Maximian, who has departed this life. He gives him as successor John, a most holy man.—4. John of Ravenna dies.—5. Saint Gregory's care for the monasteries.—6. Marinianus becomes bishop of Ravenna.—7. The decrees of the Roman synod.—8. Complaints concerning Marinianus.—9. Especially that he suffered the monasteries to be harassed.—10. A privilege granted to the monks. (Years 594 and 595.) 1. For making and cementing peace between the Romans and the Lombards, Gregory labored hard this year. King Agilulf was not averse to it; but he demanded that what had been taken from him by treachery in a time of peace should be restored, and promised in turn to give satisfaction in every way, if anything should be found to have been committed by his side (Book V, Letter 36).
The holy pontiff judged this to be consonant with equity, and lest it should be rejected by the exarch, he wrote to Severus, the latter's scholasticus, that he might persuade him not to spurn those offered conditions of peace. Indeed, at Rome and in the Roman territory it was ready at hand to procure peace privately, for Agilulf was inclined to grant it there; but Gregory, as the common father, was solicitous for the making of a general peace, because unless the war with the Lombards were settled, various islands and other places would without doubt perish. 2. But the exarch was by no means thinking of peace, for he foresaw that a war ruinous to the whole commonwealth would be most useful to himself; for he did not scruple to seize gains from the losses of others.
Deceived, therefore, by the persuasions and counsels of this man and of other like administrators of public affairs, Maurice not only refused to put an end to the war, but even charged Gregory—who was exhorting him to lay aside enmities and to enter into a treaty—with excessive simplicity, chiefly because he had written concerning Ariulf, duke of Spoleto, that he was prepared to come with his whole heart to the commonwealth (Ibid., Letter 40), that is, that he was inclined to make peace and alliance with the Romans. And so, while the pope's saner counsels were not believed, the forces of the enemy grew monstrously, and Italy was daily led captive under the Lombard yoke. These things the pious pastor deplores, and he enumerates the disasters inflicted then upon Italy, and especially upon Rome.
And since he nonetheless did not cease from urging and seeking peace, employing the service of the notary Castorius, whom he kept as his representative at Ravenna before the exarch: 'A certain man, filled with the counsel of the malignant spirit, in the nighttime silence set up against this man in a public place of the city a protestation speaking of his crime, and craftily contradicting Gregory also as to the making of peace' (Book VI, Letter 31). Against the author of this defamatory libel the pope pronounced a sentence of excommunication, unless he should come forth and prove those things which were charged in the protestation; or, repenting of the deed, should acknowledge his own fault by public confession, and beg off the due penalty.
With the same excommunication he punished those who had lent their consent to the counsel of so great an iniquity. 3. Gregory's grief conceived over the public calamities was increased by mourning over the death of a friend, namely Saint Maximian, who from being a monk and abbot of Saint Andrew's had been made bishop of Syracuse. To so great a man, who had deserved so well of him, the most holy father paid the due rites and rendered these words at his funeral, writing to the deacon Cyprian: 'Your Charity's most bitter letters concerning the death of the lord Maximian I received in the month of November. And indeed he has attained to the rewards he desired; but the unhappy people of the city of Syracuse are to be mourned, who did not deserve to have such a shepherd for long.'
'Therefore let your Charity take care that in the same Church one such should be chosen for ordination as, after the lord Maximian, may seem not undeservedly to take up the place of the same governance' (Book V, Letter 17). From this letter we understand that Maximian closed his last day about the month of November in the year 594. The noble men of Syracuse, wisely declining the burdens of the election (Ibid., Letter 22), had committed it to Gregory's judgment; and giving thanks to them, he wrote that he did not have anyone like Maximian to give them as pastor. Nevertheless he indicated to the deacon Cyprian that John, archdeacon of the Church of Catania, was more suitable;
and he willed that, if this John were chosen, a release, or as we now say, letters dimissory, should be given him by Leo, bishop of Catania, before he was ordained. Then, when he had been elected and ordained, he sent the pallium. John shone in his episcopate with all virtues, especially with liberality poured out upon the poor, so that, even if he had countless poor with him, yet in order to fulfill the largess of his mercy, he sought out even other and far-distant places, says Saint Gregory, giving him thanks for the alms sent to himself (Book VI, Letter 18). Perhaps he showed himself so beneficent toward the needy because he conformed himself to the precepts of the most holy doctor, and took care to imbibe them by assiduous reading of his writings.
