約伯倫理 第 14 章

Summary. 1. St. Gregory orders a synod to be celebrated in Sicily each year. 2. Thence he takes care that grain be conveyed to Rome. 3. The sorrowful state of Rome. On the occasion of which St. Gregory exhorts the Romans to penance. 4. By what means he provided for the ruined churches, and for the needs of impoverished bishops. Translations of bishops. 5. Gregory's solicitude and liberality toward the monasteries. 6. He restrains vagrant and disgraceful monks. 7. He orders new monasteries to be built. 8. He takes up the cause of widows. (In the years 590 and 591.) 1.

It would have been too little for Gregory to rule rightly himself and his own house, or even to keep watch over the Roman Church considered singularly, had he not at the same time provided with fatherly charity and solicitude for the whole flock of Christ, over which he presided by authority. His first letter is reckoned to have been written to the bishops of Sicily, that each year they should assemble to a synod, of which he bids Peter the subdeacon, procurator of the patrimony of St. Peter in that island, to be moderator; and thus he signifies that he has committed his own stead within this province to him. For Sicily was one of the suburbicarian provinces, which were immediately subject to the Roman bishop, concerning which the sixth canon of Nicaea, in Rufinus's translation, is to be read.

Also to be consulted is the old codex of canons published by Justellus, in which the sixth canon of the Nicene canons makes mention of the suburbicarian churches. Whether there were then metropolitans in Sicily is disputed; we incline to the negative part, which Rochus Pirrus follows and defends in the second Notitia of the Church of Messina; and we have confirmed that opinion by many most weighty reasons in the notes to the aforesaid letter. Since perhaps it would be burdensome for the Sicilian bishops to obey a subdeacon acting in the stead of the Apostolic See, St. Gregory the following year committed those stead-holdings to St. Maximianus, bishop of Syracuse (Book ii, ep. 7), as we shall say below.

Afterwards he indulged the same bishops, that they should come to a synod at Rome only once every five years, whereas before they were bound to present themselves once within a triennium. 2. Sicily was the granary of Rome and of all Italy, and to transmit grain thence to Rome lay in the power of the island's praetor. This magistracy was held by Justinus, an intimate of Gregory, whom, as soon as he had begun his pontificate, he asked to take care that the due and appointed supply of grain be conveyed into the City, lest he become guilty of the destruction of the whole Roman people by performing this less strenuously; and at the same time he admonished him of his own office: 'Let no gains,' he says, 'draw you toward injustice. Let no threats nor friendships turn you aside from the way of rectitude. Behold how brief is life.'

'Consider before what Judge you are one day to go—you who now wield judicial power over the nation' (Book ii, ep. 2). For he was not wont to caress his friends with flattering words. He exhorted the same man to abstain from all feud against ecclesiastical persons; desiring most of all to foster concord between the priesthood and the empire, and between the ministers of both. 3. What was then the state of Rome St. Gregory describes in the first homily on the Gospels, delivered in the season of Advent, some months after he entered upon the episcopate, and in book ii of the Dialogues, ch. 15. Pestilence was raging, and was crushing many with sudden death; but lately aged trees had been torn up by a sudden whirlwind, houses destroyed, churches overthrown from their foundations.

Thus was fulfilled that prophecy of St. Benedict, as Gregory himself observes: 'Rome shall not be exterminated by the nations, but, wearied by tempests, lightnings, whirlwinds, and earthquake, shall wither away in itself' (Book ii, ep. 2). Lest to so many scourges there should perhaps be added one graver than all, namely famine, the most pious father of his country rightly dreaded it; which was the chief reason for his writing to Justinus the praetor. Those chastised by so many scourges, worn down by so many calamities, Gregory tried to bend his sons to penance, and to shake them with a salutary fear:

'For if,' he says, 'by the breath of a most tenuous wind God has moved the earth and undermined the foundations of buildings, if by a most light cloud He so strikes, what shall He do when He Himself shall come as Judge and Avenger, and when His wrath shall have blazed forth to the punishment of sins?' (Homily 1 on the Gospels.) 4. His zeal for preaching in no wise hindered Gregory from giving assiduous labour to the public utilities of the Church. Very many churches in Italy lay in ruins, because of the continual wars of the Goths, and afterwards of the Lombards, with the clergy slain or put to flight, and almost all the rest carried off into servitude.

