Gregory to the clergy, order, and people residing at the Church of Mevania. As often as some matter to be done is committed to several persons, while each one dissents from another, an entrance is opened to losses rather than to advantages. Providing against this, lest it should be able to befall your Church, we have chosen to commit its care and interests for the present to Honoratus the presbyter, so that the affairs and interests of the Church may both be managed by him and guarded in every way. And therefore by these present writings we exhort your love, that, in order that a priest may be ordained for you, the assent of your will may agree in the worthy election of one man, and that you may no longer suffer the Church of God to be vacant of the office of a pontiff.
But until a priest shall be ordained for that Church, we have committed the whole of its solicitous care, as we have said, to the aforesaid presbyter. Let your love therefore hasten to show itself in all these matters so, that the ready devotion of your mind may show that you have love for the Church. (See Book II, letter 64.)