as its cardinal bishop.» (Register, book 1, letter 79.) Likewise to John, bishop of Squillace: «The care of the pastoral office admonishes us to appoint for destitute Churches their own priests, who ought to govern the Lord's flock with pastoral solicitude.
Therefore we have judged it necessary to constitute you, John, bishop of the city of Lissa, taken captive by the enemy, as cardinal priest in Squillace: so that you may both fulfill the care of souls once undertaken, with a view to future retribution; and, although you have been driven out from your own with the enemy pressing in, you may govern another Church which is vacant of a shepherd; yet in such wise that, if it should happen that that city be made free of the enemy, and, the Lord protecting, be recalled to its former state, you should return to that Church in which you were formerly ordained. But if the aforesaid city is pressed by the continual calamity of captivity, you should remain in this Church in which you have been ordained by us.» (Register, book 2, letter 37.) Likewise to John, bishop of Velletri:
«After the hostile impiety has—our sins so bringing it about—desolated the Churches of various cities, so that no hope of restoring them remains, the people failing, we are constrained by a still greater care, lest, their priests having died, the remnants of the people, governed by no shepherd's restraint, be seized through the trackless wastes of faith by the crafty enemy's envy—which God forbid. Being therefore often admonished by solicitude for this matter, this counsel has settled in our heart, that we should commit them to neighboring bishops to be governed. And therefore we have foreseen that the care and governance of the church of Tres Tabernae ought to be committed to your brotherliness, which it is necessary should be aggregated and united to your church:
so that you may be able to be, with Christ as helper, priest and rector of both churches; and whatever concerning its patrimony, or the ordination or promotion of clergy, shall seem good to you to dispose with vigilant and canonical care, you shall have—as their proper bishop—free license, by our present permission.» (Register, book 2, letter 50.) Likewise to Gratiosus, bishop of Nomentum, he joined the care and governance of the church of Saint Anthemius, established in the territory of the city of Curium in the region of the Sabines, by incardinating it. Likewise to Agnellus, bishop of Fundi, after some things: «Since, on account of the disaster of war, there is license for no one to dwell either in your city or in your church:
therefore by this our authority we constitute you cardinal priest of the Church of Terracina.» (Book 3, letter 20.) And a little after: «This too your brotherliness needs to know, that we have so constituted you cardinal priest of the aforesaid Church of Terracina, that you also do not cease to be bishop of the Church of Fundi, nor pass over its care and governance.» (Same place, letter 23.) 16.
But also those bishops who had been expelled—whom Gregory could not so quickly either incardinate, or whose return to their own sees he hoped could come to pass—he meanwhile joined, for the sustenance and stipends of the present life, to other bishops who at that time were dwelling in their own places; saying in general terms: «Our brothers and fellow-bishops, whom the straits of captivity and of various necessities oppress, take care to receive gladly, to be consoled and to live together with you in ecclesiastical maintenance: not indeed that through communion the dignity of the episcopal throne be divided, but that, according to possibility, they ought to receive sufficient sustenance from the Church.
For thus we are proved both to love our neighbor in God, and God in our neighbor. For we grant them no authority in your churches, but only exhort you most earnestly that they be maintained by your consolations.» (Register, book 1, letter 45.) 17. The most prudent pontiff also, on a just occasion presenting itself, would change the locations of sees. Hence he writes to John, bishop of Velletri, saying: «The character of the time admonishes us to transfer the sees of bishops, anciently established in certain cities, to other places of the same diocese which we think safer, so that the inhabitants may now be able to dwell there, and more easily to avoid the barbarian peril.
Therefore we command you, John, our brother and fellow-bishop of the city of Velletri, to migrate thence, and to transfer your see to the place which is called Arenata, at the church of Saint Andrew the Apostle: so that you may both be able to be freer from the incursion of hostility, and there dispose the solemn festivals according to custom.» (Register, book 2, letter 14.) 18. And it is to be noted that Gregory, although he united monasteries and bishoprics, and strove to incardinate vacant bishops into vacant cities, nevertheless never either himself transferred a bishop from the integrity of his own Church into another, or consented, under any occasion whatsoever, that he should migrate.
For after he had deposed Demetrius, bishop of Naples, over manifest crimes—when it was greatly sought by those same Neapolitans that Paul, bishop of Nepe, be incardinated to them—the most discerning pontiff, having delegated the visitation of the city of Nepe to Bishop John, granted them indeed that same Paul as visitor; but as for constituting him cardinal, he both at first deferred it by way of dispensation, and afterward utterly refused it. To him, afterward granting license to return to his own diocese, he commanded that a hundred solidi be given from the Neapolitan church, and one little orphan boy, such as he himself might have wished, from the household of that same church. 19.
This most discerning pontiff took care, with the utmost discretion, to incardinate into his own service and that of others the clergy of other parishes. Wherefore, writing to Elias, presbyter and abbot of the province of Isauria, he says after certain other matters: 'You have requested that we advance your son Epiphanius to sacred orders, and send him back to you. But in the one request we have heard you, while in the other we could by no means hear you. He has indeed been made a deacon; but whosoever has once received sacred orders in this church has no further liberty to depart from it. If, then, I have not been able to see you, I have this consolation from the matter, that I find my rest in your son.' (Register, book v, letter 37.) 20. Likewise to Maximian, bishop of Syracuse:
'Felix the deacon, the bearer of these presents, though he has in no way lapsed into the doctrines of heretics nor departed from the catholic faith, had, being lured by depraved suspicions, withdrawn himself into the schism of the Istrians against the synod of Constantinople. When he had come to Rome, and had received from us, by the Lord's help, an account of the matter, he corrected his error by resuming communion in the Lord's Body. Therefore, since, as has been said, he did not fall into heresy, but strayed from the sacred ministries of the universal Church as it were out of zeal for a right intention, we, taking counsel for his weakness and his needs, and providing above all, out of regard for piety, for his sustenance, have determined that he be incardinated in your church of Syracuse.' (Register, book
iv, letter 14.) Likewise to Fortunatus, bishop of Naples: 'We recall that your Fraternity requested of us that we should grant Gratian, a deacon of the church of Venafro, to your church to be incardinated. And since he has neither a bishop whom he may serve, nor a church of his own — the enemy, that is, preventing it — in which he ought to exercise his ministry, we have judged that your petition should not be deferred. Therefore, by these present writings, we have deemed it necessary to grant him to you, you being at liberty, our authority intervening, to establish that deacon, God being favourable, as a cardinal of your church.' (Register, book vi, letter 11.) Likewise to Cyprian the deacon:
'As your Charity has diligently laboured on behalf of the person of our brother and fellow-bishop John, that he might, God being the author, be ordained in the church of Syracuse, so now it is necessary that through the endeavours of your Charity the aids of governance also be ministered to him. For he asserts that he had a certain presbyter of his own, who, however, is said to have been ordained by our brother and fellow-bishop Leo in the church of Catania.
And since he is going to a new church, and it is necessary that he have his own men there, so that, when he is hard pressed by the tumults of affairs, he may find in his own privacy a place where he may rest, you ought gently and sweetly to persuade the aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Leo that he ought to yield the aforesaid presbyter to him, lest he seem perhaps to abandon one already ordained, whom he so kindly conceded for ordination.' (Register, book vi, chapter 20.) 21.
Gregory so most zealously maintained that most ancient order of ecclesiastical custom, handed down from the apostles and solemnly preserved even to his own times, that he set no one, however much he might excel in sanctity, wisdom, or nobility, before the senior clergy in assembly, in seating, in station, or in signature. Whence, writing to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari, he says: 'Liberatus, of whom your Fraternity has informed us, who is said to discharge the office of a deacon, if he was not made a cardinal by your predecessor, ought by no reasoning to be preferred to the deacons ordained by you; lest you seem in a certain manner, by supplanting them, to reject those whom you are known to have approved by consecrating them.
Therefore restrain the aforesaid Liberatus, whom a spirit of ambition that must be checked puffs up, with all urgency from the depravity of his purpose, and appoint him to stand last among the deacons; lest, while he contends to be unlawfully preferred, he be judged unworthy of the place in which he is now set. Yet if you shall be prompted by his obedience, and shall afterward wish to make him a cardinal, unless he shall have merited, by solemn usage, the cession of his own bishop, remember that you must abstain from his incardination; since you do not doubt that it accords with equity that you should not delay to observe toward others that which you yourself also desire to be observed toward you.' (Register, book i, letter 83.) 22.
Prompted, namely, by the order of this most ancient custom, Gregory used to commend the churches of deceased bishops to neighbouring bishops, for the making of an inventory and the choosing of a bishop of lawful reputation, writing in this manner to John of Squillace: 'A report sent directly has disclosed the death of that prelate. Wherefore we solemnly delegate to your Fraternity the task of the visitation of the bereaved church; which it befits you so to fulfil that nothing concerning the promotions of the clergy, the revenue, the ornaments, the ministries, or whatever it may be in the patrimony of that same church, be presumed upon by anyone.
