Moralia in Job 30

Argument.— 1. Gregory, though sick, relaxes nothing of his pastoral care. — 2. Crementius, primate of the province of Byzacena, has recourse to his judgment. — 3. The authority of metropolitans over the bishops of their province. — 4. St. Gregory orders that bishops wandering without the metropolitan's leave be sent back to them. — 5. The form of judgments against bishops, in the condemnation of the bishop of Malta. — 6. Those who usurp the office of defensors are punished. — 7. The humble response of St. Gregory to unjust complaints. — 8. How great a prudence shines forth in his various decrees. — 9. How great his solicitude concerning monks. — 10. St. Columbanus consults him. (In the years 598 and 599.) 1.

Although we have ascertained that especially in this year Gregory suffered from feeble health and labored under gout, yet never did he show himself more vigorous in carrying out the things that were of his office, as is proved by so many letters written by him concerning various affairs to the bishops of almost the whole Christian world (Book ix, ep. 121; Book x, ep. 35): so that, upon weighing what he accomplished for Church and commonwealth, it is pleasing to say that, while Gregory was sick, the pontiff was ever strong and vigorous. 2. From the farthest parts of Africa, namely from the province of Byzacena, Crementius its primate was at length compelled to have recourse to the pope's judgment.

He had been accused of a certain crime, and the emperor had wished him to be judged by the Roman pontiff according to the canonical statutes; but Theodorus, master of the soldiers, having received ten pounds of gold, opposed it so that it should by no means be done. Yet Augustus urged that the pope should send someone and do whatever was canonical. Crementius therefore, being assailed by his colleagues and fellow-bishops, and with the emperor pressing from another quarter, sent into Sicily Martin the scholastic to John of Syracuse, whom he knew to be most acceptable and familiar to Gregory, so that, with his favor, he might the more easily creep in upon the supreme pontiff. This primate professed himself subject to the Apostolic See; but it was doubtful whether purely or feignedly.

'But as to his saying that he is subject to the Apostolic See,' says the holy Doctor, 'if any fault be found in bishops, I know not who is not subject to it' (See Book ix, ep. 59). Crementius and his patron Martin the scholastic, in order that they might the more easily dissolve the accusations of the Byzacene bishops and turn them back upon them, brought to the supreme pontiff various complaints against them; especially that some of them had set out to court without the letters of their primate, and were holding unlawful assemblies. Gregory signified that this by no means met his approval, but in this matter he was unwilling to pronounce sentence: 'Because,' he says, 'the origin or quality of the cases is wholly unknown to us, we cannot pronounce anything definitively;'

'lest—a thing which is exceedingly reprehensible—we should seem to pass sentence on matters not well known' (Book vi, ep. 58). But he wrote to John of Syracuse that it was permitted to his discretion to confer about this matter with Martin, and to judge what needed to be done. The cause of Crementius, afterward agitated in a synod of the province of Byzacena, is taught us by letter 32 of book xii, written to the same synod. 3. From the complaint of Crementius concerning the bishops of his province setting out to Court, that is, to the palace, without his leave and letters of commendation, it is given to understand how greatly their suffragans then depended upon their metropolitans or primates. The same is proved from another letter of St. ...

...Gregory's letter directed to the bishops of Sardinia, in which he reproves both those who did not deign to learn the day of the paschal festival from their metropolitan, and those who, seeking overseas regions on account of the arising causes of their church, without the knowledge or letters of their metropolitan, as the order of the canons establishes, dared to travel. 'We exhort therefore,' he says, 'your Fraternity, that, following the ancient custom of your churches, both as to receiving the paschal announcement, and also, if necessity shall compel any one of you to travel anywhere for his own causes, you ought to seek permission from that same metropolitan of yours according to the rule appointed for you, nor presume to slight him in anything;'

'except if—which we do not desire—it happen that you have some cause against that same metropolitan of yours, so that on this account you seek the judgment of the Apostolic See' (Book ix, ep. 8). He ordered that wandering bishops disobedient to their metropolitans be returned to them, so that they might be affected with worthy penalties. Whence he writes to Syagrius that a certain Theodorus, bishop of the diocese of Milan, who, avoiding the discipline of Archbishop Constantius, was tarrying in Gaul, should be most diligently sought out and led back to his metropolitan. He commands in the same letter that Menas also, a bishop of the diocese of the Roman Church, to whom the name of bishopric was no longer in honor, be expelled from the Gauls and transmitted to Rome;

'so that, restrained under that observance which was worthy, he might strive to convert his secular morals into priestly gravity' (Ibid., ep. 113). 5. The form of judgments against guilty bishops is described in the letter to John, bishop of Syracuse. A complaint having been raised against Lucillus, bishop of the city of Malta, John had instituted an inquisition concerning his crime, which, having been written out, he afterward sent to the supreme pontiff. Which having been read, Gregory wrote back to John:

'Since the punishment of so great a crime ought to be deferred by no delay, let your Fraternity take to itself three or four of our brethren and fellow-priests, so that, with these too being present, the aforesaid truth having been declared and satisfied, you may strive without ambiguity to depose the aforesaid Lucillus from the order of the episcopate, which the contagion of a crime of this kind has stained' (Book ix, ep. 63). Certain persons, whether deacons or presbyters, were said to be conscious of and participants in the bishop's crime; whom, if, a diligent investigation having first been made, they be found guilty, the pontiff wills to be cast down from the grade of their honor, and to be thrust into monasteries for the sake of penance.

