教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 305 章

Gregory to John, bishop of Ravenna. It is no long interval of time since certain things had been reported to us concerning Your Fraternity, of which we remember that we carefully informed you when Castorius, notary of the holy Church over which, God being its author, we preside, came thither. For it had reached us that certain things were being done in your church contrary to customs and to the path of humility—things which alone, as you well know, are the exalting of the priestly office. Which things, if your Wisdom had received them meekly and with episcopal zeal, you ought not to have been inflamed on their account, but it behoved you to correct these same things with the giving of thanks. For it is contrary to ecclesiastical usage,

If it is not borne with the utmost patience — which God forbid — the correction itself becomes a fault. But Your Fraternity was much moved, and, as though rendering satisfaction with grief of heart, wrote to us, professing with the plainest truth that you have not used the pallium except after the sons of the Church have been dismissed from the sacristy, and at the time of the Masses, and in the solemn litanies, having usurped something contrary to the custom of the universal Church in your words. For how can it be that you should lawfully do in the streets, amid the tumult of the crowds at the time of ashes and hairshirt, that which you have excused as unlawful to do in the assembly of the poor and the noble and in the sacristy of the Church? Yet this (Gratian),

most dear brother, we do not think unknown to you, namely, that of scarcely any metropolitan in any part of the world has it been heard that he claimed for himself the use of the pallium outside the time of the Masses. And that you well know this custom of the universal Church, you have made most plainly clear to us by your letters, in which you transmitted to us, annexed among the enclosures, the decree of our predecessor of blessed memory, Pope John, containing that all the customs granted to you and your Church by the privilege of our predecessors ought to be preserved. You confess, therefore, that the custom of the universal Church is one thing, since you claim for yourselves by privilege those things which you do.

Therefore, as we judge, no doubt can remain to us in this matter. For either the usage of all metropolitans is also to be observed by Your Fraternity; or, if you say that something has been specially granted to your Church, the decree from the earlier pontiffs of the city of Rome, by which these things were granted to the Church of Ravenna, ought to be shown by you. And if this is not shown, it remains that, since you claim to do such things neither by general custom nor by privilege, you prove yourself to have usurped what you have done. And what shall we say to the Judge to come, most beloved brother, if we defend that heavy yoke and bond of our neck — I do not say for an ecclesiastical, but for a certain secular dignity for us —

judging ourselves burdened if for so great a weight we should be spared even for a short space of time? We wish to be adorned with the pallium, perhaps unadorned in our morals, whereas nothing shines more splendidly in an episcopal covering than humility. It behooves Your Fraternity, therefore, if with fixed mind you have set out to defend your honors for yourself by whatever arguments, either to follow the usage of the general practice from the unwritten (custom), or from the written to guard yourself by privileges. Or if, finally, none of these is the case, we do not wish you to offer to other metropolitans such an example of presumption. But lest perhaps you think that we, in writing these things to you, have neglected those things that belong to brotherly charity, know that in our archive the matter of your Church's privilege has been subtly investigated.

And indeed certain things were found which could altogether oppose the intentions of Your Fraternity, but nothing in which, concerning chapters of this kind, the case of your Church could be strengthened. Moreover, concerning that very custom of your Church which you set against us — which, that it might be proved from your parts, we already wrote to you — know that we have already taken sufficient care in this matter, inquiring of our sons Peter the deacon and Gaudiosus the primicerius, as well as Michaelius the defensor of our see, and others who for various responses were sent to Ravenna by our predecessors; and they most strictly denied that you did these things in their presence. It appears, therefore, that what was usurped unlawfully could not have been done except in secret.

Wherefore, what has been secretly introduced ought to persist by no stability. Therefore study to correct, with a view of charity and with brotherly kindness, those things which have been presumptuously done by you or by your predecessors. By no means — I do not say through yourself, but through the norm of others or of your predecessors — attempt to deviate from the rule of humility. For, that I may briefly gather up what I said above, I admonish that, unless you shall have proved these things assigned to you by privilege through the munificence of my predecessors, you presume no further to use the pallium in the streets; lest you begin not to have at the Masses even that which you boldly usurp in the streets also.

