To John, Bishop of Ravenna, on the Pallium in Processions

Gregory to John, bishop of Ravenna. I find that your fraternity is greatly distressed at being forbidden, on reasonable grounds, to wear the pallium in the litanies. But you have urgently asked to have it allowed you, through the most excellent patrician, through the most eminent prefect, and through other noblemen of your city. Now we made careful inquiry of Adeodatus, who was at one time your fraternity’s deacon, and learned from him that it was never the custom of your predecessors to use the pallium during the litanies except at the feasts of blessed John the Baptist, of the blessed apostle Peter, and of the blessed martyr Apollinaris. But we were by no means bound to believe him, since many of our delegates have often been in your fraternity’s city, and they declare that they never saw anything of the kind. In this matter credit should be given to many rather than to one man, who is testifying to something on behalf of his own church. Still, since we do not wish your fraternity to be distressed, or the petition of our sons to go for nothing with us, we grant the use of the pallium, until we gain some more exact knowledge, on the days of the Nativity of blessed John the Baptist, of the blessed apostle Peter, and of the blessed martyr Apollinaris, and on the anniversary of your ordination. But in the sacristy, as the former custom was, after the sons of the church have been received and dismissed, your fraternity may put on the pallium, and so go on to the celebration of mass. Claim nothing more for yourself in the daring of rash presumption, so that while something out of order is grasped at in outward dress, what might have been done in good order is not neglected. Given in the month of October, in the thirteenth indiction. [b]