To the Empress Constantina, on Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily

Gregory to Constantina, and so on. [a] I know how my most serene lady thinks about the heavenly homeland and the life of her soul. So I consider that I would be greatly at fault if I kept silent about matters that ought, for the fear of God, to be laid before her.

I learned that there are many of the natives on the island of Sardinia who still, after the evil custom of their race, offer sacrifices to idols, and that the priests of that same island are slow to preach our Redeemer. So I sent one of the bishops of Italy there, and with the Lord’s cooperation he has brought many of the natives to the faith. But he has reported a sacrilegious practice to me: those on the island who sacrifice to idols pay a bribe to the judge for leave to do it. And when some of them had been baptized and had stopped sacrificing to idols, this same judge of the island went on demanding from them, even after their baptism, the payment they had been accustomed to make before for leave to sacrifice to idols. When the bishop I mentioned found fault with him, he replied that he had promised so large a payment for his appointment that he could not make it up except with the help of cases of this kind. The island of Corsica, for its part, is oppressed by so excessive a number of tax collectors and so heavy a burden of taxes that the people on it can hardly pay what is demanded except by selling their children. The result is that the landowners of this island are forced to abandon the pious state and take refuge with that most wicked nation, the Lombards. For what could they suffer from barbarians harder or more cruel than to be so pinched and squeezed that they are driven to sell their children? Moreover, on the island of Sicily a certain Stephen, chartularius of the coastal districts, is said to commit such illegal acts and such oppressions, seizing places that belong to various people and posting notices of claim on estates and houses without any legal process, that if I wished to tell each of his deeds that have come to my ears, I could not finish the task in a large volume. [b]

Let my most serene lady consider all these things wisely and ease the groans of the oppressed. I suspect that these things have not reached your most pious ears, for if they had, they would by no means have gone on until now. But they should now be laid, at a suitable time, before our most pious lord, so that he may remove so great a burden of sin from his own soul, from the empire, and from his sons. I know he will say that whatever is collected from these islands is sent to us for the expenses of Italy. But in answer I suggest that, even if less were spent on Italy, he should still rid his empire of the tears of the oppressed. For perhaps the reason such great spending in this land does less good than it might is that the money for it is collected with some admixture of sin. So let our most serene lords give orders that nothing be collected with sin. And I know that, even if less is given for the good of the state, the state is much helped by this. And even if it should perhaps be helped less by smaller spending, still it is better that we should not live in this present life than that you should meet any hindrance on the way to eternal life. For think what the feelings must be, what the state of heart, of parents when they part with their children so as not to be tormented. And how one ought to feel for other people’s children is well known to those who have children of their own. Let it be enough, then, for me to have set these things out briefly, so that I may not, if your piety did not know what is being done in these parts, suffer before the strict Judge for the guilt of my silence. [e]