教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 584 章

Gregory to Maximus, bishop of Salona. Although to the culpable beginnings of your ordination you had added a grave evil through the fault of disobedience, we nevertheless, tempering the authority of the Apostolic See with such moderation as was fitting, never flared up against you beyond what the cause demanded. But lest our forbearance, which you yourself had provoked against yourself, should prolong itself too far, the responsibility entrusted to us pressed us vehemently, lest we should seem negligently to pass over certain unlawful things which we had heard concerning you. If you consider these things well, you yourself, by deferring to make satisfaction through yourself, were confirming them, and from this you were the more sharply inciting our zeal against you.

But when at length, using wholesome counsel, you humbly submitted yourself to the yoke of obedience, and your Beloved, doing penance, purged himself by worthy satisfaction as we had appointed, understand that the grace of fraternal charity has been restored to you, and rejoice that you have been received into our fellowship; for as it behoves us to be strict toward those persisting in fault, so we ought to be kindly toward pardon for those who come to their senses. Since therefore your Fraternity knows that it has recovered the communion of the Apostolic See, let it send a person to us who may receive the pallium to be conveyed to you according to custom. For just as we do not suffer unlawful things to be perpetrated, so we do not deny the things that belong to custom.

But although the dispensation of our position has called us also to grant these things, nevertheless the petition of our most sweet and most excellent son, the lord Callinicus the exarch, greatly demanded that we should deal more mildly with you. His most dear will we neither could nor did wish to sadden. (Cf. John the Deacon, book IV, chap. 45.)