But concerning the sacristy — that Your Fraternity both sat with the pallium and received the sons of the Church, and both did it and excused it — we now for the time being make no complaint, because, following the sentence of the synods, we refuse to avenge lesser faults which are denied. Yet this we have learned, that it was done once and again; but we forbid it to be done further. Let Your Fraternity, however, be altogether solicitous, lest that which is still conceded to a beginning presumption should, when it advances, be punished the worse. You have moreover complained that certain men of the priestly order of the city of Ravenna, their sins pressing upon them, have been entangled in grave crimes.

Whose cause we wish either that you should examine there, or — if however the difficulty of proofs is not hindered by the remoteness of the places — that you should transmit them here to have these very matters examined. But if, relying on the patronage of the great, they should scorn to come either to your judgment or to us (which we do not believe), and in the chapters objected against them should be unable to answer contumaciously, we wish that, after your second and third admonition, you interdict them from the ministry of the sacred office; and that you report to us the contumacy of them by the tenor of your writings, that we may deliberate how you ought subtly to scrutinize their acts and to amend them according to the canonical definitions.

Let Your Fraternity therefore know that we are most fully absolved of this cause, from the fact that we have committed those very causes to you to be subtly investigated; and that all their sins, if they should come unpunished, all the weight of this examination should redound to the peril of your soul; knowing that your love will have no excuse before the Judge to come, if you do not correct the excesses of your clergy with the utmost severity of canonical rigor, and if you permit those by whom these things have been approved further to profane the sacred orders. But this (Gratian, dist. 93, c.

22): that concerning the mappulae (napkins) to be used by your clergy, about which you wrote, it was strongly opposed by our clerics, who say that this was never granted to any other Church whatsoever, nor did the clerics of Ravenna presume any such thing, either there or in the city of Rome, with their conscience clear; nor, if it had been attempted, would a prejudice be generated from a furtive usurpation. But even if in any Church this had been presumed, they assert it must be amended, since it is presumed not by the concession of the Roman pontiff, but by mere surreptitious stealth.

But we, preserving the honor of Your Fraternity — although against the will of the aforesaid clergy of ours — nevertheless permit your chief deacons, whom certain persons have testified to us to have used them even before, to use the mappulae in your service only; but at any other time, or that other persons should do this, we most vehemently forbid. (Cf. John the Deacon, bk. IV, ch. 2.) My most reverend fellow-servant Castorius, notary of your apostolic see, delivered to me the letter of my lord, a partner of honey and of wound. Which yet so fixed its stings that it did not withdraw a place for medicine. For he who, following the divine judgment, reprehends pride, deservedly professes himself in a certain manner mild and placid.

You have therefore recorded that I, out of ambition for novelty, had usurped the use of the pallium beyond what had been granted to my predecessors. Let the conscience of my own lord, which is governed by the divine right hand, by no means allow itself to believe this matter, nor to open its most sacred ears to the uncertainty of an opinion. First, because, though a sinner, I know nevertheless how grave it is to transgress the bounds fixed for us by the fathers, and that all pride has nothing else but ruin. For if our elders did not tolerate pride in kings, how much more is it not to be endured in priests? Then, I recall that I was nurtured in the bosom and lap of your most holy Roman Church, and, with God's help, advanced.

And with what daring should I presume to oppose that most holy see, which transmits its own rights to the universal Church — for the preserving of whose authority, as is manifest to God, I have gravely stirred up the envy of many enemies against me?