As regards the laymen defiled by association with the same crime, he decrees that those who shall have been shown to be guilty are to be deprived of participation in the Lord's Body and Blood, with litanies and prayers moreover being imposed. He leaves the length of this penance to be determined by John's judgement, admonishing him to take care that the viaticum be not denied to those who are pressed by the peril of death. When Trajan, abbot of the monastery of Syracuse, had been appointed in the place of the deposed bishop, St. Gregory ordered that the property of the Church of Melita be restored to him by Lucillus and by Peter his son, since this shameful bishop had been a plunderer of that Church, not a ruler or a father (Book X, letter 1).

The new bishop requested that he be permitted to take four or five monks from his own monastery, to have them as helpers and companions at table; and although the most wise pontiff judged this fair, nevertheless he was unwilling to grant them by his own authority, but left the matter to John's judgement, lest he should seem to diminish the rights of the bishop. 6. In this same year the vengeance of the most just pontiff blazed forth against those who in Sicily dared to arrogate to themselves the name and authority of defenders. Concerning the investigation and restraint of these men he wrote to the Roman defender. But because one of them, Martianus by name, had delayed to render obedience to John, the bishop administering the care of the Roman patrimony, he orders that the contumacious man be deported into exile. 7.

He who in exercising all these judgements showed a mind unbending and upright, nonetheless proved of how lowly a spirit he was, especially in his reply to John of Syracuse (already often mentioned), concerning certain complaints made public against himself, as he had heard from John (Book IX, letter 12). In arranging certain rites pertaining to the Mass, some took it ill that Gregory had followed the customs of the Church of Constantinople; carried away by a false zeal for the Roman Church, they alleged that her honour had been injured by ceremonies borrowed from an inferior Church. To this the pontiff, more outstanding in humility than in dignity, replies: first, that in the things he had established he had imitated the rite of no other Church;

secondly, that he was not ashamed to imitate whatever good he might find in inferior Churches. 「For he is a fool,」 he says, 「who thinks himself first in this respect, that he disdains to learn the good things he has seen.」 These words are indeed most worthy of so wise a pontiff. 8. The holy man's supreme prudence shone forth especially in the measures he established against the Jewish traders, that it should not be lawful for them to retain Christian slaves — which they greatly desired and by various arts sought to obtain; but this most perceptive man, most shrewd in his wonderful simplicity, foiled them all.

To the same prudence is to be ascribed the fact that, although he allowed no limits to be prescribed to his own almsgiving, he nevertheless decreed that it must by no means be tolerated that things granted as alms over several years should afterwards be exacted as though owed by debt (Book IX, letter 36). Although the reasoning of law does not permit those things which come to the rights of the Church to be alienated — as the holy Doctor himself states beforehand in his letter to the Roman defender — nevertheless he judged that the severity of this law should sometimes be tempered out of regard for mercy (Ibid., letter 26). Wherefore he ordered that a house given by Ammonia to the Roman Church be restored to Calixeus her grandson, who was laboring in poverty: especially since he contended that his grandmother had had no power to alienate this house;

even though he by no means approved of the deed. He admonished the same Romanus in another letter (Book IX, letter 27) to beware lest, by too readily extending the Church's patronage, he should defend scoundrels and thus become party to their crimes: whence he wished that no account be taken of his own letters of recommendation, if he should perchance have incautiously given any (Ibid., letter 69). Now let us briefly touch upon what was decreed by the most just father this year in favor of the monastic order. 9. First, he declared void the testament of a certain abbess, and ordered that what she had unlawfully bequeathed to others be restored to her monastery:

「Because,」 he says, 「for those entering a monastery for the sake of conversion, there is thereafter no license to make a testament, even if the monastic habit has not been assumed」 (Book IX, letter 7). On these matters the first letter of the tenth book is to be read. Secondly, he settled a controversy between Antonius, his subdeacon, superior of a certain hospice, and Domitius, priest and abbot of the monastery of Saints Maximus and Agatha, and confirmed the agreements that had been made between them (Book IX, letter 20). Thirdly, he ordered that the Estate of Venus, unjustly seized by the agents of the Roman Church, be restored to the monastery of Saint Mark near Spoleto (Book IX, letter 30).

Fourthly, when Valentinus, priest and abbot, had complained that monks deprived by him of communion for their fault were nonetheless received to communion in the diocese of Spoleto, St. Gregory wrote to Chrysanthus, bishop of Spoleto, that he should not allow communion to be indiscriminately restored to monks fleeing to his Church (Book IX, letter 37). Of the privileges granted to the monastery of Arles we spoke in the preceding chapter. 40. The fame of his supreme kindness toward monks perhaps impelled the most celebrated abbot Columbanus to take refuge with him, while he was being harassed in Gaul on account of certain peculiar rites of the Scots (Irish), especially in the celebration of Easter, of which he was most tenacious.

For this reason he wrote to our Gregory (Book IX, letter 127). The substance of his letter is that, in the celebration of Easter, the cycle of Victorius being rejected, the custom of the Scots ought to be embraced, which Anatolius (praised by Jerome) had favored. He also consults St. Gregory about bishops either ordained by simony or after a lapse during the time of their diaconate; and likewise about monks deserting their monastery. He praises the book of the Pastoral Rule, and asks for the expositions on Ezekiel and on the Canticles. In the following year a council was held in Gaul in which the rite of the Scots observed by Columbanus was proscribed.

Driven out of Gaul, the most holy abbot proceeded to Agilulf, king of the Lombards, and in his dominion built the most celebrated monastery of Bobbio. But as to why he preferred to fix his seat in the kingdom of the Lombards rather than in other places of Italy, this perhaps was the cause: that he knew among the Lombards the condemnation of the Three Chapters had not been received. For this pious abbot was, on other grounds, opposed to that condemnation, as is clear from his letter to Boniface IV (Cf. Benedictine Annals, book IX, p. 256).