To Gennadius, Exarch of Africa, on the Council of Numidia

Gregory to Gennadius, patrician and exarch of Africa. We are well assured that the mind of your religious Excellency burns with zeal of divine love, especially against things done improperly in the churches. So we are all the more glad to lay on you the correction of faults in church cases, as we have confidence in the bent of your devout disposition. Be it known, then, to your excellency that some who have come to us from Africa have reported that many things are being done in the Council of Numidia against the way of the fathers and the ordinances of the canons. Since we could no longer bear the frequent complaints about such things that have reached us, we have entrusted the inquiry into them to our brother and fellow bishop Columbus, whose seriousness his widespread reputation itself does not let us doubt. So, greeting you with fatherly affection, we urge your excellency to lend him the support of your help in everything that belongs to church discipline. Otherwise, if what is done wrong is not looked into and punished, it may grow with greater license into future excesses, through a precedent of long standing. Know too, most excellent son, that if you seek victories and are working for the security of the province entrusted to you, nothing will help you more to this end than being zealous, as far as you can, to restrain the lives of priests and the internal wars of the churches. [a]