And therefore your Fraternity shall hasten to go to the aforesaid church, and make haste to admonish its clergy and people with assiduous exhortations, that, laying aside partisanship, with one and the same consent they may seek out for themselves such a priest to be set over them as may be found worthy of so great a ministry, and may in no way be rejected by the venerable canons. And when he has been requested, with the solemnity of a decree strengthened by the signatures of all, and with the testimony of your Charity's letter, let him come to us to be consecrated;
admonishing your Fraternity also that you permit no one to be chosen from another church, unless perchance among the clergy of those same cities in which you bestow the office of visitation no one worthy of the episcopate — which we do not believe will happen — could be found: providing above all things that they do not presume to aspire to the merit of any conversation of a lay person, and that you incur not the peril of your order, which God forbid. But the monasteries, if any are established in that parish, we grant to be under your care and disposition, until a proper bishop shall have been ordained there: that the vigilance of your solicitude may, God helping, respond by action befitting its resolve.' (Register, book ii, letter
38.) Likewise to the clergy, the order, and the people: 'Learning of the death of your prelate, we made it our care solemnly to delegate the visitation of the bereaved church to our brother and fellow-bishop John: to whom we gave it in charge that he suffer nothing concerning the promotions of the clergy, the revenue, the ornaments, or the ministries to be usurped by anyone; whom it befits you to obey with assiduous exhortations; so that in ecclesiastical service a priest may be sought out who differs by no reasoning from the venerable canons. And when he has been requested, with the solemnity of a decree strengthened by the signatures of all, and with the visitor's page accompanying, let him come to us to be ordained;
providing above all things that you do not presume to choose a lay person of whatever life or merit: for know that not only is such a one by no reasoning to be advanced to the summit of the episcopate, but also that you can by no intercessions merit pardon; but know without doubt that all among you who shall be found to have aspired on behalf of a lay person are to be made strangers to their office and to communion.' (Register, book ii, letter 29.) 23. On no occasion would Gregory suffer anything of the offerings or estates of any churches whatever to be taken away. Therefore he writes to Maximian, bishop of Syracuse, among other things, saying:
'We have taken care to admonish your Charity that, if any of the bishops shall depart from this light, or, which God forbid, shall be removed for his own excesses, the assembled clergy of the hierarchy and all the elders of the clergy, making in his presence an inventory of the church's goods, all that shall be found be minutely described; and that, not as was formerly said to be done, any species, or anything else of the church's goods, be taken away as though for the labour of making the inventory. For thus do we desire that those things which pertain to the maintenance of the resources of the poor be discharged, that absolutely no occasion of venality be left, in their goods, to grasping men.
Let the visitors of the churches, and their clergy also, who are wearied together with them through the parishes of a city not their own, receive some subsidy for their labour, by your arrangement. For it is just that they should there obtain a stipend, who are found for the time to lend their service.' (Register, book iv, letter 1.) 24. Gregory shrank with all the effort of his mind, as from a certain pestilential burden, from accepting from his bishops the customary gifts or presents. Whence to Felix, bishop of Messina: 'It befits us, by our consideration, to remit those customs which are known to bring a burden upon the churches, lest they be compelled to render that on account of which they ought rather to expect something to be rendered to them.
To your own clergy indeed, or to those of others, you ought to observe custom inviolate, and to transmit to them yearly what is customary: but as for us, henceforth we forbid that anything be transmitted. And since we take no delight in presents, the little palm-branches which your Fraternity sent we have received with thanksgiving; but lest you might have felt any loss therefrom, we caused them to be sold at a worthy price, and have transmitted that to your Fraternity under seal. But because we have learned that your Charity wishes to come to us, we admonish you by these present writings that you ought not to undertake the labour of coming;
but pray for us, that the more the intervals of the journey separate us, the more we may be joined together in mutual charity in our souls, Christ helping; so that, aiding one another by mutual entreaty, we may render up the office we have undertaken, entire, to the Judge who is to come.' (Register, book i, letter 66, indiction 9.) Likewise to John, bishop of Prima Justiniana, to whom he both sends the pallium and commits his own vicariate, he writes after much: 'The gifts of your Sanctity I had been altogether unwilling to accept, because it would be very unfitting that we should seem to have received presents from brethren who are despoiled and afflicted; but your envoys overcame me by another argument, bringing them to one from whom the offerings of your Fraternity could not be refused.'
(Book ii, letter 23.) 25. Hence it is that Gregory, taking no pleasure in wearying any of the bishops by a journey to the city, committed his own vicariate throughout all Sicily to Maximian, bishop of Syracuse; commanding that all the bishops should come to Rome once in five years. (Register, book ii, letter 7.) Whence, writing to Cyprian the deacon, he says: 'Your Charity knows that this custom formerly obtained, that our brethren and fellow-bishops should assemble at Rome from Sicily once in three years; but we, taking counsel for their labour, know that we have established that they should present themselves here once in five years,' and the rest. (Register, book vii, letter
22.) Here it is to be noted that, if the blessed Gregory panted after presents — which it is impious to believe — he would not have protracted the coming of the bishops from three years to five, but would rather, without doubt, have hastened it from three years to two. 26. But how would he gladly accept presents, who, although he feared to refuse the alms of another that were to be dispensed, yet both accepted them with fear and dispensed them with the greatest caution: who was so accustomed to give his own and not to accept another's, that he even utterly refused the prices of certain things. Whence he writes to Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria, among other things, saying: 'As to what you write concerning the timbers, that they were short, the quality of the ship by which they were transmitted caused it:
for if a larger ship had come, I could have transmitted even larger timbers. But as to what you say, that if we transmit larger ones, you will give a price: we indeed give thanks for your bounty, but we are forbidden to accept a price, the Gospel interdicting it. For we did not buy those timbers which we transmit: and how can we accept a price, when it is written: Freely you have received, freely give? Now therefore, according to the capacity of the ship, we have transmitted small timbers by the shipmaster: but in the following year, if it shall please Almighty God, we prepare larger ones.' (Register, book viii, letter 29.) 27.
It is no wonder if this most liberal pontiff took no customary payments and no presents from his suffragans, to whom he himself, if anything seemed necessary, ministered right cheerfully. Whence he writes to Venantius, bishop of Perugia, saying: 'We have learned that our brother and fellow-bishop Ecclesius suffers greatly from cold, for the reason that he has no winter garment. And since he asked that something ought to be transmitted to him from us, we have transmitted to your Fraternity for this purpose, by the bearer of these presents, a woollen cloak, a tunic, and a breast-covering, that they ought to be transmitted to him from you without delay. And therefore study to transmit to the aforesaid brother of ours, with all speed;
and do not omit to report to us by your letters this very thing, that you have transmitted it; but so act that, since the cold is severe, you make no delay whatever in transmitting it.' (Register, book x, letter 55, indiction 5.) Likewise to the same Ecclesius, bishop of Chiusi: 'Receiving the writings of your Fraternity, we were saddened that we learned through them that you were both grievously infirm and still weak. And although we had the desire of seeing your Sanctity, yet you did well to keep yourself there at this time: lest, coming hither, you should by the trouble of your sickness cause us a relapse of sadness.' And after a few words:
'But we have transmitted to you one horse, such as we could find, of the blessing of Saint Peter, that you may have something on which you may be carried after your infirmity.' (Register, book x, letter 45, indiction 3.) 28. Enlarged by such a patron, the pontiffs of that time began both to adorn new churches which they constructed from the foundations, and most splendidly to renovate the old ones also. For Gregory sought out nothing in his bishops more curiously than sanctity, wisdom, and liberality. And that this may shine forth more significantly, I shall adduce certain of his letters, by whose testimony my reader may learn the faults of certain bishops reproved.
For he says in a letter to Secundus, the servant of God, among other things, thus: 29. 'Stir up our brother Marinianus, the bishop, with such words as you can, for I suspect that he has fallen asleep. For certain men came to me among whom were some old beggars, who were examined by me, and reported both what they had received, and from whom, and item by item, how much and by whom things had been given to them on the road. When I diligently inquired of them concerning the aforesaid brother what he had given them, they answered that they had asked him, but had received absolutely nothing from him, so that they did not even receive bread on the way, which it was always customary for all in that church to give. For they said: He answered us, saying: I have not what I might give you.
And I marvel if he who has garments, has silver, has storerooms, has not what he ought to give to the poor. Tell him therefore that he change his mind together with his place. Let him not believe that reading and prayer alone suffice for him, so that, withdrawn, he may study to sit and to bear no fruit from his hand; but let him have an open hand, let him run to those suffering necessity, let him reckon another's want as his own: for if he has not these things, he holds the empty name of a bishop.' (Register, book vi, letter 30.) 30. Likewise to Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, after certain matters: 'It had been reported to us that, kindled with inconsiderate zeal, you broke the images of the saints, under this pretext, as it were, that they ought not to be adored. And indeed, because you had forbidden that they be adored, we altogether praised you:
but we reprove that you broke them. Tell me, brother, when was it ever done by any priest, or heard of, what you did? If nothing else, at least this ought to have recalled you, that, despising your other brethren, you should believe yourself alone to be both holy and wise. For it is one thing to adore a picture, another to learn, through the story of the picture, what is to be adored. For what Scripture affords to those who read, this a picture affords to the unlettered who behold it: since in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow, in it they read who do not know letters. Whence, and especially for the Gentiles, a picture takes the place of reading. Which it especially behooved you to attend to, who dwell among the Gentiles:
lest, while you were incautiously kindled by right zeal, you should engender a scandal to fiercer spirits. Therefore that ought not to have been broken which was placed in the churches, not for adoration, but solely for the instruction of the minds of the ignorant. And because antiquity, not without reason, admitted that the stories of the saints be depicted in venerable places, if you had seasoned your zeal with discretion, you could without doubt both have salubriously obtained the things you intended, and have gathered the flock rather than scattered it — nay, the scattered flock rather than scatter it: so that the merited name of pastor might excel in you, and not the fault of a scatterer weigh upon you.
But while you carry this out in this over-incautious impulse of your soul, you are reported so to have scandalized your sons, that a very great part of them has suspended itself from your communion. When therefore will you lead the straying sheep to the Lord's fold, you who are not able to retain those you have? Wherefore we exhort you that even now you study to be solicitous, and restrain yourself from this presumption: and that you make haste, with paternal sweetness, with every endeavour and every study, to recall to yourself the minds of those whom you know to be disjoined from your unity.' (Register, book xi, letter 13.) 31. To Januarius likewise, bishop of Cagliari, after certain matters he writes, saying:
'Among manifold complaints, Isidore, a most illustrious man, has complained that he was excommunicated and anathematized by your Fraternity without cause. When we wished to learn from your clerk, who was present, for what reason this had been done, it became known that it was done for no other cause than that he had done you an injury. Which matter has vehemently afflicted us, because, if it is so, you show that you think nothing of heavenly things, but signify that you have an earthly conversation: since, for the vindication of a private injury, you have brought in the malediction of an anathema, which is forbidden by the sacred rules. Whence for the rest be altogether circumspect and solicitous, and do not again presume to inflict such things on anyone in defence of your own injury.