Especially grave calamities had the churches of Minturnae and of Populonia suffered, in which there survived no priest by whom either penance could be given to the dying or baptism to infants. Wherefore those widowed and deserted churches, and the rest that had suffered the like calamity, he either united to neighbouring churches still intact, or commended to the neighbouring bishops to be visited and governed. The emperor Maurice had ordered that bishops whom the fury of hostility had driven from their proper places should betake themselves to those bishops who had not been torn from their churches, and should receive from them their stipends and the necessaries of life.

This decree Gregory praised, and exhorted those bishops to associate to themselves their brethren and fellow-bishops as their guests, and to relieve their want. Some bishops too, driven from their own churches, he translated to other bishoprics, as is plain from many of his letters. Worthy of note is what is read concerning Paul, bishop of Nepi, whom the most wise pope had appointed visitor and administrator of the Church of Naples during the vacancy of the see, having commended the visitation and care of the Church of Nepi to John the bishop, chiefly that on the solemn days of Easter he might perform the sacred rites. Paul, while executing the province delivered to him, suffered a most grievous injury at Castrum Lucullanum near Naples.

Gregory consoled him by letter; and lest so great a crime should remain unpunished, he sent Epiphanius the subdeacon, that together with the judge of Campania he might inquire into the perpetrated outrage and pass sentence. From what has been said it is proved that at that time the bishops of Italy, immediately subject to the Roman pontiff as to their metropolitan, at his nod sometimes migrated from their own churches to others, and that their churches were by the same authority commended to other bishops. (See the Register, book i, epp. 8, 15, 45, 79; book ii, epp. 37 and 45.) 5. After bestowing his first cares upon those churches, he reserved others for the monasteries dear to him. And so to those labouring under want he most munificently gave aid.

The monks complaining that they were burdened and harassed by the bishops he took under his own protection, deeming it inhuman to forbid them the celebration of Masses in their own monasteries and the burial of their dead. He himself set before all prelates an example of humility and equity to be looked upon, in regard to the monks of St. Theodore in the territory of Palermo. Gregory, servant of God, priest and abbot of this monastery, had by a submitted petition complained that the boundaries of his possessions had been invaded by the agents of the Roman Church. Wherefore St. Gregory charged Peter the subdeacon, who then managed the affairs and patrimonies of the Apostolic See in those regions:

St. Gregory charged him that he should hasten to restore the things which the abbot demanded, if it should be proved that the monastery had possessed them in quiet for forty continuous years. Here he was unwilling to use the privilege of the Roman Church, granted by Justinian, whereby he could have compelled the abbot to prove a hundred-year possession. (See book i, epp. 9 and 12. Cf. the Code, 'On the Most Holy Churches,' the law 'Ut inter.') 6. There was another monastery of St. Theodore near Messina, into which he willed that the monks of the city of Tauriana among the Bruttii, put to flight by the barbarians and wandering throughout all Sicily without a superior, should be enclosed. Concerning which matter he wrote both to Felix, bishop of Messina, and to Peter the subdeacon already praised (Book i, epp. 40 and 41).

By another letter of the most holy pope certain monks of the diocese of Sorrento, carried away by the same license of wandering and moreover intent upon private property (peculium), are recalled to their duty. Some too of these vagrants had leapt forth even to so great a wickedness that they had publicly taken wives; concerning whom he writes to Anthemius the subdeacon (ibid., ep. 42), that they should with all vigilance be sought out, and be compelled in monasteries to pay the penalties of so great a disgrace by a fitting chastisement.

So far was he an upholder of monastic stability, that he judged that to clerics converted (turned) into a monastery no license should be left of returning to the Churches in which they had previously served, and much less of passing over to others, unless the bishop should judge them to be taken up for the priesthood. How great was the solicitude and vigilance of the most holy pontiff concerning the monastic order is proved by another letter to the same Anthemius, in which he prescribes two things not lightly to be passed over. One is that the women who, through fear of the enemy, had fled to the island of Eumorphiana should be removed thence, lest they afford an occasion of falling to the monks inhabiting this island.

