教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 230 章

Gregory to Stephen the chartulary. Knowing the greatness of your Charity to love the Lord with your whole heart, on this account we have deemed it necessary to bring to your notice those things which we have learned to have been committed on the estates formerly belonging by right to Julius of patrician memory, against the divine precepts and against the rule of the canons, so that both the things that have been perpetrated may be corrected, and others henceforth may not presume to attempt them. It has therefore been intimated to us that on the estate which is called Marato, two monks have fled from the abbot of the monastery of Saint George which is situated on it; and that one of them has already taken a wife, while the other, having become a layman, lives in a secular manner;

whereas these very men are asserted not to be free but of the household of the estate, and even if according to their condition they had been bound to serve, it was against God that, after attaining the worship of the divine office, they should return to the secular life and habit. Wherefore I exhort that, having regard to the eternal Judge, you cause these monks without delay to be brought back, lest by their example, and (which God forbid) by your sin, the discipline of the other monasteries be broken down; but rather that by the support of your Magnitude the hope of doing such things be removed from the other monks.

Moreover the aforesaid abbot asserts that the presbyter of the aforesaid estate wishes to impose upon that monastery new customs, which from the time of the founding of the monastery down to the present, through a period of three years, have not existed; namely, that if anything be offered there to God by faithful men for the sake of munificence, he asserts that he ought to receive a portion of it. Let your Magnitude take pains diligently to ascertain this; and if it was not so from the beginning, let it not permit anything new to be imposed anew even as the times slip by, especially since we have learned both that the monastery is of scanty means and is one of poor men, and that the abbot himself is by the testimony of many altogether hospitable.