For if you shall do any such thing, know that it shall afterward be avenged upon you.' (Register, book xi, letter 49.) 32. Likewise to the same: 'The preacher of Almighty God, the apostle Paul, commands, saying: Rebuke not an elder (1 Tim. v, 1). But this rule of his is to be observed in this case, when the fault of the elder does not by his example draw the hearts of the younger to destruction. For where an elder offers to the young an example unto destruction, there he is to be smitten with strict rebuke. For it is written: A snare to the young are all of you (Isa. xlii, 22). And again the prophet says: The sinner of a hundred years is accursed (Isa. lxv, 20).
But such wickedness concerning your old age has come to my ears, that, unless we still weighed it with human consideration, we would smite it with a settled malediction. For it has been told me that on the Lord's Day, before you celebrated the solemnities of the Mass, you set out to reap the corn of the bearer of these presents; and after reaping it, you celebrated the solemnities of the Mass. After the solemnities of the Mass also, you feared not in the least to root up the boundaries of that possession. What penalty ought to follow such a deed, all who hear know. But we were doubtful concerning so great a perversity; yet our son Cyriacus the abbot, being questioned by us while he was at Cagliari, declared that he had learned it to be so.
And because we still spare your grey hairs, we exhort you: come at last to your senses, old man, and restrain yourself from such levity of manners and perversity of works: for the nearer you become to death, the more solicitous and fearful you ought to be. And indeed sentence had well-nigh been hurled against you; but because we know your simplicity together with your old age, for the present we are silent.' (Book ix, letter 1.) 33. Gregory forbade absolutely all pontiffs from the reading of the books of the Gentiles. Wherefore to Desiderius, bishop of Gaul, who was requesting the pallium, he writes, saying:
'When many good things had been reported to us concerning your studies, such gladness was born in our heart that we could by no means suffer to deny those things which your Fraternity asked to be granted to it. But after this it reached us — which we cannot mention without shame — that your Fraternity expounds grammar to certain persons. Which thing we took ill, and have vehemently spurned, so that we turned into groaning and sadness what had first been said; because the praises of Christ do not find room in one mouth together with the praises of Jove. And how grave and nefarious it is that bishops should sing what does not befit even a religious layman, do you yourself consider.
For although our most beloved son Candidus the presbyter, coming afterward and being subtly questioned on this matter, denied it, and endeavoured to excuse you, yet it has not even now departed from our mind; because, as much as it is execrable that this be narrated of a priest, so much does it behove that, whether it be so or not, be ascertained by strict and truthful satisfaction. Whence if, after this, these things which were brought to us shall clearly appear to be false, and it shall be established that you do not devote yourself to trifles and secular letters, then we shall give thanks to our God, who did not permit your heart to be stained by the blasphemous praises of nefarious men, and we shall treat, now secure and without any doubt, of granting the things you ask.' (Register, book xi, letter 54.) 34.
Nonetheless he writes to Natalis, bishop of Salona, saying: 'From many coming from your city, dearest brother, I have learned that, the pastoral care being abandoned, you are occupied with banquets alone. Which things heard I would not believe, unless I approved them by the proofs of your own actions. For that you in no way devote yourself to reading, in no way keep vigil over exhortation, but even are ignorant of the very usage of the ecclesiastical order — this is a testimony that you know not how to preserve reverence toward those under whom you are set.' (Register, book ii, letter 18.) 35. But when Natalis strove by his own writings, through vain philosophy, to prove himself blameless, the most gentle teacher Gregory wrote back thus:
'In defence of banquets your Fraternity recalls the banquet of Abraham, in which, according to sacred eloquence, he is said to have received three angels. But by this example of a banquet, neither do we reprove your Beatitude, if we learn that you receive angels into hospitality. Again your Fraternity relates that Isaac, being satisfied, gave a blessing to his son. Both of which things of the Old Testament, since they were so done according to history that yet they signified something by allegory, would that we might so be able to run through deeds done in the reading of them, that we might also be able to perceive, by foreseeing, deeds to be done. For he indeed, saluting one in the three angels, declared that the subsistences of the Trinity are of one substance.
But he, being satisfied, blesses his son: because he who is filled with divine banquets, his understanding is extended into the virtue of prophecy. Now the divine banquets are the words of sacred eloquence. If therefore you read assiduously, if, drawing an example from things outward, you penetrate inward things, you fill, as it were satisfied from the hunt of the field, the belly of the mind, that, the son being set before you — the received people, that is — you may be able to announce things to come. But he already grows dim in this world who prophesies anything concerning God: because assuredly it is fitting that he should here already see less through concupiscence, whose sense flashes within through understanding. These things therefore draw unto yourselves; and if you recognize yourselves to be such, there is nothing that you should doubt concerning our estimation.
I find also that your Beatitude rejoices, if it sustains the name of a glutton together with the author of the things. Which I briefly explain thus: that if a falsehood is spoken concerning you, you truly sustain this name together with the author of the things. But if it is true concerning you, who doubts that this was false concerning him? An equal name does not avail to absolve you, whose cause is unequal. For the thief also, about to perish, received the cross together with him; but him whom his own guilt held, an equal crucifixion did not absolve.' (Register, book ii, letter 52.) Yet I, as much as I am able, beseech with prayers, that the author of us both, God, may join your most holy Fraternity to himself, not only in name, but also in cause.
But the banquets which are made out of the intention of bestowing charity, your Sanctity rightly praises in your letters; yet it is to be known that they then truly proceed from charity, when in them the life of no absent person is bitten, no one is reproved out of mockery; and when in them are heard not the vain fables of secular affairs, but the words of sacred reading, when no more is served to the body than is necessary, but its infirmity alone is refreshed, that it may be kept for the use of exercising virtue. If therefore you do these things in your banquets, I confess you are a master of the abstinent. But as to the testimony of Paul the apostle which you put to me, in which he says: He who eats not, let him not judge him that eats (Rom.
xiv, 5), I altogether esteem it to have been incongruous: because neither do I not eat, nor was it said by the apostle Paul for this, that the members of Christ, which in his body — that is, in the Church — are connected to one another by the joint of charity, should in no way exercise any care concerning themselves. But if neither I pertained to you, nor you at all pertained to me, I should rightly be compelled to keep silence, so as not to reprove him who could not be amended. This sentence therefore was said solely on account of those who are eager to judge those whose care is not committed to them. But since we, God being the author, are one, if we keep silent about those things which are to be corrected by us, we greatly transgress.' 36.
Gregory by no means permitted any of the pontiffs to depart from his own parish even for a little while, save by an utterly inevitable necessity: whom indeed he most vehemently forbade to be occupied in worldly affairs. Whence he writes to Romanus, the defensor, saying: 'It has been reported to us that our most reverend brother Basil the bishop is occupied, as though one of the laity, in secular affairs, and uselessly serves the praetorian offices.'
Since this affair both renders him contemptible and annihilates the reverence due to a priest, as soon as your Experience has received this command, compel him by strict enforcement so to return that, while you press upon him there, he may not be permitted to linger under any pretext whatever for five days: lest, if in any manner you allow him to prolong his stay there any further, you begin along with him to be gravely blameworthy in our sight. (Register, book x, letter 10.) 37. Likewise to Anthemius the subdeacon: It has come to our notice that Pimenius, bishop of the city of Amalfi, is not content to reside in his own church, but wanders abroad through various places.
Seeing this, others too do not keep themselves within the fortress, but, following his example, choose rather to dwell outside. And because, acting thus, they themselves rather invite the enemy to their own plundering, we therefore charge you by this authority that you do not cease to threaten the aforesaid bishop, so that he may not presume to do this henceforth, but reside in his own church after the manner of a priest. And if perchance you learn that he is not corrected after your threat, you shall take care both to assign him to a monastery and by every means to inform us, so that you may learn again from our command what you ought to do. (Register, book vi, letter 23.) 38.
It is no wonder that Gregory, out of the ministry entrusted to him, took care to rebuke with wholesome words the vices of any prelates whatsoever, seeing that he did not hesitate to commit to the memory of posterity, for the instruction of the people, the fall of his own aunt. For, wishing to distinguish by illustrative examples the calling of the many from the election of the few—according to that Gospel saying which declares, Many are called, but few are chosen (Matt. xxii, 14)—he sets forth, saying: My father had three sisters, all of whom were consecrated virgins: of these one was called Tharsilla, another Gordiana, another Aemiliana. All being converted by one love, consecrated at one and the same time, living under regular discipline in their own house, they led a common life.
And when they had long continued in the same manner of life, Tharsilla and Aemiliana began by daily increases to grow up into the love of their Creator, and, though here in body alone, daily to pass over in spirit to things eternal. But on the contrary Gordiana's spirit began, by daily decreases, to grow lukewarm from the love of that inward warmth, and little by little to return to the love of this world. Now Tharsilla was often wont to say to her sister Aemiliana with a great groan: I see that our sister Gordiana is not of our lot. For I perceive that she is flowing away outward, and does not guard the heart to that which she had purposed. Whom they took care to correct daily with gentle reproof, and to reform from levity of manners to the gravity of her habit.
She indeed would suddenly resume a countenance of gravity amid the words of reproof; but when the hour of that same reproof had passed, straightway there passed also the assumed gravity of decorum, and she soon returned to frivolous talk. She rejoiced in the company of lay girls, and any person who was not given over to this world was to her exceedingly burdensome.
But on a certain night to this Tharsilla, my aunt—who among her sisters had grown up in the honour and summit of sanctity, by the virtue of continual prayer, by zealous mortification, by singular abstinence, by the venerable gravity of her life—there appeared, as she herself related, in a vision my great-great-grandfather Felix, prelate of this Roman Church, and showed her a dwelling of perpetual brightness, saying: Come, for in this dwelling of light I receive you. She, soon after seized by a fever, came to her last day.
And as with noble women and men who are dying, many gather to console their kinsfolk, so at that hour men and women, awaiting her departure, stood around her bed, among whom my mother also was present. When suddenly, looking upward, she saw Jesus coming, and with great intensity began to cry out to those standing by, saying: Depart, depart, Jesus is coming. And while she fixed her gaze upon Him whom she beheld, that holy soul was loosed from the flesh; and so great a fragrance of a wondrous odour was suddenly diffused that the very sweetness showed to all that the Author of sweetness had come thither.
