教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 317 章

Gregory to Cyprian, deacon and rector of Sicily. It has been brought to us (Gratian, causa 19, q. 3, c. 8) that the Lady Petronilla, born of the province of Lucania, was converted through the exhortation of Bishop Agnellus, and that all her property, which she was able to have—though it might lawfully have fallen to her by right—she nonetheless conferred, and that specially under the title of donation, upon the very monastery which she entered; and that the aforesaid bishop, when dying, left half of his substance to a certain Agnellus, his son, who is said to be a notary of our Church, and the other half to the same monastery.

But when, on account of the calamity bursting upon Italy, they had fled to Sicily, it is said that the oft-named Agnellus, having corrupted her morals, violated her, and, perceiving her to be pregnant, seduced her away from the monastery, and carried off all her property, both that which was properly her own and that which she was able to have from her father's portion, and after so great and so wicked a crime had been perpetrated, defends them as being under the right of his own ownership. We exhort therefore your Charity to cause the aforesaid man, and likewise the woman, to be brought before you under strict execution, and to investigate the case itself, according to its merit, with the utmost subtlety of examination. And if you find it as it has been reported to us, a business defiled by so many iniquities, determine it with the severity of the highest purgation;

so that both upon the aforesaid man, who regarded neither his own habit nor hers, and who was the cause of such great crimes, strict retribution may come; and, that vengeance first proceeding, and she being brought back into the monastery under penance, all the property which had been taken away from the oft-named place may be restored, together with all its fruits and accessions.