教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 330 章

Gregory to Constantius, bishop of Milan. It has come to us by the report of certain persons coming from the parts of Lodi that the religion of those places has so deviated from the path of ecclesiastical discipline that they in no way regard, in their ways and actions, the statutes of canonical ordinance. Since these matters were both to be examined more carefully and to be avenged more severely, I admonished Venantius, our brother and fellow bishop, the bearer of these presents, that they be urgently amended. But because of the magnitude of the disquiet of the offending persons, he judged that he alone did not suffice in an inquiry of this kind; and therefore he asked of us that the help of your Fraternity's authority also be joined to him in the examining of that same business.

Although therefore brotherly love ought to exact this from you even without our writings, yet by these present letters also we especially exhort you that, the aforesaid brother of ours being taken to you, you compel all the clerics and other religious of the aforenamed city and its territory, concerning whose excesses there is any suspicion, to come to you; and, carefully inquiring into all things according to God for fear of the judgment to come, if you find anyone to have departed from the statutes of the canons, correct him with canonical punishment. Nor suffer in your places those who do not bear in their conduct what they display in their habit to stray longer through precipices. Whom it behooves you also to lead back to the norm of rectitude with pastoral circumspection.

So therefore let your Fraternity, all things being more skillfully investigated, correct, set in order, and hasten to compose for the future what has been reported to us in such matters, so that it may both profit your soul, if you vigilantly and vigorously scrutinize the causes of your office, and that you may by no means allow to be frustrated the judgment which we have always held concerning the strictness of your maturity.