The other is that before the eighteenth year of age no youths should be received to the monastic habit on this island, on Palmaria, and on the other islands. 'Because,' says the provident pontiff, 'harsh is the congregation of monks on the islands'; that is, because here the monks led a most hard life, on account of the inclemency of the air and the penury of things requisite for life. But wrongly do some argue from this passage that here the time of monastic profession was absolutely defined by St. Gregory, since he there also bids that boys found in these monasteries under eighteen years of age be sent to Rome—doubtless that they might be trained in monasteries where the discipline was milder. But of these things we have already spoken in the first book (Ch.

ch. 3, § 44) and in the note to this fiftieth letter. For the restoring and building also of new monasteries, whether on these islands or on the adjacent ones, Gregory made use of the labour of Horosius the abbot, as we understand from various letters written this year (Book i, epp. 51 and 52). The monks dwelling on the island of Monte Cristo strayed utterly from the precepts of the monastic rule; nor were those who dwelt on the island of Gorgona reported to observe their laws more religiously. Such was the condition of those disturbed and iniquitous times, with arms clashing on every side, amid which even the more sacred laws either are silent or scarcely are heard.

Not despairing, however, of the correction of those brethren, Gregory gave orders to the abbot Orosius, already praised, that he should visit these monasteries as though a legate of the Apostolic See, and that whatever he found worthy of correction he should take pains to root out, and should recall the monks to a better way of life. 7. Nor indeed did that fair-minded judge of affairs think that he ought to abstain from raising up new monasteries on account of the corrupted morals of some few monks.

On the contrary, he charged the same Orosius and the defensor Symmachus that, besides the monastery lately built on the island of Corsica by a religious woman named Labina—for the founding of which Symmachus had requested monks from Gregory—they should see to the building of another in a fortified place on the same island. 「To the end,」 he says, 「that the island itself, which until now has had no monastery, may also be bettered in the way of this manner of life」 (Book I, letter 52). But we must not linger too long over monastic matters. 8. The Apostle bids that bishops honor widows (1 Tim. 5:3), which is also to be understood of supplying them with food and the other necessities of life.

Therefore Gregory not only commended them to the bishops, but also took constant care himself to protect them and to relieve their want. Of this his fatherly charity toward them the chief proof is letter 39 of Book I, in which he commands the subdeacon Anthemius, administrator of the ecclesiastical patrimony in Campania, to disburse a thousand measures of wheat and eighty solidi to three widows suffering necessity. That this bounty was yearly we gather from letter 59 of the same book. The opening of the former letter teaches us that nothing lay nearer to the heart of the holy and pious shepherd than care for the poor, and that it was the chief province of his agents and procurators to bring aid to the needy—to which he exhorted them both in person and in writing.

But if they attended to their duty too negligently and were not at hand for the poor, being goaded by Gregory's sharper rebukes they at once paid the penalty for their sloth. Among the three widows just mentioned was Pateria, aunt or father's-sister or mother's-sister of St. Gregory; though he does not expressly call her a widow, he nevertheless implies it, since he numbers her among the other widows, and, speaking of her sons, is silent about a husband. By the example of so great a pontiff bishops can learn not to close the bowels of mercy toward their kinsfolk and near ones (even though these ought not to be enriched with the goods of the Church), but to give them a place among the other poor.

But if any repel from themselves the poor who are joined to them by kinship, let them beware lest it be imputed to proud shame. Since that most munificent man desired to bestow a benefit, not to lend at interest, and judged it more blessed to give than to receive, he refused gifts, as we learn especially from his letter to Felix of Messina written in that year (Book I, letter 66). For he understood that he had been set at the very summit of the Church to this end—that gifts should flow down from himself upon his subjects abundantly and freely; not, in reverse order, flow back from the subjects to himself. ARGUMENT. 1. St. Gregory's mercy toward heretics, tempered by prudence. 2. How he bore himself toward the schismatics who made tumult over the Three Chapters.

The condemnation of the Three Chapters, when received in Spain, and in Gaul. 3. Examples of Gregory's charity and equity toward the Jews. 4. Authari, king of the Lombards, dies. His successor Agilulf favors the Catholics. 5. What Gregory decreed for the restoring of the faith and of discipline. 6. What he ordained concerning the celibacy of subdeacons. A rank fable of the heterodox is exploded. 7. Concerning Venantius, a deserter of the monastic state. 8. St. Gregory exhorts him to penance. What is to be thought of the marriages of monks. (A.D. 590 and 591.) 1. With what charity Gregory embraced his own and the children of the Church, those things sufficiently and more than sufficiently demonstrate which we have already drawn out from his letters written in the first year of his pontificate.