This reading he employed even at his table, in the presence of strangers, whereby he in some manner seasoned the food. The man of highest humility and modesty took this entirely amiss, and was the cause that John should refrain from this reading at least in the presence of foreigners, and should command the sayings of the more ancient Fathers to be read, by whose authority they might be able to be instructed (Book VII, Letter 9). 4. In the same year in which Maximian died, John, archbishop of the people of Ravenna, also departed this life, the controversy concerning the use of the pallium not yet laid to rest, as is evident from certain letters of Gregory written to him a little before (Book V, Letters 25, 48, 56). The most holy Father seems to have foretold his impending death in these words, Letter 15:
'All these things, therefore, which I have said above, most dear brother, reconsider. Attend to the day of your calling; consider what accounts you are to render for the burden of the episcopate. Amend those habits of a notary. See what befits a bishop in tongue and in deed. Be wholly pure toward your brethren. Do not speak one thing and hold another in your heart. Nor desire to seem beyond what you are, that you may be able to be beyond what you seem' (Ibid., Letters 11 and 15). Earlier he had rebuked him because he used mocking words; because, when he raged, he laid base charges upon his servants; because he showed himself lord only to the clergy, whom no discipline restrained. 5.
To the same negligence, perhaps, ought to be attributed the fact that clerics had encroached upon many monasteries. For pretending, forsooth, to live religiously, they sought to be set over the monasteries; but through their manner of life the monasteries were being destroyed, says Saint Gregory: for he who serves in the clerical office cannot himself keep the strict discipline of a monastery. By what compact, therefore, could he who does not fulfill the monastic rule compel others to observe it more strictly? Accordingly, not without reason did the provident Father take care to remedy so great an evil as soon as possible, by no means suffering sacred places to be destroyed through the ambition of clerics (Book V, Letter 1).
Some have used this letter to prove that the state of the monastic life is utterly alien to the clerical office. But how much this is abhorrent to the mind of the holy Doctor, he himself manifestly shows, since he took up very many monks—both from his own and from other monasteries—to the sacred orders, indeed to the episcopate, and even set them over apostolic duties. What of the fact that he sometimes assigns the monastic state as both a step and a preliminary disposition toward the episcopate? 'Opportunus is to be exhorted,' he says, 'that he become either a monk or a subdeacon under you; so that after some little time, if it please God, he himself may be advanced to the pastoral care' (Book XII, Letter 12).
But the most learned Mabillon is to be consulted, both in the first volume of the fourth Benedictine century in the Preface, and in the Annals. The mind, therefore, of the holy Doctor was—as far as we can gather from the praised first letter of the fifth book and from others—that the presiding over monasteries ought by no means to be entrusted to clerics; because, since they are enslaved to a laxer discipline, and have not been nurtured in the stricter morals of monks, they are less careful about the observance of the monastic rule.
Besides, inasmuch as either ambition, or avarice, or some other depraved affection had paved the way to the abbatial dignity for those clerics whom Gregory attacks, they followed a secular manner of living, in banquets, in furnishings, in garments; and in order that they might be able to be equals in procuring these things for themselves, they plundered the monasteries. 6. When John had died, the holy pontiff bore solicitude concerning the electing of a successor. The exarch demanded the archdeacon Donatus; for we believe him to be designated by these words: 'We have willed that the desire of the most excellent man, the lord patrician, in the person of the archdeacon Donatus, be fulfilled' (Book V, Letter 48). Truly it was dangerous not to comply with the request of this supreme prefect;
who, since he had his seat at Ravenna, claimed very much for himself in the election of the bishop of that city. But since not a few things had become known in the life and morals of Donatus which counseled that he ought to be repelled from the episcopate, Gregory judged that consent ought not to be given to his ordination. He also did not suffer the presbyter John to be promoted to the episcopal dignity, because he was ignorant of the Psalms and less than vigorous in the priestly office. At length, by unanimous consent, Marinianus was elected, unwilling and reluctant. He had long lived in the monastery with Gregory, who commended him to Andrew the scholasticus, an intimate of his own. To testify his grateful mind toward his archbishop, Andrew afterward with Saint
Gregory pleaded with prayers for the restoring of the use of the pallium according to the ancient custom in the Church of Ravenna (Book VI, Letter 61). But before he assented that Marinianus should use the pallium on certain days of litanies and on solemn days, the wise pontiff ordered that concerning that matter the testimonies of the archdeacon and of the elders of the city be examined, an oath having first been furnished by each. 7. Marinianus began to govern the Church of Ravenna before a certain day of July of this very year, in which he took part in a synod celebrated at Rome by Gregory. The acts and decrees of this synod, which were formerly contained in the series of Letters, may now be read in the appendix to the Letters.
The chief matters are: concerning the office of deacons; concerning the removing of lay boys from the service of the pontifical chamber; concerning the restraining of the depredations by the rectors of the ecclesiastical patrimony; concerning sacred orders and the pallium being conferred freely and without any price; and so forth. In this synod, twenty-three bishops and very many presbyters who presided over the chief titular churches of the City corroborated the enactments by unanimous consent and fortified them with their subscriptions—but not the deacons and the rest of the clergy. In the subscriptions, in the second place, is read the name of Marinianus, namely, after Gregory. Of this assembly the holy pope is believed to speak where, in very many letters (Book VI, Letters
14, 15, 16, 17), he attests that John, a presbyter of the Church of Chalcedon, concerning whom mention was already made (Above, Book II, Chapter 9, Number 5), was in the synod, by the judgment of the bishops, freed from the charge of heresy. 8. However, not long after, Marinianus repented of the episcopate he had undertaken and of the monastic tranquillity he had lost, since schismatics were slandering him as venerating the Council of Chalcedon less than was fitting. Concerning this matter Saint Gregory wrote to the clergy and people of Ravenna, asserting that Marinianus, nourished from his cradle in the bosom of the holy universal Church, had held the right preaching of the faith (Book VI, Letter 2), and thought no otherwise concerning the Council of Chalcedon than was proper.
