To Gennadius, Exarch of Africa, Praising His Victories

The Pastoral Rule and Letters

Letters, Book 1

To Gennadius, Exarch of Africa, Praising His Victories

Gregory to Gennadius, patrician, and so on.

If the great success of your excellency’s military exploits had not come from the merit of your faith and from the grace of the Christian religion, it would not be so remarkable, since we know that the like has been granted to military leaders of old. But when, by God’s gift, you secure your future victories in advance, not by worldly preparations but rather by prayers, it becomes a matter of astonishment how your glory comes to you, not from the counsels of this world, but from God, who bestows it from above. For where is the fame of your merits not on people’s lips? And it is reported that you constantly seek these wars, not from a desire to shed blood, but for the sake of extending the state in which we see God worshiped, so that the name of Christ may be spread through the subject nations by the preaching of the faith. For as your outward deeds of courage make you eminent in this life, so the inward beauty of your character, coming from a clean heart, glorifies you by making you a sharer in the heavenly joys to come.

For we have learned that your excellency has done a great many things to help feed the sheep of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles. You have restored to him no small parts of his patrimony, which had been stripped of their proper farmers, by supplying them with Datitian settlers. Whatever, then, you give him in a Christian spirit, you receive repayment for it through hope in the judgment to come. That is why we have thought it right to commend to your eminence Hilarus, who is also the bearer of this letter, so that in matters in which he may tell you he needs your help, you may give him your usual goodwill, though always with regard to justice. And now, sending you the greeting of our fatherly love, we pray our God and Savior mercifully to protect your eminence for the comfort of the holy state, and to strengthen you with the strength of his arm to spread his name more and more through the neighboring nations.