And when her body, after the manner of the dead, was stripped for washing, it was found that from the long practice of prayer a hardened skin had grown up on her elbows and knees, like that of camels; and what her living spirit had ever done, her dead flesh bore witness to. Now these things happened before the day of the Lord's Nativity. When that had passed, she soon appeared to her sister Aemiliana through the visitation of a nocturnal vision, saying: Come, that whereas I kept the Lord's Nativity without you, I may now keep the holy Theophany together with you. To her the other, at once solicitous for the salvation of her sister Gordiana, replied: And if I come alone, to whom do I leave our sister Gordiana? To her, with a sorrowful countenance, she again said:
Come, for our sister Gordiana has been reckoned among the laywomen. This vision was soon followed by bodily affliction; and just as had been foretold, before the day of the Lord's Manifestation, as that same affliction grew heavier, she died. But Gordiana, as soon as she found that she remained alone, her depravity grew; and what had before lain hidden in the desire of her thought, she afterward carried out in the effect of a depraved deed. For, forgetful of the fear of the Lord, forgetful of modesty and reverence, forgetful of her consecration, she afterward took as husband the manager of her own fields. Behold, all three were formerly converted by one ardour, but not all remained in one and the same zeal, because, according to the Lord's word: Many are called, but few are chosen (Matt.
xxii, 14). (Homily 38 on the Gospels.) 39. The negligences of his subjects too Gregory both subtly investigated and corrected with the most stringent reproofs. Whence, writing to Vitalianus, bishop of Siponto: If, he says, you had been a keeper of the religious habit, or knew how to be a bishop, it would not have been permitted, with you placed there, either for the daughter of Tullianus of glorious memory, the master of soldiery, to return, with her religious garments cast off, to a secular habit, or to send us a perverse letter. But because you are weighed down by excessive sloth and excessive torpor, this thing, at present unlawful, has been committed with impunity, to your disgrace.
For if, as we have said above, you had been vigilant, the vengeance upon a most wicked woman ought to have reached us before her fault did. Since therefore you are so dull and so negligent that, unless you have experienced canonical coercion upon yourself, you know not how to keep the strictness of discipline in others—how you ought to be vigilant we shall show you, if it please the Lord, at a fitting time. (Register, book viii, letter 8.) 40. Likewise to Sergius the defensor: If you were a man, or had any discretion (in another reading, strictness), you ought so to have proved yourself a keeper of regular discipline, that those things which are there unlawfully committed vengeance might correct before the report of them reached us.
But since excessive folly makes you negligent, we are not only offended concerning those matters, but are moreover no less provoked to punish your own sloth. (Register, book viii, letter 9.) 41. Likewise to Anthemius, subdeacon of Campania: It has come to our notice that our brother and fellow bishop Paschasius is so slothful and negligent in all things that in nothing can it be recognized that he is a bishop, so much so that neither his church, nor the monasteries, nor the children of the church, nor the oppressed, nor the poor feel any zeal of his love toward themselves, nor does he lend any help of defence to those who supplicate him in matters wherein it is just;
and—what is yet more grievous to say—by no reasoning does he suffer himself to receive the counsels of the wise and of those who advise rightly, so that what he cannot himself attend to, he might at least learn from another; but, with the matters that pertain to the care of a Pastor set aside, he occupies himself uselessly with the whole of his zeal in building a ship. Whence, as is reported, it has come to pass that he has already lost four hundred solidi or more. This too is added to his faults, that being thus daily despised, he is said to go down to the sea with one or two clerics, so that both among his own he is a byword, and to strangers he appears so mean and despicable that he is judged to have in himself nothing of episcopal genius or reverence.
But if it is so, know that it is not without your fault, since you have put off rebuking and coercing him as is fitting. Since therefore all this not only condemns him, but is proved also to pertain to the reproach of the priestly office, we will that you ought, before other priests, or certain of his own noble sons, to protest to him and to exhort him that, the vice of torpor shaken off, he ought not to be slothful, but to be watchful in the care of his church and monasteries; to show fatherly charity to his sons; to be prompt with discretion in the defence of the poor; to be upright in matters wherein justice shall counsel; to receive gladly the counsels of the wise:
so that both that city may be able to be consoled by his solicitude, and he himself may be able to cover the faults of his sloth. But if—which we do not believe—after this our exhortation he shall attempt to be negligent still in his accustomed manner, he is by every means to be sent to us: that, placed here, he may be able to learn what and how it befits a priest to act according to the fear of God. (Book xiii, letter 26.) 42. Likewise to the same: As often as we hear those things concerning our brothers and fellow bishops which are able both to show them reprehensible and to beget sorrow in us, necessity constrains us to think not moderately about their amendment.
Since therefore it has been reported to us that the bishops of Campania are so negligent that, unmindful of their honour, they show neither toward the churches nor toward their sons the care of fatherly vigilance, nor bear solicitude for the monasteries, nor expend themselves in the protection of the oppressed poor: therefore by this authority we charge you that, having called them together to you, from our command you strictly admonish them that they ought no longer to be slothful, but to hold a priestly zeal, and to show forth their solicitude in deed; and so to be vigilant in those things which it befits them justly to do according to God, that no fresh murmur concerning them may exasperate us.
But if you learn that any of them is negligent after this, send him to us without any excuse, that he may be able to feel in himself, by regular strictness, how grievous a thing it is to be unwilling to be corrected from those things which are reprehensible and greatly to be blamed. (Register, book xiii, letter 27.) Likewise to Victor, bishop of Palermo, after some matters: You understand, he says, of what fault you already are, that I, placed so far away, should know the things done in your city, and, occupied with so many cares, should dispose what ought to be done. (Register, book v, letter 6.) 43. It is indeed to be noted that, just as that most discerning prelate Gregory hardly ever, or never, let manifest crimes go without vengeance:
so assuredly in doubtful matters he never at any time pronounced a definite sentence. Wherefore he writes to Andreas, bishop of Taranto, saying: Whoever, conscious of his own guilt, strives to appease it now by worthy penance, shall behold the tribunal of the eternal Judge without fear. For we have learned by manifest truth that you had a concubine, concerning whom also a contrary suspicion has arisen in certain persons. But because in ambiguous matters judgment ought not to be absolute, we have chosen to commit this to your own conscience. On which account, if, being established in holy orders, you recollect that you are stained by intercourse with her, having laid down the honour of the priesthood, presume by no means to approach to minister:
sciturusinanimaetuxpericulomi-nistrare, etDeonostrotesinedubioreddereratio-nem, sihujusscelerisconscius, ineoquoesordine, celansveritatempermanerevolueris.(??) ( Regist. l. iii, ep. 45.) 44. ObhocsollicitissimusEcclesiaeDeicustosGre-gorius, uniuscujusqueconsiliariosarguens, quantuminseerat, omnesomninosalvarecertabat. UndeVe-nantio, exmonachopatricio, postaliquascribens, ait: (??) Scioquiacumepistolameasuscipitur, proti-nusamiciconveniunt, litteraticlientesvocantur, etdecausavitaeconsiliumafautoribusmortisquaeri-tur: quiduranonte, sedrestuasdiligunt, nulla (??)bi, nisiquaeadtempusplaceant, loquuntur.
knowing that you minister at the peril of your soul, and that you will without doubt render an account to our God, if, conscious of this crime, you shall have willed to remain in the order in which you are, concealing the truth. (Register, book iii, letter 45.) 44. On this account Gregory, that most solicitous keeper of the Church of God, rebuking the counsellors of each man, strove, as far as in him lay, to save absolutely all. Whence, writing to Venantius, an ex-monk of patrician rank, after some matters, he says: I know that when my letter is received, straightway friends assemble, lettered clients are summoned, and counsel about the cause of life is sought from the abettors of death: who love not you, but your possessions, and speak to you nothing but what may please for the time.
For such, as you yourself remember, were formerly the counsellors who led you to the crime of so great an offence. And—that I may speak to you something from a secular author (Seneca, letter 5)—with friends all things are to be discussed, but first concerning the friends themselves. But if in your cause you seek a man for a counsellor, I beg you, receive me as your counsellor. None can be more faithful to you for counsel than he who loves not what is yours, but you yourself. (Register, book i, letter 34.) Likewise to John, bishop of Constantinople, after several matters: I had written to the most blessed man the lord John;
but I believe that that familiar young man of yours wrote back to me—he who has as yet learned nothing of God, who knows not the bowels of charity, who is accused by all in wicked matters, who daily plots against the deaths of various persons through secret wills, and neither fears the Lord nor blushes before men. Believe me, most dear brother, if you have perfectly the zeal of truth, correct him first, that from those who are near to you, even those who are not near may be the better amended by the example. Do not accept his tongue. He ought to be directed to the counsel of your Holiness, and not your Holiness to be bent to his words. For if you listen to him, I know that he will not be able to have peace with his own brethren. (Register, book
iii, letter 53.) Likewise to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari: Those, he says, by whose counsels you ploughed up another's harvest, and did not in the least fear to root up boundary-markers, we decree to be excommunicated for two months; so that if anything befall them after the manner of men within the space of two months, they be not deprived of the blessing of the viaticum. Henceforth, however, be on your guard against their counsels, and keep yourself carefully: lest, if you become a disciple in evil to those to whom you ought to have been a master in good, we spare neither your simplicity any longer, nor your old age. (Register, book ix, letter 1.) Likewise to Callinicus, exarch of Italy, after several matters:
Know this, that it grieved me not a little that the mayor of the palace, who received the petition of a bishop wishing to return from schism, professed that he had lost it, and afterward it was held by the adversaries of the Church. Which I judge to have been done not by his negligence, but by his venality. Whence I wonder that your Excellency did not in the least punish this fault in him; but nevertheless, because I wondered at this, I quickly reproached my own self. For where the lord Justinus offers counsel—he who has not peace with the Catholic Church—there heretics cannot be condemned. Moreover, you declare that you wish to keep the birthday of the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, in the city of Rome; and we pray the Almighty
Lord that He may protect you with His mercy, and grant you to fulfil your vows. But I ask that the aforesaid most eloquent man come along; and if he will not come, let him withdraw from your service; or at least, if your Excellency perchance, owing to arising causes, cannot come, let him nevertheless communicate with the unity of the holy Church. For I hear he is a good man, were he not of the worst error. (Register, book ix, letter 9.) 45. Likewise to Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, after many matters: It has come to me that your Charity willingly receives evil men into its company or counsel, so much so that you have as a familiar a certain presbyter who, after he had fallen, is even now said to wallow in his pollution of iniquity.
