約伯倫理 第 17 章

Argument. 1. On the law of Maurice forbidding soldiers to be received into monasteries. This St. Gregory disapproves. 2. Whether he amended it before it was published. 3. On what occasion that law was passed, and on what grounds it rested. 4. Gregory solicitous for monastic discipline. 5. Whether abbots and monks were forbidden to go abroad. 6. A Jew mocks Christians by a false cult of Elias. Gregory writes concerning his punishment. 7. He labours at the Dialogues. (Years 592 and 595.) 1. Before we depart from the East, we must treat of a certain law promulgated by the emperor at about the same time, which afflicted with the gravest sorrow the most holy pontiff, already labouring under sickness.

For Maurice had decreed not only that whoever had been involved in public administrations should not be able to attain to an ecclesiastical office, but also that it should not be lawful for such a one to be converted in a monastery: which he had likewise established concerning those who were enrolled in military service, to whom thenceforth it was not free to seek the monasteries for the sake of penance. That members of the town councils (curiales), and those bound by secular business, should be excluded from ecclesiastical dignities, St. Gregory greatly approved, knowing most evidently, as he says, that whoever, deserting the secular habit, hastens to come to ecclesiastical offices, wishes to change the world, not to leave it. But that these same men should not be allowed to be converted in monasteries he by no means approved.

For even though they were debtors of another's money and entangled in public accounts, their debts could be satisfied through the monastery, says the holy pontiff. By this one and the same argument he demonstrates at once both that the monasteries were then endowed even with ample revenues, and that the highest charity flourished within them. But most of all did the most holy father condemn the law by which soldiers were forbidden entrance into monasteries, unless either their military service being completed, or having obtained their discharge on account of bodily infirmity. Let us hear him himself remonstrating with Maurice concerning this law: 'To these things, behold, through me, His last servant and yours, Christ shall answer, saying:

I made thee, from a notary, count of the excubitors; from count of the excubitors, Caesar; from Caesar, emperor; and not only this, but even father of emperors. I committed my priests to thy hand, and dost thou withdraw thy soldiers from my service? Answer, I beg thee, most pious lord, thy servant: what wilt thou reply, in the judgment, to thy Lord who comes and says these things?' Let the rest be read, spoken with the same liberty as befitted the supreme pontiff, which nevertheless he afterward tempered with these words breathing humility: 'I indeed, being subject to the command, have caused this same law to be transmitted through the various parts of the earth; and because the law itself in no way accords with Almighty God, behold, through the page of my representation I have made announcement to my most serene lords.

On both sides therefore I have discharged what I owed, both rendering obedience to the emperor, and by no means keeping silence concerning what I felt for God's sake.' (See Book III, letters 65 and 66.) 2. This letter Gregory sent to Theodorus, the emperor's archiater, that is, chief of the physicians, asking him to present it to Maurice at a favourable time, with whom his favour prevailed exceedingly, and, by employing both counsels and entreaties, to move the emperor to reshape or soften this law. Whether Theodorus accomplished this we do not know. Yet the holy pontiff seems to teach that Maurice afterward drew back from the law he had enacted. For, writing to very many metropolitans about soldiers to be received into the monastic habit after a probation of three years, he adds:

'On which matter also the most serene and most Christian emperor, believe me, is in every way appeased, and gladly receives the conversion of those whom he recognizes as not being entangled in public accounts.' The most illustrious Cardinal Baronius also judges that this imperial law was amended and tempered by Gregory before he took care to have it promulgated and transmitted to the metropolitans. Nearly the same is the opinion of the most illustrious lord De Marca (On Concord, Book II, ch. [—]); and he adds that St. Gregory, in softening this law, used the same authority as did the praetorian prefects, in whose power it lay either to modify for a time the civil laws directed to them by the emperors to be published, or

— or to abstain from publishing them, until they had written to the emperor about amending them, or had themselves approached him. But others think that this law was sent by St. Gregory with no change made, just as he had received it from the emperor; and they contend that this is signified by these words of Gregory: 'I have caused the same law to be transmitted through the various parts of the earth, and because the law itself in no way accords with Almighty God, behold... I have made announcement.' Therefore, they say, the law, such as it was transmitted by the pope, had not yet been corrected and amended, since after amendment it was consonant with the will and law of God. Let the reader choose whichever of the two opinions he pleases. 3.

For the rest, the occasion for passing this law had been furnished to the emperor by the frequent concourse of those then seeking penance at the monasteries, so that very many men, bound to the world and to the court by various offices and ministries, terrified by the threatened scourges of the divine wrath, were sending back their notice to both public and private affairs; the tax-farmers were deserting their toll-houses; military men, whether common soldiers and men of the ranks, or centurions or tribunes and other commanders, were casting off the insignia of military service, hastening to conversion. Moreover there were not wanting reasons which might persuade that only soldiers who had served out their time and been discharged were to be received into monasteries. For indeed canon 4 of the Council of Chalcedon

— it is provided that no slave be received in monasteries under pretext of monastic profession, without the knowledge of his master: but those who transgress this definition are excommunicated. And in the Council of Gangra, canon 3, we read: 'If anyone, under pretext of divine worship, teach a slave to despise his own master, so that he withdraw from his service... let him be anathema.' But soldiers, throughout the whole time of their service, were bound to the service of the state no otherwise than slaves; whence at that time they were also branded on the hand, like chattels upon whom certain marks were burned. Concerning these Vegetius is to be read, Book II, ch. 25. Gregory himself, in the aforesaid letter to Maurice, calls soldiers 'marked on the hand.'