Now, however, concerning his mercy toward strangers—namely heretics or schismatics, indeed even toward the Jews—certain things are to be drawn from the same documents; wherein we shall show at the same time how he bore himself toward all those enemies of Christ and of His spouse. That gentleness is to be preferred to severity, so that those who have fallen into heresy may be recalled to the true faith, he teaches in the letter to Demetrius, bishop of Naples (Book I, letter 14): and that they are to be received readily into communion even at the peril of interposing one's own soul. Yet lest this supreme indulgence should decline into excessive laxity, there was at hand a moderating prudence, which shone forth most of all in his response to the question concerning single or triple immersion in baptism proposed by St.

—the question proposed by Leander of Seville. The rite received among the Arians was to immerse three times in conferring baptism, but for the orthodox a single immersion sufficed. The Visigoths, lately converted to the Catholic faith—chiefly through King Reccared and the teacher St. Leander—wished to retain their former custom of thrice immersing. The old Catholics stood against this, being themselves most tenacious of their own rite. Consulted about this controversy, Leander judged that the Apostolic See must be approached, and without consulting it he dared decide nothing, following the ancient custom of his fathers. He therefore wrote to Gregory and argued on both sides, setting forth various reasons now for single, now for triple immersion.

To the question the most holy master replied that, without peril to the faith, it was lawful to follow either rite indifferently, because where the faith is one, a diverse custom does no harm to the Church. He adds, however: 「But because until now the infant was immersed three times in baptism by the heretics, I do not think it ought to be done among you, lest, while they count the immersions, they divide the Godhead; and while they do what they were doing, they should boast that they have overcome our custom」 (Book I, letter 43). A most prudent response indeed. And the same is the reason why to our brethren lately returned to us from the corrupt dogma of Calvin we do not indulge many things which otherwise might be reckoned among matters of indifference. 2.

With the same gentleness, tempered by prudence, Gregory dealt with the schismatics—chiefly those who dissented from the Church in defense of the Three Chapters. For that schism there then stood only the bishops of Istria and of Venetia. For although earlier it had blazed up more fiercely in Africa and in Illyricum, we not rashly conjecture that in these provinces it was already laid to rest, from so many letters sent by St. Gregory both to the Illyrian and to the African bishops, in which there is no mention of this schism.

Now among the schismatics we do not reckon those who, although they did not receive the Fifth Council and had by no means subscribed to the condemnation of the Three Chapters, nevertheless in no way abstained from the communion of those who had admitted this synod and the condemnation of the Three Chapters proclaimed therein. Certainly St. Gregory never held these for schismatics, but only those who withdrew on occasion of the Fifth Synod and spurned the communion of others, as we shall show below by manifest documents.

For it is to be observed that in Spain, Gaul, and almost all the other provinces which did not obey the Roman emperor (by whose compulsion, though Pope Vigilius resisted, these Chapters were condemned), the decree of their condemnation was received only later. Concerning Spain the most eminent Cardinal Henry Noris proves this by the clearest arguments, in his historical dissertation on the Fifth Synod, chapter 9, §2—especially from the silence of the councils of Spain, which nowhere decree that this synod is to be received, and from St. Isidore, who then in his catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers,

speaking of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and then in his Chronicle, quite freely rebukes the emperor Justinian for having compelled the bishops within the bounds of the empire to condemn the Three Chapters. Concerning Gaul the same is proved in Volume II, or in the appendix to the works of St. Leo the Great, Pope, in the observation on the Judgment of Chrodobert, bishop of Tours; the letters of the pontiffs Vigilius and Pelagius, which signify this not obscurely, being also brought forward. Indeed St. Columban, who had long lived in Gaul, showed clearly enough that he thought thus, in his letter to Boniface V, where among other things he hurls this against Pope Vigilius: 「Watch therefore, I pray, O pope, since perhaps Vigilius did not watch well—Vigilius, whom those men proclaim the head of the scandal, who cast blame upon you.」

But although controversy was at times stirred up in the Gallican synods concerning Columban's doctrine and rites, he was nevertheless never brought under suspicion of error or of schism on account of his having rejected the condemnation of the Three Chapters. Had the prelates of Istria contained themselves within these lines, and been content merely not to subscribe to the oft-chanted condemnation, without breaking the bond of communion and charity, they would by no means have been called schismatics. But they never ceased to make tumult, and to rave against the Roman See. Yet these, and their standard-bearer Severus, bishop of Aquileia or Grado, who had relapsed and returned to the schism he had before abjured, St.

