To Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna, on His Predecessor’s Will

Gregory to Marinianus, bishop of Ravenna. Just as unjust demands should not be granted, so the petition of those who ask for what is lawful ought not to be set aside. Now your fraternity’s presbyters, deacons and clergy have presented us with a petition. They complain that the late John, your predecessor, made a will that burdened his church with various bequests, and they have asked that these, since they are to the detriment of his church, should not be paid on any excuse, because the law forbids them. The inheritance and the succession have been renounced, so that no reason binds you to satisfy any such claims. Even so, we urge you over and above this: as for any bequests he made, contrary to what the laws lay down, out of property that belonged to his church or that he acquired while he was bishop, your fraternity is neither to lend them your authority nor to consent to them on any account. But if he wished or directed anything to be done with his private property, which he had before he became bishop and had not earlier given to his church, that disposition must be held valid in every respect, and no one of the clergy is to try, against reason and on any pretext, to set it aside. [a]

While he was alive, he often begged us to confirm by our authority what he had given to the monastery he himself had built near the church of Saint Apollinaris, and we promised to do it. So we think it needful to urge your fraternity to allow nothing that he gave and established there to be diminished, but to see that it is all preserved and firmly settled. Now, since he is known to have mentioned this monastery, and the property given to it, in the will he made, you must understand that we have not confirmed this part of it because we are following his last wishes, but because, as we have said, we promised it to him while he was alive. Let your fraternity, then, make haste to carry out all these things so carefully that what he established, and we confirmed, in the monastery named above may be maintained, and that what he directed by his will to be given or done to the detriment of his church may have no force, since the law forbids it. [c]