According to present-day custom, although no brands are burned upon soldiers, nevertheless, as soon as, upon taking the oath, they have professed military service, they cannot with impunity desert it, even for the sake of embracing a holier warfare. Let these things be said in order that we may show that law to have been neither impiously passed by the emperor, nor rashly promulgated by Gregory. For although it seemed to fight against piety, in that soldiers were forbidden to serve in the sacred battle-line of the monks (wherefore Gregory rather freely rebuked Maurice), yet the matter being more closely examined, and account being taken of the public good, the prudence of most experienced men perhaps counselled that it be so ordained. 4.

Since the most holy man was thus solicitous for the enlisting of soldiers for Christ, he laboured more and more that discipline might flourish among them, and above all he took pains to admonish the abbots to keep watch over the salvation and safekeeping of their brethren. Whence, as soon as he heard that a certain abbot John had by his own negligence defiled and shaken the reputation of his monastery, he wrote to him in these words: 'Be altogether solicitous for the souls of the brethren. Let it suffice now that the reputation of the monastery has been defiled through your negligence. Do not frequently go out abroad. In these affairs appoint a procurator, and do you devote yourself to reading and to prayer....'

'But among the very brethren of your monastery whom I see, I do not find them devoting themselves to reading. Whence it is necessary to consider how great a sin it is, that God should have transmitted to you sustenance out of another's offering, and that you should neglect to learn the commandments of God' (Book III, letter 3). Now this most skilled ruler of souls enjoined sacred reading not only upon clergy and monks, but even upon laymen and those devoted to military service, as is clear from the letter written to Maurentius, master of the soldiers (Book VIII, letter 17), whom he praises for this, that, avoiding human gatherings, he applied himself to unrolling the sacred books; but he grieves that in this pious study of reading he has no companion. 5.

For the rest, from these words of Gregory to John, 'do not frequently go out,' the author of the New Ecclesiastical Library written in French wrongly asserts that both abbots and monks were forbidden to go forth abroad, whereas Gregory censures only frequent goings-out into public. Truly St. Benedict, who willed his own pupils to be devoted to the solitary life, in two chapters of his Rule (namely 51 and 67) clearly signifies that they were not forbidden to go out beyond the monastery and to attend to business. Gregory himself, moreover, not only employed abbots and monks in many affairs, both ecclesiastical and even political, as we shall often say below, but even set them in charge. In the preceding year he had written to John of Ravenna (Book II, letter

— letter 46), that Claudius, abbot of the monastery of Classis, was to be sent to the city of Fanum with a certain sum of money, to redeem captives. Afterward, when Queen Theodelinda had suspended herself from communion with Constantius, bishop of Milan, on account of the three chapters condemned by him, he sent to her the abbot John and the notary Hippolytus, that they might persuade the queen of the authority of the Council of Chalcedon—that it had by no means been struck down by this condemnation (as the schismatics were vociferating)—and recall her to communion with Constantius (Book IV, letters 5 and 4). Nay, he even made use of the services of the monk Secundinus and the abbot Probus for composing peace with Agilulf, king of the Lombards; which turned out happily (Book VI, letter 30, and Book IX, letters

— letters 4 and 43). We do not think that in this place we should recount so many monks sent by St. Gregory for the sake of preaching the Gospel, of whom mention will be made afterward. Nevertheless retirement and rest from all business, by which the solitary life is chiefly commended, so long as it is permitted to enjoy these, monks ought to embrace and pursue, by the example of St. Gregory above all urging this—who, drawn away from the quiet of the monastery and raised to the summit of the supreme pontificate, like a little infant weaned from his mother's breast, uttered as it were so many wailings as he published writings.

That we may also treat in passing of those who are without, and do not belong to the Church: the Jews, who more than once had experienced Gregory's clemency, were in this year restrained by his tireless solicitude and unwearied zeal. For when a certain Nasas, most wicked among them, had built an altar under the title of the blessed Elias, and had drawn and seduced many of the Christians thither for the sake of prayer, the most vigilant pontiff wrote to Libertinus, prefect of Sicily (Book III, letter 38), where the crime had been committed and the superstition was flourishing, that he should most strictly and corporally chastise this Jew, if the guilt should be established, and should not imitate the sloth—and, worse than that, the avarice—of Justinus, praetor of the same island.

For that Justinus, softened by the gifts of the Jews, took no care to avenge the injuries done to God, as Gregory had learned from letters written to him. The same Jew was reported to have procured Christian slaves for himself, which fought against a law passed by Constantine the Great, that Christians should not be servants to Jews. And because it had been provided by the same law that if the Jews should have any Christians in their obsequious service and household, these should at once be asserted into liberty (Eusebius, Book IV of the Life of Constantine, ch. 27), the pope demands that this be carried into execution vigorously and without delay. Nearly the same is the subject-matter of another letter (Book IV, letter 1), written to Venantius, bishop of Luna, in the following year. 7.

That St. Gregory in this third year of his pontificate thought of composing the Dialogues is attested by the letter to Maximian, bishop of Syracuse, in which we also get a hint that a little afterward he set himself to elaborating them (Book III, letter 51). But concerning the time at which they were written, read our preface, Tome II, especially numbers 17 and following. From that same preface all things that pertain to these books must be sought again. This one thing I shall here observe: that this excellent work was the fruit of solitude, for which Gregory frequently panted, that he might be relieved from the troubles and solicitudes of the pastoral life, and might in some measure repair the loss of the quiet he had lost, by weeping for it with pious tears.

But of what sort he was in retirement, and upon what things he then bent his mind in meditation, learn from the very opening of the Dialogues.