Gregory with fatherly affection invited to peace, and to a synod to be celebrated by the emperor's command. John the Deacon relates (Book I, letter 16) that Severus, then compelled by both apostolic and imperial injunction, and with Smaragdus pressing upon him, came to Ravenna; where, fearing to undergo a synodal contest with Gregory, through the mediation of John, bishop of Ravenna, he returned to the unity of the Church—from which he attests that a little after he sprang back, an injunction of Maurice Augustus having also been surreptitiously obtained, which enjoined that schismatics should by no means be forced to return to the unity of the Church. But what John here narrates happened earlier, as is clear from Paul the Deacon (Book III on the Deeds of the Lombards, ch. 27).

For it is established that the exarch Smaragdus had already yielded his place to Romanus when Gregory summoned Severus by his letters to peace. In these too St. Gregory makes mention both of Severus's return to the Church and of his relapse into schism: 「As much,」 he says, 「as we had rejoiced that you had long since been incorporated into the unity of the Church, so much the more abundantly are we now confounded that you are severed from the Catholic fellowship.」 The bishop, kindler of schism, stopped his ears together with his companions; yet the most holy man remitted nothing of his fatherly affection toward the rebels, as we shall show below from others of his letters. 3. Let us now demonstrate that the Jews themselves made trial not only of Gregory's equity, but also of his charity.

Peter, bishop of Terracina, had expelled the Jews from the place in which they had been accustomed to gather to celebrate their festivals, having however assigned another place where they might freely congregate for the sake of their religion. But a little after he had forced them to migrate from there also. Of the wrong done to them the Jews complained before the pope, who wrote back to Peter: 「If it is so, we will that your Fraternity refrain from a complaint of this kind, and that at the place which, with your knowledge, they have obtained for their gathering, they be permitted to assemble as was the custom there. For those who disagree from the Christian religion must be gathered to the unity of the faith by gentleness, by kindness, by admonishing, by persuading;

lest those whom the sweetness of preaching and the foreseen terror of the coming Judge might have been able to invite to believe, be driven off by threats and terrors.」 (Book I, letter 35.) Wholly consonant with this sentence are the things he wrote a little after to Virgilius of Arles and to Theodore, bishop of Marseilles—namely, that the Jews ought not to be compelled to receive baptism, lest, being made Christians by necessity rather than by will, they should relapse into their former superstition, and thence die the worse from that whence they seemed to have been reborn. (Ibid., letter 47.) Yet the offending Jews, especially if there were danger that the Christian religion be brought into contempt, he took pains to restrain as speedily as possible.

Hence, when he learned that a certain Jew had procured the sacred vessels or ministries of the Church of Venafro (which is forbidden by law), and especially two chalices, he ordered the subdeacon Anthemius to have the buyer summoned through the governor of the province, and to compel him to restore those sacred treasures, the deacon and the other clerics—impious sellers of the sacred furniture—being consigned to penance. 4. Now let us touch summarily upon the affairs of the Lombards transacted in the first year of Gregory's pontificate. That in this year Authari, their king, was extinguished, we learn from letter 17 of Book I, the Lombard rule being extended as far as Reggio in the utmost bounds of the Bruttii (Paul, Book III, ch. 34).

A little before, this Arian prince, carried away by zeal for propagating his sect, had by a solemn edict forbidden that the sons of his own gentiles should be baptized in the Catholic faith. But not long after he found God his avenger, and for this fault was taken from among the living. That he perished by poison the writer of Lombard affairs narrates (Paul the Deacon, Book III, ch. 36), after he had reigned six years. His death being known, the dukes and chief men of the Lombards assembled at Pavia, to deliberate about choosing a successor.

In which assembly it was decreed by unanimous sentence that Theodelinda, a queen of tried prudence and virtue, should always preside over the helm of the kingdom, and should choose whom she preferred from among the dukes as husband for herself and as king of the whole nation. She, having taken counsel with the elders, took as consort of the kingdom and of the marriage-bed the duke of the Turinese, Ago or Agilulf by name; upon whom, at Milan, in a crowded assembly of the whole nation, was placed—as the writers of Milan have it—the golden crown called 「iron」 from the iron circle enclosed within it; which afterward became most famous.

