To Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse, on Church Revenues, Abbots and Abbesses

Gregory to Maximianus, bishop of Syracuse. Long ago, by our authority, your fraternity was charged with correcting in our place any excesses or improper proceedings there might be in the church and the other venerable places of Sicily. But since a complaint has reached us that some things have been neglected all this time, we have thought it right to stir up your fraternity again, in particular, to correct them. [a] For we learn that in the case of revenues newly acquired by churches the canonical division into fourths is not observed. Instead, the bishops of the various places distribute a fourth part of the old revenues only, and keep for their own use those that have been acquired recently. So let your fraternity hurry to correct this bad custom that has crept in, so that the fourth parts are paid out according to their canonical distribution, whether from former revenues or from those that have come in now or may come in later. For it is unfitting that one and the same property of the church should be reckoned, as it were, under two different laws, the law of seizure and the law of the canons. [b]

Do not allow presbyters, deacons and other clerics of any order who serve churches to be abbots of monasteries. Let them either give up their clerical duties and be advanced to the monastic order, or, if they decide to remain abbots, let them by no means be allowed to hold clerical posts. For if one cannot carry out the duties of either of these positions with the diligence its importance calls for, it is very unfitting that anyone should be judged fit for both. Then the church order would hinder the monastic life, and in turn the rule of monks would hinder the church’s service. We have also taken care to warn your love of this. If any of the bishops departs this life, or, which God forbid, is removed for his offenses, the hierarchs and all the leading clergy are to assemble and make an inventory of the church’s property in your presence. Everything found is to be written down accurately, and nothing is to be taken from the church’s property, in kind or in any other way at all, as is said to have been done in the past, as though in payment for the trouble of making the inventories. For we want everything that serves to protect what belongs to the poor to be carried out in such a way that no opening is left in their affairs for the greed of self-seeking men. Let visitors of churches, and their clerics who take trouble with them in parishes not of their own city, receive some payment for their labor, as you appoint. For it is just that they should be paid in the places where they are found giving their services. [c]

We most strongly forbid young women to be made abbesses. So let your fraternity allow no bishop to give the veil to any but a virgin of sixty, whose age and character call for it. Then, when this and the points named above have been set right with the Lord’s help by the pressure of your strict demands, you may hurry to bind up again with the ties of the canons the long-loosened state of venerable things, and divine affairs may be ordered, not by the unfitting wishes of men, but with proper strictness. In the month of October, in the twelfth indiction. [d]