This indeed we do not at all believe, since he who receives such a one does not correct crimes, but rather seems to give license to others of perpetrating such things. But lest perchance by some stealth or dissimulation he has persuaded you, that he might be received by you and still be held in favour, it befits you not only to expel him far from you, but also by every means, with priestly zeal, to cut away his own excesses; and as for others who are recorded to be depraved, restrain them by fatherly exhortation from their depravity, and be earnest to recall them to the way of rectitude.
But if—which God forbid—you see them profit in nothing by wholesome admonition, you shall take care to cast these too far from you, lest their depravities, from the fact that they are received, seem in no way displeasing, and not only do they themselves remain uncorrected, but by their reception others also be corrupted. And consider how both execrable among men and perilous before the eyes of God it is, if through him by whom crimes ought to be punished, vices seem to be nourished. These things therefore, most beloved brother, diligently attend to, and be earnest so to act that you may wholesomely correct the depraved, and not bring the scandal of the fellowship of the wicked into the souls of your sons. (Register, book xi, letter 13.) 46.
That one man be punished for another's fault, Gregory, that most upright judge, by no means permitted. And therefore, writing to Gudiscalcus, duke of Campania, he says: That solicitude of superiors is useful, that caution praiseworthy, in which reason does everything, and fury claims nothing for itself. Power therefore must be restrained under reason, nor is anything to be done before the agitated mind returns to tranquillity. For in the time of commotion, wrath thinks everything just that it has done. It has come to us, then, that your Greatness was driven by such an impulse of fury as to cause not only the doors of the monastery of the holy Archangel to be broken, but even what was found there to be plundered.
Moreover, you are said to have so blazed up against the abbot of that same monastery that, unless by hiding himself he had lain concealed during the time of your wrath, he would have incurred no light peril; and finally, that, terrified by fear of you, he does not even dare hitherto to leave the house in which he had formerly taken refuge. And lest perchance you should seem to have done this in vain, you charge the flight of that very monk who went over to the enemy—as far as has been reported to us—as a crime against him, asserting that he fled by his will. But if it is so, we are grieved, and greatly marvel at your wisdom. For if you think it lawful that one man's fault be harmful to others, many can be liable to this crime.
For the servants of divers nobles, the clerics of many churches, the monks of divers monasteries, the men of many judges, have often given themselves over to the enemy. Therefore, if this is believed, assuredly the masters of servants, the bishops of clerics, the abbots of monks, the judges of divers fugitives, are all set under fault and crime. Have not, even in the days of your Greatness, many from the city in which you dwell slipped away by flight to the soldiers of the Lombards? And who could be found of such want of discretion and such great folly as to reckon that their iniquity should be imputed to you? (Book x, letter 11.) 47. The liberty of each individual man Gregory nonetheless defended with free voice against the insolences of judges.
Whence, writing to Leontius, an ex-consul, after some matters, he says: If Libertinus is found blameworthy in the matter of this security-bond, what he may plead for himself in other causes I know not: yet this one thing I know well and firmly, that even if he committed any fraud against the public revenues, his property ought to have been distrained, not his liberty. For in this—that free men are beaten or imprisoned—to say nothing of the fact that Almighty God is offended, to say nothing of the fact that your reputation is gravely burdened, yet the times of our most pious emperor are utterly darkened. For this is the difference between the kings of the nations and the emperors of the Romans, that the kings of the nations are lords of slaves, but the emperor of the Romans is lord of free men.
Whence you too, whatever you do, ought to do it first indeed with justice preserved, and then with liberty guarded in all things. For it is written: What you do not wish to be done to you, see that you do not do to another (Tob. iv, 16). And Truth itself says: Whatsoever you wish that men should do to you, do you also the same to them (Matt. vii, 12). In the liberty therefore of those who have been committed to your examination, you ought especially to attend to your own: and if you yourselves do not wish your liberty to be injured by your superiors, guard the liberty of your subjects by honouring it. For we know who said: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt. xxiv, 35).
And because His words do not pass away, but are in all things fulfilled, let us fear what He again says: With what measure you have measured, it shall be measured to you again (Matt. vii, 2). But what does your Glory suppose—that if we act proudly, if cruelly, God being despised, we appease a man to ourselves? By no means. For He who is despised stirs against us the very one whom, with God despised, we wish to appease. Let us therefore take care in all things to appease God, who is able to bring back even angry men to gentleness. For, as I said, even gentle men, when God is indignant, are provoked to wrath.
But if it is said that without stripes and terrors public frauds cannot be discovered, this I could admit, if in the matter of the accounts the lord Leontius had not come. For it is true that those are wont to exceed all measure who are deficient in sense and in tongue. (Register, book x, letter 51.) 48. The cupidities and crimes of all judges Gregory restrained, as with the bit and bridle of his pontificate, by the most powerful authorities; and those whom he could not gently correct from depravity, he made public by the reproofs of his writings. Whence he writes to Romanus, exarch of Italy, residing at Ravenna, saying:
With your Excellency, the audacity of the depraved ought to find rather the goads of correction than the solace of defence. For it is grievous enough that a depraved action should there have a refuge, whence it is fitting that the censure of discipline should proceed. It has come to us, then, that a certain Speciosus, a presbyter, who, as the cause demanded, had been assigned to a monastery by John, our brother and fellow bishop, thereafter went out against the will of his pastor, and, the vigour of ecclesiastical constitution being despised, resists the aforesaid bishop, relying upon your protection. Which, because it without doubt provokes the odium of your Excellency, it is necessary that you should suspend him from that protection you have granted:
lest, if under the pretext of your name he be for a time disobedient or contumacious to his pastor, and defend your judges against you, and your Excellency be compelled from this matter to give offence, we likewise be grieved by your discord. We have learned besides—what it is impious even to say—that certain women, who until now have remained in the religious and monastic habit, are laying aside their religious garment and their veil, and, what we cannot relate without grievous sorrow, are joining themselves to husbands. But this—that they presume even to say or attempt it—they are said to be supported by the patronage of your favour. Which the bitterness of that very perversity does not permit us to believe.
We ask therefore that you by no means involve yourself in so great a sin. For iniquity of this kind we will by no means, for God's sake, suffer to remain unpunished. Whence again we beseech that your Excellency mix not itself in the defence of such causes: lest both God defend His own injury, and the fault of others beget discord between us. (Register, book v, letter 24.) Likewise to Venantius, an ex-monk, a patrician: Many foolish men have supposed that if I were raised to the order of the episcopate, I would refuse to address you or to visit you frequently by letters. But it is not so, since by the very necessity of my place I am now constrained not to keep silence. And after a little.
Compelled therefore by this consideration, whether you will or no, I am about to speak, because with all my strength I desire either that you be saved, or that I be delivered from concern for your death. For you recollect in what habit you were, and, the animadversion of the supernal strictness being set aside, you recognize to what you have lapsed. Weigh therefore your fault while there is leisure; dread the strictness of the future Judge while you are able, lest then you hear that bitter sentence when you may no longer escape it by any weeping. And below: By the witness of the Gospel (Matt. xii), you know that the divine severity arraigns us concerning an idle word, and subtly demands an accounting of a useless word. Weigh therefore what it will do concerning a perverse work, if it reproves some in its judgment concerning a word.
Ananias had vowed his money to God, which afterward, overcome by diabolical persuasion, he withdrew (Acts v); but by what death he was punished, you know. If he therefore was worthy of the peril of death, who took from God the coins which he had given, consider by how great a peril in the divine judgment you will be worthy, who took away, not coins, but your very self, from Almighty God, to whom you had devoted yourself under the monastic habit. Wherefore, if you will hearken to the words of my correction, you will know in the end how gentle and sweet they are. Behold, I confess, I speak mourning, and, addicted to sorrow at your deed, I am scarcely able to bring forth words: and yet your spirit, conscious of its own action, scarcely suffices to bear what it hears; it blushes, is confounded, resists.
If therefore it cannot bear the words of dust, what will it do at the judgment of the Creator? Yet I confess that I believe the mercy of the supernal grace to be very great, in that it beholds you fleeing from life, and yet still reserves you unto life: in that it sees you proud, and bears with you. (Register, book i, letter 34.) And when Venantius, persisting in the same apostasy, having certain rivalries arisen, learned that his oblations had been cursed by John, bishop of Syracuse, he was stirred up against the bishop after the manner of an enemy, and did not fear to accuse him to Gregory. To whom he himself writes back, saying:
The letter which you sent found us much saddened already, in that we have learned that between you and John, our brother and fellow bishop, of whose concord we were desiring to rejoice, a scandal has arisen. For whatever the cause had been, wrath ought not to have burst forth so far that your armed men, as we have heard, should rush into the episcopal residence, and commit divers evils after the manner of an enemy, and that this affair should meanwhile divide you from fatherly charity. Could it not, if there was any contention whatsoever, have been tranquilly settled, so that neither the interest of the parties should feel detriment, nor grace suffer harm?
But of what gravity, of what holiness, of what gentleness our above-mentioned brother is, we are not ignorant. From this we gather that, unless the excessive force of grief had driven him, his brotherly charity would by no means have come to that deed on account of which you declare yourselves grieved. As soon as we learned of this from his own writing, we at once wrote to him, admonishing him both to receive your offerings as before, and not only to permit Masses to be celebrated in your house, but even, if you should wish it, to perform them himself; and so forth. (Register, book vi, letter 43.)
Now Venantius, returning into concord with the bishop, after for eleven years he had refused, though exhorted by Gregory with many letters, to return to the monastic profession, fell into a most grievous sickness. Hearing this from John, bishop of Syracuse, Gregory wrote back, saying: I have received the writings of your Fraternity, which spoke to me of the sickness of my most sweet son, the lord Venantius, and related in full how all things had been done concerning him. But hearing at one and the same time both that he despaired and was gravely ill, and that wicked men were pressing hard upon the property of the orphans—namely his daughters—the grief could scarcely find room within my heart.