By so great a benefit Theodelinda, being kindled with ardor for the Catholic faith, impelled Agilulf, now bound to her, to embrace that same faith, if we are to believe Paul the Deacon (Book IV, ch. 6). And, following the king's example, the Lombards in great part abjured Arianism. Yet what Paul says of the Catholic faith received by Agilulf we understand to have been done later, from St. Columban's letter to Pope Boniface, written not before the year 607, at which time the king of the Lombards was still an Arian; for of him he thus speaks: 「For he is said to have declared that, if he knew it for certain, he too would believe.」 For which cause Columban composed a book against the Arians, as Jonas testifies.

It is nevertheless established that Agilulf, though he did not yet follow the orthodox faith, greatly favored the Catholics from the very beginning of his reign—which St. Columban too experienced, being kindly received by him. 5. Gregory, having heard of the death of King Authari, wrote to all the bishops of Italy (Book I, letter 44) that they should take care to reconcile to the Catholic faith the little ones of the Lombards baptized in the Arian rite—especially as a grave mortality was pressing on; but afterward he set his mind to repairing in Italy the discipline of the Church, which had been ruined amid the swords of the heterodox barbarians.

Solicitous for the penance of priests and others of the clergy who had fallen, he ordered that they be thrust back into the poorest monasteries, where regular observance flourished, and that sufficient stipends be supplied to them, so that from these the monks—who should bear the care of their amendment—might also have subsidy for living. He took pains to check ambition in the clergy. Hence he ordered Liberatus the deacon, puffed up and distended with a spirit of ambition, to stand in the last place among the other deacons, that he might grow accustomed to humility and subjection (Book I, letters 85 and 84). He commanded that bishops accused of a crime be judged in council according to custom, and be deposed by no other than a synodal sentence (Book III, letter 8).

He established that wandering clerics were not to be received or incardinated without the release or letters dimissory of their own bishop. What he decreed concerning the celibacy of subdeacons must now be examined more carefully (Book I, letter 83). 6. Pope Pelagius II, three years before, had imposed the law of celibacy on the subdeacons of Sicily, after the custom of the Roman Church; and had ordered that those already married be separated from their wives—which seemed to Gregory harsh and inequitable, and liable to very many perils of a worse kind. This decree, therefore, the most wise pontiff so tempered as to allow married subdeacons to retain their wives, on this law: that they should never advance to sacred orders;

「Because no one ought to ascend to the ministry of the altar unless his chastity has been approved before the ministry is undertaken」 (Book I, letter 44, and Book IV, letter 34). For the rest, he forbade that thereafter bishops should ordain any subdeacon except one who promised to live chastely. By these things is exploded the little fable which the Centuriators of Magdeburg drew forth from a letter forged under the name of St.

Udalric, bishop of Augsburg, to Pope Nicholas—namely, that our Gregory had first by a solemn decree taken away wives from the priests, but, when he had understood that from his fishpond the heads of infants to the number of six thousand had been drawn out by fishermen, and imputed this infanticide to himself (for he did not doubt that so many infants had been born of the stealthy fornications or adulteries of priests), he unfixed his decree, and repented of so great a crime. As many words here, so many rank and stolid lies of the fable. By what reasoning were those infants' heads cast rather into the fishpond of the pontifical dwellings than into the Tiber, or into the public sewers?

The heads are found and counted—what became of the rest of the corpses? As if it had even the least likelihood that the parricides of those infants, to whom it so greatly mattered to conceal so great a crime, should—having by agreement cast the heads of the slain into the pontifical fishpond—of their own accord, as if in sport, have wished to make it public?

How brazen-faced indeed are those who would have it that Gregory repented of having bound priests and sacred ministers to the law of celibacy—when he himself was never the author of any such law (since indeed it had always been observed at least in the Latin Church, where the canons were in force), nor did he suffer almost any year of his pontificate to pass in which he did not write something concerning the celibacy of the major clergy. Read especially the following letters: Book I, letters 44 and 52; Book IV, letters 26 and 36; Book IX, letter 60; Book X, letter 62; Book XI, letter 64, to Secunda, answering her inquiry, where, speaking of clerics who are free to take wives, he excludes those who are constituted in sacred orders; finally Book XIII, letters

