To Leander, Bishop of Seville, with the Pastoral Rule

Gregory to Leander, bishop of Seville. How ardently I thirst to see you, you can read on the tablets of your own heart, since you love me so very much. But since I cannot see you, separated as you are from me by long stretches of country, I have done what my love for you prompted. On the arrival here of our common son Probinus the presbyter, I have sent to your holiness the Book of Pastoral Rule, which I wrote at the beginning of my time as bishop, and the books which you knew I had already composed explaining the blessed Job. Some sheets of the third and fourth parts of that work I have not sent to your love, because I had already given those sheets of these parts, and those only, to monasteries. Let your holiness, then, read earnestly these that I send, and more earnestly mourn over my sins, lest I be the more seriously to blame for seeming, as it were, to know what I fail to do. But with how great a tumult of business I am weighed down in this church, the very shortness of my letter will tell your love, seeing that I say so little to the one I love more than all. [a]