But in this there was consolation, that tears burst forth from me through groans. Your Holiness therefore ought not to neglect that first care which is fitting, so as to think upon his soul, by exhorting, by entreating, by setting before him the terrible judgment of God, by promising His ineffable mercy; that he may return to his habit, at least at the last: lest the guilt of so great a fault stand against him in the eternal judgment. (Register, book xi, letter 36.) If, however, Gregory perceived any judges to be incorrigible in their wickedness, he denounced them by his own writings before the princes. Whence he complains to Constantina Augusta, saying:
Since I had learned that there were many pagans in the island of Sardinia, and that they still, after the manner of wicked heathenism, were enslaved to the sacrifices of idols, and that the priests of that same island were sluggish in preaching our Redeemer, I sent thither one of the bishops of Italy, who, with the Lord's cooperation, brought many of the pagans to the faith. But a certain man reported to me a sacrilegious matter: that those who sacrifice to idols in that island pay a bribe to the judge, so that this may be permitted them to do. When some of these had been baptized and had now ceased to sacrifice to idols, that same bribe is still exacted from them by the judge of the island, even after baptism, which was formerly wont to be given for the sacrificing to idols.
When the aforesaid bishop rebuked him, he answered that he had promised so great a payment (for his office) that he could not meet it except even from such causes. But the island of Corsica is oppressed by so great an excess of tax-collectors and by such a burden of exactions, that those who dwell in it can scarcely satisfy what is demanded of them by selling their own sons. Whence it comes about that, the pious commonwealth being abandoned, the possessors of that island are driven to flee to the most abominable nation of the Lombards. For what heavier, what crueller thing can they suffer from the barbarians, than that, straitened and crushed, they are compelled to sell their own sons?
In the island of Sicily, moreover, a certain Stephen, a registrar of the maritime districts, is said to work such prejudices and such oppressions—invading the lands of individuals, and, without any pleading of the causes, setting up his title-deeds over their possessions and houses—that if I should wish to relate each of his deeds that have come to me, I could not fill out these things even in a great volume. Let my most serene lady diligently look upon all these things, and check the groans of the oppressed. And a little after: Weigh what minds, what bowels of parents can be, when they sell off their sons that they may not be tortured. But how one ought to pity the sons of others, they know well who have their own.
Whence let it suffice that I have briefly suggested these things, lest, if your Piety should not have known those things which are done in these parts, the guilt of my silence should condemn me before the strict Judge. (Register, book v, letter 41.) 49. Hence it is that in the time of this Gregory so many priests and laymen throughout diverse regions are proved, with the Dialogues as witness, to have shone with miracles, as could never afterwards be found under later pontiffs. The enemy of the human race, therefore, envying such great felicities of the Church of God, inflamed some of the pontiffs and likewise of the secular judges to envy against him. Concerning whose affliction he complains, among other things, to John, bishop of Ravenna, saying:
I reckon this to my sins, that this man who is now present (there is no doubt but that it is the Roman exarch) both dissembles about fighting against our enemies, and forbids us to make peace: although even now, even if he should wish it, we cannot make it at all: because Ariulf, having the army of Autharith and Nordulf, desires that their pledged lands be given to him, so that he may deign to speak somewhat of peace with you. (Register, book ii, letter 46.) Likewise to Sebastian, bishop of Sirmium, after some things: What we suffer in this land, most holy brother, from the person of your friend the lord Romanus, we are scarcely able to tell:
yet I say briefly that his malice toward us has surpassed the swords of the Lombards, so that those enemies who slay us seem more benign than the judges of the commonwealth, who consume us in their thoughts by their malice, by robberies and deceits. And at one and the same time to bear the care of bishops and of clerics, and also of monasteries and of the people, to watch anxiously against the ambushes of the enemy, to be ever wary against the deceits and malices of the dukes—of what labor, of what grief this is, your Fraternity weighs the more truly the more purely you love me who suffer these things. (Register, book v, letter 42.) Likewise to Anastasius the patriarch, after many things:
What evils we suffer from the swords of the barbarians, what from the perversity of the judges, I shrink from relating to your Beatitude, lest I increase the groaning of one whose groaning I ought rather to have diminished by consoling. (Register, book iv, letter 39.) Likewise to Palladius, presbyter of Mount Sinai, after very many things: I ask that you should pray for me, that almighty God may deign to guard me both from evil spirits and from perverse men: for in this pilgrimage of my life evils, both many and great, surround me, so that with the Psalmist I may rightly say: Thy wraths have passed over me, and thy terrors have troubled me. They have compassed me about like water all the day, they have compassed me about together (Psalm lxxxvii, 17 and 18). (Register, book xi, letter 2.) 50.
Furthermore, to Maurice, then a most avaricious and likewise most rapacious prince, who at the suggestions of his enemies was passing a most deadly law, that it should be lawful for none of the soldiers—namely of any who had been marked (enlisted) by the hand—to be converted (to the monastic life), he thus answered among other things: To this end has power over all men been given from heaven to the piety of my lords, that those who desire good things may be aided, that the way of the heavens may lie the more widely open, that the earthly kingdom may serve the heavenly kingdom. And behold, it is said with open voice that it is not lawful for him who has once been enrolled in earthly military service to serve our Lord Jesus Christ, unless either his service be completed, or he be rejected on account of bodily weakness.
But behold, through me, His and your lowest servant, Christ will answer, saying: I made thee, from a notary, count of the guards; from count of the guards, Caesar; from Caesar, emperor; and not this only, but even father of emperors. My priests I have committed to thy hand, and dost thou withdraw thy soldiers from My service? Answer, I pray, most pious lord, thy servant: what wilt thou answer in the judgment to thy Lord, when He comes and says these things? And a little after: Let my Lord, I beg, inquire what former emperor gave such a law, and let him more subtly consider whether it ought to have been given. (Register, book ii, letter 65.) Likewise to Theodore the physician, after some things:
By the working of my sins, he says, at whose suggestion or counsel I know not, the emperor within the past year has brought forth in his commonwealth such a law, that no one who has held a public office, no one who has been marked by function or by hand, or has been reckoned among the soldiers, may be permitted to be converted (into monastic life) in a monastery, unless perhaps his military service has been completed. Which law, as those who know the old laws say, Julian first brought forth—concerning whom we all know how far he was turned away from God. (Same place, letter 66.) 51.
The madness of the judges was strengthened, or rather fostered, by John, then bishop of the royal city, formerly a monk; who at the time when Gregory, appointed apocrisiarius by the prelate Pelagius, was staying at Constantinople, feigned as if humbly to flee the supreme priesthood; but once he had received it, he grew to such a height in the pride of his crafty mind that, seeking an occasion from another matter, he held a synod in which he attempted to call himself universal. As soon as Pope Pelagius recognized this, by letters sent forth from the authority of the holy apostle Peter, he annulled the acts of that same synod. And he forbade the deacon who, according to custom, attended upon the emperors for the transacting of ecclesiastical responses, to celebrate the solemnities of Mass with him.
Following whose sentence, blessed Gregory too had punished the aforesaid John with a like sentence, when, though often admonished, he put off acquiescing; and he had charged all the pontiffs, under threat of their own honor, that they should never either write the profane word 'universal,' or accept it written, or, where it had been written, subscribe to it. Wherefore John, purchasing by many deceits the consent of the most avaricious emperor to his hypocrisy, obtained that the emperor should write to Gregory that he had shown himself peaceable toward him. Wherefore he himself writes, among other things, to the empress Constantina, saying:
From Sabinianus, my deacon and responsalis, writing to me, I have learned how great a justice your Serenity expends in the causes of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, against certain men who are proudly humble and feignedly bland. Whence I still beg that you permit the hypocrisy of no one to prevail against the truth: for there are some who, according to the voice of the excellent preacher, by sweet speeches and blessings seduce the hearts of the innocent (Romans xvi); who are indeed despised in their garment, but swell in heart, and, as though they despised all things in this world, yet nonetheless seek to obtain at once all the things that are of the world;
who confess themselves unworthy in comparison with all men, yet cannot be content with private titles, because they crave that whereby they may seem worthier than all. (Register, book v, letter 21.) And a little after: 52. Moreover I make known that I have received the writings of my most pious lords, that I should be at peace with my brother and fellow-priest John. And indeed it befitted so religious a lord to enjoin this upon a priest. But since with new presumption and pride this same brother of mine calls himself universal bishop, so that in the time of my predecessor of holy memory he caused himself to be inscribed in a synod with this proud title:
although all the acts of that synod were annulled, the Apostolic See contradicting them, my most serene lord intimates something sad to me; that he did not correct him who is proud, but rather wished to turn me aside from my intention—me who in this cause defend the truth of the statutes of the Gospels and of the canons concerning humility and rectitude. In which matter my aforesaid brother and fellow-priest acts against the Evangelical sentence, against blessed Peter the apostle also, and against all the churches and the statutes of the canons. But there is an almighty God, in whose hand are all things, of whom it is written: There is no wisdom, there is no prudence, there is no counsel against the Lord (Proverbs xxi, 30).
And indeed the aforesaid most holy brother often endeavors to persuade many things to my most serene lord; but I well know that those great prayers and tears of his permit nothing to be filched from him by anyone against reason or against his own soul. Yet it is very sad that it should be patiently borne that, all others being despised, the aforesaid brother and my colleague in the episcopate should attempt to be called bishop alone. But in this pride of his, what else is signified, save that the times of Antichrist are now near at hand? For he plainly imitates him who, despising the legions of angels in the shared joy, attempted to burst forth to the summit of singularity, saying: Above the stars of heaven will I exalt my throne, I will sit upon the mount of the Testament, on the sides of the North.
I will ascend above the height of the clouds: I will be like the Most High (Isaiah xiv, 13). Whence through the almighty Lord I beg that you not permit the times of your Piety to be stained by the arrogance of one man: nor in any way whatsoever lend any assent to so perverse a title; and in this cause let not your Piety in any wise despise me; because even if the sins of Gregory be so great that he ought to suffer such things, yet the sins of the apostle Peter are none, that in your times he should deserve to suffer such things.
