To All the Bishops of Dalmatia

Gregory to all the bishops appointed throughout Dalmatia.

Although we want to visit your fraternity often by exchanging letters, still, when some particular case calls for our attention, we like to take the opportunity to do two duties at once: both to refresh our brotherly souls by a visit, and to explain accurately the matters that come up, so that ignorance of them does not leave your minds confused. Now our brother Natalis, bishop of the city of Salona, wanted to advance the archdeacon Honoratus to the order of the priesthood. Honoratus declined to be advanced to a higher order, and in a petition he sent he asked my predecessor of holy memory that he not be advanced against his will. For he claimed that this was being attempted not to promote him but because of displeasure against him. At that, our predecessor of holy memory wrote to Natalis, our brother and fellow bishop, forbidding him to promote the archdeacon Honoratus against his will, or to keep in his heart the bitterness of the displeasure he had conceived against him. And when we too had laid the same prohibition on Natalis, he not only disregarded the commands of God but also treated our letters with contempt, and tried, so it is said, craftily to degrade this archdeacon, against custom, under the pretense of promoting him to a higher rank. It was arranged in this way so that, having removed him from the post of archdeacon, he could call in another person to serve in the place of the deposed archdeacon. [b]

Now we think that this Honoratus may have fallen under his bishop’s displeasure because he kept him from giving sacred vessels to his relatives. Both my predecessor of holy memory before and I now have wanted to examine the case carefully. But he, knowing what he had done, has put off sending a representative for its trial, so that the truth about his doings might not come out. He has already been admonished by letter so often, and has so far been stubbornly obstinate. So we have arranged for him to be admonished once more, in a letter sent to him by the bearer of this one, so that as soon as the bearer arrives he will receive the archdeacon Honoratus back into his former place. And if, with his heart still hardened, he defiantly puts off restoring him to that position, we order that for the defiance he has shown so many times he be deprived of the use of the pallium granted to him by this see. And if, even after losing the pallium, he persists in the same obstinacy, we order him to be barred from sharing in the body and blood of the Lord. For it is right that he should find those severe in justice whom he scorned when they came to him in love.

So we do not now turn aside from the path of justice, which this bishop has despised. Once the man whose guilt has in no way been shown to us has been restored to his place, we direct Bishop Natalis to send us a person with instructions, who can by his statements prove to us that this bishop’s intentions were right. For we have also had this archdeacon come to us, so that, having heard what both parties assert, we may decide whatever is just, whatever is pleasing to Almighty God. For we defend no one out of personal affection; with God’s help we keep the rule of justice without respect for any man’s person.