35 and 36. For the rest, it is not worth the trouble to explode this fable by many arguments, since it vanishes at once when it is weighed at what time St. Udalric the bishop lived. For he could not have been contemporary either with Nicholas I or with Nicholas II. On this matter the eminent Cardinal Baronius is to be consulted, at the year 591, number 21. 7. With no less zeal did Gregory guard the chastity and repute of the monks than of the clergy, as we forewarned in the previous chapter, number 6. And indeed he held those most strictly bound who had, by vow or resolve, joined themselves to perpetual chastity, as is placed beyond doubt from his letter to Venantius written in this year. Venantius, sprung it seems of patrician stock in Sicily, had embraced the monastic life;

but afterward, having left the monastery, he had married a woman by name Italica, or had returned to one previously married, from whom he begot two daughters, Barbara and Antonina. That in those times some monks had publicly taken wives St. Gregory laments (Book I, letter 42), and orders that they be torn from them and thrust back into a monastery, as we have already observed. Our Mabillon suspects that Italica was Venantius's parent, not his wife (Benedictine Annals, year 601, page 266); but—be it said with the peace of so great a man—this conjecture collapses when the inscription of letter 125 of Book IX is read.

Nor does the title of 「Chancellor of Italy,」 which is gratuitously conferred upon this patrician, rest on any firmer foundation—drawn as it is from the corrupt inscriptions of the letters which the printed codices have, but not those written by hand. That Barbara and Antonina were born before Venantius's fall, nothing compels us to say. Venantius had departed from the monastery some years before Gregory undertook the pontificate. His daughters addressed Gregory by letter in the eleventh year of his pontificate, one perhaps twelve, the other ten years old (Book XI, letters 35 and 78). What need of supposing them beyond that age?

It was no more at variance with the most holy pontiff's piety honorably to greet and to protect noble maidens, even though born of unlawful nuptials, than to write in most reverent and friendly words to their dear parents Venantius and Italica, and to rebuke John, bishop of Syracuse, for the offerings of Venantius which he had refused (Book VI, letter 44). We have run a little beyond bounds, weighing the conjectures of a most learned man; now we must return to that from which we digressed. 8. Gregory wrote to Venantius, deserter of the monastic resolve, a weighty letter, that he might exhort him to penance—which may easily be read. Especially worthy of note are these words:

「Ananias had vowed money to God, which afterward, overcome by diabolical persuasion, he withdrew (Acts 5). But by what death he was punished, you know. If, therefore, he was worthy of the peril of death who took away from God the coins he had given, consider with how great a peril in the divine judgment you will be worthy—you who withdrew from Almighty God, to whom you devoted yourself under the monastic habit, not coins, but your very self. Consider the judgment of God which he deserves, who vowed himself to God, and, being straightway ensnared by the desires of the world, lied concerning what he vowed」 (Book I, letter 34). By which words what could be said more expressly to establish the obligation of monastic vows?

The incestuous marriages of monks and nuns Pope Siricius had long before condemned as contrary to the public laws and to ecclesiastical right, writing to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona (Letter I, ch. 6, Vol. I of the Councils, p. 1019). In support are the Council of Chalcedon, canon 16, and the Fourth of Carthage, to which Augustine subscribed, chapter 104. Augustine, however, seems to teach that the marriages of those who have vowed continence are not adulteries, although he judges their fall worse than any adultery (Book On the Good of Widowhood, chapters 10, 11, 12). But he contends that this vice belongs to those who marry, not to the marriages themselves, which are holy and never to be condemned.

Thus indeed the holy doctor speaks, lest he seem to consent with the Manichaeans who condemn marriage. This question, proposed to him, St. Bernard touches in his book On Precept and Dispensation, chapter 17, but decides nothing. Venantius did not come to his senses; nor yet did Gregory spring back from friendship with him, hoping that a more opportune time would sometime be at hand for exhorting his friend again to penance.

Indeed, having afterward heard of the grave sickness with which he lay abed, being solicitous for his salvation, he wrote to John, bishop of Syracuse, that he ought to think about his soul—by exhorting, by entreating, by setting before him the terrible judgment of God, by promising His ineffable mercy—that he might return to his habit even at the last, lest the guilt of so great a fault stand against him in the eternal judgment (Book XI, letter 36). But what followed thereupon we do not know. Of Venantius there will yet later be occasion to treat. Now let us pass over from Sicily into Africa, where the pontifical authority of St. Gregory, and his pastoral solicitude, became manifest in the first year in which he ascended the Roman See.