'Therefore,' he says, 'receiving fullest satisfaction, with entire charity and pure heart, love your pastor, that the intercession of the same pastor, more purely poured forth before God, may avail to profit you' (Ibid.). These things Gregory says on behalf of Marinianus. Afterward, when he had heard that Marinianus was too sparing toward the poor, he both rebuked his tenacity by his letters, and through Secundus [Al. Secundinus], a most holy monk, took care that these admonitions be conveyed to him in secret: Let him not believe that reading and prayer alone suffice for him, so that he should study to sit apart and by no means to bear fruit with his hand; but let him have a generous hand, let him run to those in need, let him count another's want as his own:
for if he does not have these things, he holds the empty name of a bishop. 9. There were afterward other occasions for complaining about Marinianus, chiefly because he, though himself a monk, showed himself more unjust toward the monks; whence Saint Gregory wrote to him: 'We wonder why in so short a time your Fraternity's discretion has been so changed, that you do not perceive what it demands: whereof we grieve, because you give a manifest sign that the words of those who ill counsel have prevailed more with you than the study of divine reading has profited. And whereas it behooves you to defend the monasteries and to gather the religious there most earnestly, that you may be able to make gain from the gathering of souls, you desire on the contrary to exercise yourself in their burdens, as your letters testify;'
'and, what is worse, you strive that we ought to be made partakers of your fault, namely, while with our consent you desire to weigh down, under the name of managing affairs and causes, the monastery which your predecessor founded. For you ought to recall that, in your presence, with various presbyters and deacons and your clerics also present, we granted, contrary to his testament, what they requested, as was commanded. Yet there the disposition of the same your predecessor, which he had made concerning that monastery, was confirmed; and you now, dissembling these things, demand that we ought to command things contrary' (Book VI, Letter 29). Whose monastery's defense Gregory undertook in this letter, is not clearly established.
Nevertheless we conjecture that this best father of monks speaks on behalf of the Classe monastery of Saint Apollinaris, built by Marinianus's predecessor. Nor did other monasteries situated in the diocese of Ravenna experience the archbishop as more beneficent, as is clear from the end of the praised letter. 'Moreover,' he says, 'it has come to us that the monasteries which are established under your Fraternity are weighed down by the importunities of clerics and by their various molestations; that this may not be done henceforth, restrain it with a strict interdiction: so that to the monks living there it may be permitted freely to exult in the praises of our God.'
And when the pious Father had heard that, his admonition being moreover disregarded, the monks were still being harassed by the clerics of Ravenna—the archbishop dissembling—no differently than before, he thought he ought to write again, and to insist more vehemently. He closes his letter with these words: 'Let your Holiness, therefore, now admonished a second time, not defer to amend all these things with vigilant care; lest, if after this we should perceive you to be negligent—which we do not believe—we be compelled to provide otherwise for the quiet of the monasteries. For be it known to you that we do not suffer the congregation of God's servants to lie subject any longer to so great a necessity' (Book VII, Letter 43). 10. While Saint
Gregory was writing these things, he was perhaps already meditating to provide for the tranquillity of the monasteries by that famous privilege which he promulgated in the third Roman council. He had already granted a similar one to the monastery of Saints John and Stephen in the city of Classe, of which Claudius, a disciple of Saint Gregory, was abbot. The lawsuit stirred up between the archbishops of Ravenna and this abbot the most holy pontiff had willed to be judged at Rome. And when some from the clergy and from the people had cried out against this, that it was contrary to the laws and canons, the pope wrote back: 'This perhaps could be objected, if he did not have recourse to a greater, and seek before him that the merit of his cause be determined.'
'Do you not yourself know that the case which arose from John the presbyter against John of Constantinople, our brother and fellow-bishop, according to the canons had recourse to the Apostolic See, and our sentence was pronounced upon it? If, therefore, from that city where the prince is, a case was brought to our cognizance, how much more ought a matter which is among you to be terminated here, the truth being known?' (Book VI, Letter 24.) Therefore, in order to cut off this controversy by the roots and every occasion of litigating, the wise pontiff fortified this monastery with an ample privilege, which thus begins: 'How necessary it is to provide for the quiet of monasteries,' and so forth. With similar privileges he also fortified the convents of nuns.
But what the aim of the holy Pope was in granting these immunities, he not obscurely discloses in writing to the abbot Luminosus: 'These things, however, being thus accomplished, be solicitous in the work of God, and give your labor assiduously to prayer, lest there seem to have been sought for you rather a security of mind in prayer, but—which God forbid—the episcopal strictness evaded by those living wickedly' (Book II, Letter 42).