教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 494 章

Gregory to Vitalianus, Bishop of Siponto. Had you known how to be a guardian of the religious habit, or a bishop, it would not have been permitted, while you were stationed there, that the daughter of Tullianus of glorious memory, the master of soldiery, should cast off her religious garments and return to a secular habit, nor that she should direct a perverse letter to us. But because you are weighed down by excessive sloth and torpor, in your disgrace a thing at present unlawful has been committed with impunity. For, as we have said before, had you been vigilant, the vengeance upon the most wicked woman ought to have reached us before her fault did.

Since therefore you are so dull and so negligent that, unless you have experienced canonical coercion upon yourself, you know not how to keep strictness and discipline in others, we shall show you, if it please the Lord, at a fitting time, how solicitous you ought to be. Therefore, receiving the present writing, awake, and, being aroused, at least carry out what, oppressed by cowardice until now, you have deferred. Let it therefore be a matter of your urgency to apprehend the aforesaid woman, together with Sergius our defender, and not only to recall her, without any excuse, to the habit she has wickedly despised, but also to thrust her into a monastery, where she may be able to be guarded altogether strictly;

and so to exhibit all solicitude concerning her, that from your strictness she may be able to recognize how wicked was the thing she committed. In which matter, if anyone—which we do not believe—should attempt by any device of laymen to offer resistance to you, make haste to suspend him from participation in the most sacred communion, and to report to us, so that, after he did not perceive by his own consideration how execrable was that which he presumed to do, he may recognize it by the manner of his correction. But in all these things be zealous to show yourself so cautious and vigilant that your neglect may not double your fault, but that your solicitude may somewhat avail to diminish it.