But let my most blessed lord judge that I have attempted nothing against the ancient custom — which is attested by many and by almost all the citizens of this city, even if he had assented to it among the records; and the aforesaid most reverend notary could have attested it — namely, that when the sons of the Church are already descending from the sacristy, and the deacons are entering, so that the procession may soon go forth, then the chief deacon is accustomed to vest the bishop of the Church of Ravenna with the pallium, which he is likewise accustomed to use in the solemn litanies. Let no one therefore try to creep in against me before my lord, because, if he wills, with God as guardian, he cannot prove that any novelty was introduced by me.

For in what manner I have obeyed your commands or your interests, where the cause required it, may almighty God make manifest to your most pure heart; and this I impute to my sins, that after so many labors and straits, which within and without I sustain, I should deserve to find such a recompense. But again, among other things, that consideration consoles me, that sometimes the most holy fathers chastise their sons only for this, that they may make them better; and that after this devotion and satisfaction you would not only preserve the ancient privileges to the holy Church of Ravenna, which is peculiarly yours, but would even confer greater ones in your times.

For as to what your Apostolate writes concerning the mappulae presumed by my presbyters and deacons, I truly confess it wearies me to comment anything about it, since the truth itself, which alone prevails with my lord, is of itself sufficient. For since this is lawful to the lesser Churches situated around the City, your Apostolate, my lord, will also be able — if it deign to inquire of the venerable clergy of its own first apostolic see — to find in every way that, as often as, for the ordination of the episcopate or for a response, the priests or Levites of the Church of Ravenna have come to Rome, they all proceeded, in the eyes of your most holy predecessors, with the mappulae without any reprehension.

Wherefore even at the time when, a sinner, I was ordained there by your predecessor, all my presbyters and deacons, proceeding with me in the service of the lord Pope, used them. And because our God, foreseeing all things, has placed all things in your hand and in your most pure conscience, I adjure you by that very apostolic see, which formerly by love (?) and now also by due honor you govern, that in nothing you diminish, on account of my merit, for the Church of Ravenna, which is familiarly yours, the privileges which it has hitherto used; but rather, according to the prophetic voice, let it be transferred 'to me and to the house of my father,' according to its merit.

Since therefore all the privileges which were granted to the holy Church of Ravenna by your predecessors, for greater satisfaction I have submitted them in the venerable archives according to the times of the consecration of my predecessors, nonetheless finding them trustworthy — now indeed it is in the power of God and of yourself whatever, the truth once known, you shall order to be done; since I, desiring to obey the commands of my lord's Apostolate, although ancient custom prevailed, have taken care to abstain until the second command. Gregory to Cyprian the deacon. Cosmas says that out of various necessities of dangers he has been bound by many debts, so that on their account he says his sons are being detained by his creditors. Which matter, if it is so, altogether moves us.

Wherefore we exhort your love that, since it is a matter of giving from the goods of the poor, you investigate his cause with the utmost subtlety; and if you find him truly entangled in the aforesaid debts, so that there is no substance from which he can pay these very things, you approach his aforesaid creditors, and, in order to recover his sons, settle with them for whatever amount you shall have ascertained. And because, as has been said, he here has nothing from which to make restitution, pay from the goods of the poor by our present authority; knowing that whatever shall have been given there by your provision is to be reckoned among the payments of our patrimony. In the month of August, in the eleventh indiction. (See ep. 45, indiction 12. Cf. John the Deacon, bk. II, ch. 55.) Gregory to Secundinus, bishop of Tauromenium.

We formerly commanded (Gratian, C. 18, q. 2, c. 1) that from the monastery of Saint Andrew, which is above Mascalae, the baptistery ought to be taken away on account of the insolences of the monks, and that in the same place, where the font is, an altar should be founded. The completion of which matter has hitherto been protracted. We admonish therefore Your Fraternity that you ought to insert no further delay after receiving these our present letters; but, that place of the font being filled up, let an altar for celebrating the sacred mysteries be founded there without any delay; so that both the aforesaid monks may be free to celebrate the work of God more securely, and our mind may not be stirred against Your Fraternity on account of your negligence.