Prologue: To John of Ravenna

Gregory to his most reverend and most holy brother and fellow bishop, John.

With kind and humble intent you reprove me, dearest brother, for having wished to escape the burdens of pastoral care by hiding myself. So that they should not seem light to some, I set down with my pen, in the book before you, my whole estimate of how heavy they are. In this way the one who is free of them may not seek them unwarily, and the one who has sought them in that way may tremble at having got them. This book is divided into four separate heads of argument, so that it may approach the reader’s mind by points set out in order, by steps, as it were. For, as the nature of the matter requires, we must above all consider in what way each person should come to the highest rule; and, having duly arrived at it, how he should live; and, living well, how he should teach; and, teaching rightly, how carefully he should become aware of his own weakness every day. Otherwise humility may flee from the approach, or the life may be at odds with the arrival, or teaching may be lacking to the life, or presumption may unduly exalt the teaching.

So let fear temper the desire. But afterward, when authority has been taken up by one who did not seek it, let his life commend it. Then it is necessary that the good that shows itself in the pastor’s life should also be spread abroad by his speech. And at last it remains that, whatever works are brought to completion, the thought of our own weakness should humble us about them, so that the swelling of pride does not snuff out even those works before the eyes of the hidden judgment. But there are many, like me in their lack of skill, who do not know how to measure themselves and yet are eager to teach what they have not learned. They think the burden of authority light in proportion as they do not know the pressure of its greatness. Let them be reproved from the very beginning of this book. Unlearned and hasty as they are, they desire to hold the citadel of teaching; so let them be turned back from their hasty ventures at the very door of our discussion.