Whence again and again through the almighty Lord I beg that, as the former princes sought the favor of the holy apostle Peter, you too take care both to seek and to preserve it for yourselves, and that on account of our sins, we who serve him unworthily, his honor with you be in no way diminished—he who is able both now to be your helper in all things, and afterward to forgive your sins. Now we have already led twenty-seven years since we have lived in this city amid the swords of the Lombards: how many things are daily disbursed to them by the Church, that we may be able to live among them, need not be suggested.
But I briefly make known that, just as in the parts of Ravenna the Piety of our Lords keeps a paymaster with the foremost army of Italy, who, when causes arise, makes the daily expenditures, so also in this city, in such causes, I am their paymaster. And yet this church, which at one and the same time so unceasingly expends so much upon clerics, monasteries, the poor, the people, and moreover the Lombards—behold, it is still oppressed by the affliction of all the churches, because from the pride of one man many groan, even if they presume to say nothing. (Same place.) 53. To the most avaricious prince also Gregory contradicts with a free voice, writing after some things:
Behold, there is no doubt but that Peter received the keys of the heavenly kingdom, the power of binding and loosing is bestowed on him, the care of the whole Church and the primacy is committed to him, and yet he is not called universal apostle; and my most holy man and fellow-priest John endeavors to be called universal bishop. I am compelled to cry out and to say: O the times, O the morals! Behold, all things in the parts of Europe are handed over to the jurisdiction of the barbarians: cities are destroyed, fortresses overthrown, provinces depopulated, no cultivator inhabits the land; the worshippers of idols rage and lord it daily over the slaughter of the faithful;
and yet priests, who ought to have lain weeping upon the pavement and in ashes, seek for themselves names of vanity, and glory in new and profane titles. Do I in this matter, most pious Lord, defend my own cause? Do I vindicate a special injury, and not rather the cause of almighty God, and the cause of the universal Church? Who is this, who against the Evangelical statutes, against the decrees of the canons, presumes to usurp for himself a new name? Would that, even without the diminution of others, he were but one who craves to be called universal. And certainly we know that many priests of the Church of Constantinople have fallen into the abyss of heresy, and have been touched as not only heretics but even heresiarchs.
Thence indeed came Nestorius, who, deeming Christ Jesus, the mediator of God and men, to be two persons, because he did not believe that God could become man, burst forth even to Jewish perfidy. Thence indeed came Macedonius, who denied that the Holy Spirit, consubstantial with the Father and the Son, is God. If therefore anyone has seized for himself in that church the name whence so many heresiarchs are known to have proceeded, then the universal Church—which God forbid—falls from its state, when he who is called universal falls. But far be from the hearts of Christians that name of blasphemy, in which the honor of all priests is taken away, while it is madly arrogated by one to himself.
Certainly, for the honor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, it was offered to the Roman pontiff through the venerable Council of Chalcedon; but none of them ever consented to use this name of singularity, lest, while something was given privately to one, all priests should be deprived of their due honor. What is it, then, that we do not seek the glory of this title even when offered, and another presumes to seize it for himself even when not offered? He, therefore, is the more to be bent by the command of our most pious lords, who scorns to render obedience to the canonical precepts.
He is to be coerced, who does injury to the holy universal Church, who swells in heart, who craves to rejoice in the name of singularity, who by a private title sets himself even above the honor of your empire. Behold, we all suffer scandal in this matter. Let the author of the scandal, then, return to the right way, and all the quarrels of priests will cease. For I am the servant of all priests, inasmuch as they live in a priestly manner. But he who against almighty God, through the swelling of vainglory, and against the statutes of the Fathers, raises his neck—I trust in the almighty Lord that He will not bend mine to him, not even with swords.
But what was lately done in this city upon the hearing of this title, I have more subtly indicated to Sabinianus, my deacon and responsalis. (Register, book v, letter 20.) 54. Likewise to John, bishop of Constantinople: At the time when your Fraternity was advanced to the priestly honor, you recollect what peace and concord of the churches you found: but with what boldness, or with what swelling, I know not, you have attempted to seize for yourself a new name, whence the hearts of all the brethren might have come to scandal. In which matter I greatly marvel, since I remember that, in order that you might not come to the episcopate, you wished to flee it; and yet, having obtained it, you desire so to exercise it as though you had rushed to it with ambitious longing.
For you, who confessed yourself unworthy to be called bishop, have at length been brought to this, that, despising the brethren, you crave to be called bishop alone. And a little after: For truly, weeping, I say, and out of the inmost grief of my bowels I reckon it to my sins, that that brother of mine has not until now been able to be brought back to humility—he who was established in the degree of the episcopate to this end, that he might bring back the souls of others to humility: which he who teaches others the truth has not consented to teach himself, nor even at my entreaty. Likewise after some things:
Who, I ask, in this so perverse a title, is set forth for imitation, save he who, despising the legions of angels socially established with him, attempted to burst forth to the summit of singularity, so that he might seem to be subject to none, and alone to preside over all? Who also said: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of heaven will I exalt my throne, I will sit upon the mount of the testament, on the sides of the North; I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High (Isaiah xiv, 13). For what are all thy brethren, the bishops of the universal Church, but the stars of heaven, whose life and tongue together shine amid the sins and errors of men as amid the darkness of night?
While you desire to set yourself above them by an exalted title, and to trample their name by comparison with your own, what else do you say but: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of heaven will I exalt my throne? Are not all bishops clouds, who both rain down words of preaching and shine with the light of good works? While your Fraternity, despising them, attempts to press them beneath yourself, what else do you say but that which is said by the ancient enemy: I will ascend above the height of the clouds? When I behold all these things weeping, and dread the hidden judgments of God, my tears are multiplied, and the groans do not find room in my heart:
that that most holy man, the lord John, of such great abstinence and humility, has by the seduction of familiar tongues burst forth into such great pride, that in the craving of a perverse name he strives to become like him who, while he proudly wished to be like God, lost even the grace of the likeness bestowed on him, and therefore lost true blessedness, because he sought a false glory. Certainly Peter, prince of the apostles, is a member of the holy and universal Church; Paul, Andrew, John—what else are they than heads of individual peoples? And yet under one Head all are members of the Church.
And, that I may bind together all things in a brief cincture of speech: the saints before the Law, the saints under the Law, the saints under grace, all these, making perfect the body of the Lord, are constituted among the members of the Church, and no one ever wished to be called universal. Let your Holiness therefore acknowledge how greatly you swell within, you who crave to be called by that name by which no one who was truly holy presumed to be called. Likewise after a little: Certainly of old it is cried out by the apostle: Little children, it is the last hour (1 John ii, 18). And according to what the Truth foretold, pestilence and the sword rage through the world; nations rise up against nations; the globe of the earth is shaken, and with its inhabitants the earth is swallowed up as the ground gapes open;
all the things that were foretold come to pass (Luke xxi). The king of pride is near, and—what it is unlawful to say—an army of priests is prepared for him: because those who had been set for this end, that they might furnish the leadership of humility, now do military service for the neck (arrogance) of elation. But in this matter, even if our tongue by no means contradicts, His power is raised against elation, who by Himself in a special manner opposes the vice of pride. And below: It behooves you to consider, lest any root of bitterness springing up above should hinder, and through it many be defiled: which, however, if we neglect to consider, against the swelling of so great an elation the judgments from above will keep watch. (Register, book v, letter 19.) Likewise to the same in another letter, after many things:
But even now I say: either receive those same persons (namely John of Chalcedon and Athanasius, presbyters of Isauria) into their orders, and grant them rest; or if perhaps you are unwilling to do this, then, all altercation being set aside, keep in their case the statutes of the elders or the bounds of the canons. But if you do neither, we indeed do not wish to bring on strife, yet we do not shun it when it comes from you. But what the canons say concerning bishops who wish to be feared by blows, your Fraternity well knows. For we have been made shepherds, not smiters. And the excellent preacher says: Reprove, entreat, rebuke, with all patience and doctrine.
But new and unheard-of is that preaching which exacts faith by blows. (Book ii, letter 53.) 55. Likewise to Sabinianus, deacon of Constantinople: Concerning the cause of our brother, the most reverend man John, bishop of Constantinople, I was unwilling to make two letters: but one has been briefly made, which seems to have both admixed, that is, both rectitude and blandishment. Let your Charity therefore take care to give him that letter which I have now sent, on account of the emperor's will. For concerning what follows, another such letter shall be transmitted, in which his pride may not rejoice.
For to this point he has gone, that under the occasion of the presbyter John he transmitted hither certain acts, in which he named himself ecumenical patriarch through almost every line. But I hope in the almighty God that the majesty from above will dissolve his hypocrisy. But I marvel that he was able to deceive your Charity, so that you permitted the lord emperor to be persuaded to transmit to me his writings concerning this cause of his, in which he might admonish me that I ought to have peace with him (who, if he wishes to hold justice, ought rather to have admonished him to restrain himself from the proud title), and that peace might forthwith be made between us. Yet with what craftiness this was contrived by our aforesaid brother John, as I suspect, you by no means weighed.
For he did this to this end: that either the lord emperor should be heeded, and he himself should seem confirmed in his vanity; or that he should not be heeded by me, and his mind should be provoked against me. But we will hold to the right way, fearing nothing else in this cause but the almighty Lord. Whence let your Charity in no way tremble. Whatever it sees in this world to be lofty against the truth, let it despise for the sake of the truth; and let it trust in the grace of almighty God and the help of blessed Peter. Let it recall the voice of the Truth, saying: Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in this world (1 John iv, 4). And in this cause, let it act with supreme authority whatever must be done.
For since we can in no way be defended from the swords of the enemies, since for the love of the commonwealth we have lost silver, gold, slaves, and garments, it is far too ignominious that through them we should lose even the faith. For to consent in this wicked title is nothing else than to lose the faith. Whence, as I have already written to you in previous letters, never presume to proceed together with him. (Book v, letter 49.) 56. But indeed John, the inventor of a new presumption, when he had made Maurice adverse to God and hostile toward Gregory with his accomplices, seeing the empress Constantina persuade with all her efforts that the privileges to be preserved for the Roman Church, with what arts he could, in...
...stirred that, on account of the church which she was building in the palace in honor of the holy apostle Paul, she should demand of Gregory that the head of that same apostle, or some other part of his body, be directed to her. Recognizing which craftiness, the most blessed pope thus satisfied the empress's mind: While I desired that those things be commanded me, in which, by showing most ready obedience, I might have been able to provoke your favor toward me the more, a greater sadness held me, that you command those things which I can neither do nor dare. For the bodies of the holy apostles Peter and Paul shine with such great miracles and terrors in their churches, that one cannot approach even to pray there without great fear.
Finally, when my predecessor of blessed memory wished to change the silver that lay above the most sacred body of the blessed Apostle Peter—though it was far from that body, at a distance of nearly fifteen feet—a sign of no small terror appeared to him. And I too likewise wished to make some improvement near the body of the most sacred holy Apostle Paul; and because it was necessary that a digging be made somewhat deeper next to the tomb of this kind, the overseer of that place found certain bones (not indeed joined to the same tomb), and because he presumed to lift them and to transfer them to another place, with certain mournful signs appearing, he died a sudden death.
Besides this, moreover, that same predecessor of mine of holy memory, desiring to make certain improvements at the body of the holy martyr Lawrence, while it was unknown where the venerable body had been placed, dug in his searching, and suddenly the martyr's tomb was unknowingly opened; and those who were present and laboring there—monks and sacristans, who saw the body of that same martyr, though they by no means presumed to touch it—all died within ten days, so that no one who had seen that holy and just body could remain alive.
But let the most serene lady know that it is not the custom of the Romans, when they give relics of the saints, to presume to touch anything of the body; rather, only a brandeum (a cloth) is placed in a small box and set upon the most sacred bodies of the saints. This, when taken up, is laid away with due veneration in the church that is to be dedicated; and through it as great miracles are wrought there as if their bodies had been specially carried thither. Whence it came to pass that, in the time of Pope Leo of blessed memory—as is handed down by our elders—when certain Greeks doubted concerning such relics, the aforesaid pontiff took shears and cut this very brandeum, and from that incision blood flowed forth.
For among the Romans, or in all the regions of the West, it is utterly intolerable and sacrilegious if anyone should perchance wish to touch the bodies of the saints. And if he should presume to do so, it is certain that this rashness will in no way remain unpunished. For this reason we marvel greatly, and scarcely believe, concerning the custom of the Greeks, who assert that they lift up the bones of the saints. For certain Greek monks who came here two years ago were, in the silence of the night, digging up beside the church of Saint Paul the bodies of the dead lying in the field, and hiding away their bones, keeping them for themselves for when they should depart.
When they had been seized and diligently examined as to why they were doing this, they confessed that they were about to carry those bones to Greece as though they were relics of saints. From their example, as was said before, a greater doubt has arisen in us as to whether it be true what is said, that the bones of the saints are truly lifted up. But concerning the bodies of the blessed Apostles, what am I to say? Since it is established that at the time when they suffered, faithful men came from the East who sought back their bodies as those of their own citizens; and these, having been brought as far as the second milestone of the city, were placed in the spot which is called Catacumbas.
But when the whole multitude of them, gathering together, strove to lift them up from there, such a force of thunder and lightning so terrified and scattered them that they by no means presumed to attempt such things again. Then the Romans, coming out, lifted up the bodies of those who by the mercy of the Lord deserved this, and placed them in the spots where they now lie buried. Who then, most serene lady, could be so rash that, knowing these things, he would presume—I do not say to touch their bodies, but even in any degree to look upon them?
Since therefore such commands have been laid upon me by you, which I could by no means obey, insofar as I can discover, it is not from you, but certain men have wished to stir up your piety against me, so that they might, God forbid, withdraw from me the favor of your goodwill; and for that reason they sought out a matter in which I might be found, as it were, disobedient toward you. But I trust in almighty God that in no way is anything being stolen from your most kindly disposition, and that you will always possess the power of the holy Apostles, whom you love with your whole heart and mind, not from their bodily presence, but from their protection. As for the sudarium (napkin), which you likewise ordered to be sent, it is with his body:
and it can no more be touched than his body can be approached. But because the religious desire of the most serene lady ought not to be left empty, from the chains which the holy Apostle Paul himself bore on his hands and neck, and from which many miracles are shown forth among the people, I shall hasten to send you some portion, if indeed I am able to remove it by filing: for since often many come from those same chains and beg a blessing, that they may receive some little bit from the filings, a priest stands by with a file, and for some who ask, something is so quickly struck off from his chains that there is no delay;
but for certain others who ask, the file is drawn along those same chains for a long time, and yet it is not obtained that anything should come forth from them. (Book IV, Letter 50.) 57. In these truthful words of Gregory it clearly appears that up to those times the Roman pontiff conferred a brandeum in place of relics, whereas in a later period particles began to be given, as sacred relics, to those who asked, from the garments which are kept beneath the altar of Saint John in the Constantinian basilica. 58. These garments are indeed proven to shine forth even to the present day with such great miracles that, shaken out of doors in time of drought, they bring rain, and in time of flooding they restore fair weather.
For besides these things, which they do throughout the several churches, I will not conceal what things almighty God has wrought through those garments placed in the oratory of my house in the Suburra. Recently, in the time of Pope Hadrian, it seemed good to me that the altar of the holy Mother of God Mary—which, being placed outside the oratory of Saint John in a wholly open courtyard, could not be honored with suitable lights—ought to be located within the oratory. And Gaudericus of Velletri, who is still seen to survive as bishop, being summoned, with hymns and canticles struck out from the old altar two little sealed boxes.
One of these, at my entreaty, he opened, being exceedingly fearful, and in it he found particles from those tunics—as far as could be discerned by curious eyes from their likeness—which he solemnly deposited beneath the new altar. From that time onward, as many know who are proven still to survive, the lamps, kindled by divine power, more frequently than usual shone bright. For in this eighth indiction, in the week before the day of the Lord's Nativity, when I somewhat doubted concerning a matter of this kind, after the morning hymns were completed, the sacristan extinguished a candle. Desiring to relight it after vespers, he found it already lit; and judging that he had carelessly failed to extinguish it, on the next day he put it out more attentively;
and having barred the doors, he returned at vespertime to relight the lamp. When he nonetheless found it kindled, from the awareness that the key had been kept by himself, and from the miracle of the oil not being diminished, he assuredly recognized that He had kindled the lamp who, in that daily lighting, in which the oil could not have been diminished, had by divine power increased it. 59. Of these garments, as I judge, the one which has the tighter sleeves is truly the tunic of Saint John, which the blessed Gregory received in his own time, a certain bishop bringing it. Whence, among other things, he writes to Abbot John, saying: Concerning the tunic of Saint John I have received it altogether gratefully, because you were solicitous to inform me.
But let your love take care to send me the tunic itself, or—what is better—the same bishop who has it, together with his clerics and with it, to me: so that we may both enjoy the blessing of the tunic, and be able to have recompense from the same bishop or his clerics. (Book III, Letter 3.) But the other (which, with its wider sleeves, seems to be not a tunic, but plainly a dalmatic), unless I am mistaken, belongs to Saint Paschasius, deacon of the Apostolic See, who—according to what the same blessed Gregory mentions in the fourth book of the Dialogues (Chapter 40)—when he had died in the times of Pope Symmachus, a man possessed by a demon touched his dalmatic laid upon the bier, and was immediately made whole.
But as to why both garments are called Saint John's, I would believe that they obtained this ancient custom because they are customarily kept beneath his altar. For that one of them belongs to John the Evangelist, and not to the Baptist, no one doubts—especially since every wise man knows that the Baptist used camel's hair for clothing (Matthew 3), whereas the Evangelist, who for so many years after the Lord's Passion, bearing the pontifical office, most frequently celebrated the solemnities of the Mass, could by no means have been without priestly vestments.
But if it be said that, since a tunic and a dalmatic are pontifical vestments, both ought to be believed to be Saint John's, it must be considered that Gregory named to Abbot John not a dalmatic, but a tunic: for if he had thought that a dalmatic too had been Saint John's, then in seeking his tunic he would consequently not have kept silent about having his dalmatic. 60. Let it suffice that I have somehow inserted these things concerning the garments of Saint John—about which many are in doubt—into the acts of the blessed Gregory.
For the rest, John of Constantinople, that hypocrite, who with many evasions refused to be turned away from his ambition for the title of "universal," recognizing—according to the prophecy of the same Father—that the judgments of the Lord were watching over him, after no long space of time died a sudden death; and he whose ambitious pride the whole world could scarcely contain, was easily placed within the narrowness of a single tomb.
After his gradual passing away, when the Emperor Maurice—that beholder, namely, of the priests of Christ—was urging, on behalf of Cyriacus, who had succeeded John, that Gregory should not labor over the matter of so frivolous a title, Gregory himself resisted so long by the authorities of his pontificate, until he had utterly taken away the plague of the "universal" title even from the very deceitful lips of the flatterers. Wherefore, writing after certain matters to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, he says: Your Beatitude took care to indicate that you now do not write superb titles to certain persons, which have sprung from the root of vanity; and you speak to me, saying: "As you commanded." That word "command," I beg, remove from my hearing: for I know who I am, who you are.
For by place you are my brethren, by character my fathers. I therefore did not command, but took care to point out what things are useful. Yet I do not find that Your Beatitude wished perfectly to retain this very thing which I set before your memory. For I said that neither to me nor to any other ought you to write any such thing; and behold, in the preface of the letter which you directed to me myself, who forbade it, you took care to imprint the word of a proud appellation, calling me "universal pope." This, I beg, let your most sweet holiness do no further, because that is withdrawn from you which is bestowed on another more than reason demands. For I seek to be prospered not by words, but by character;
nor do I reckon it to be my honor, in which I recognize my brethren to lose their honor. For my honor is the honor of the universal Church. My honor is the solid vigor of my brethren. Then indeed am I truly honored, when the honor due to each and every one is not denied. For if your holiness calls me "universal pope," you deny yourself to be that which you confess me to be universally. But far be this. Let the words depart which puff up vanity and wound charity. And indeed you know that in the holy Council of Chalcedon, and afterward by the Fathers who followed, this was offered to my predecessors:
but nevertheless none of them ever wished to use this title, so that, while they cherished in this world the honor of all priests, they might guard their own before almighty God. (Book VIII, Letter 30.)