To the Emperor Maurice, on the Donatists in Africa

Gregory to Maurice Augustus. [a]

Amid the cares of war and the countless anxieties you bear in your tireless zeal for governing the Christian state, it is a great joy to me, together with the whole world, that your piety always keeps watch over the guarding of the faith by which the empire of our lords shines. So I fully trust that, as you guard the causes of God with the love of a religious mind, so God guards and helps yours with the grace of his majesty. Now the tenor of the commands you have sent shows most clearly how the serenity of your piety, out of regard for righteousness and zeal for the purest religion, has been moved against the utterly wicked depravity of the Donatists. But the most reverend bishops who have come from the province of Africa declare that these commands have been so disregarded, through ill-advised connivance, that the judgment of God is not feared there, nor have the imperial commands yet been carried out. They add this as well: that in that province, because the bribes of the Donatists prevail, the catholic faith is put up for sale in public. But on the other hand, the glorious Gennadius has likewise complained of one of those who made these complaints, and two others have borne the same witness with him on the matter. But since a secular judge was involved in this case, I have thought it right to send these bishops to the footsteps of your piety, so that they may set before your most serene ears in person what they say they have endured for the catholic faith. [b]

For these reasons I beg the Christianity of my lords, for the good of their souls and the life of their most pious children, to order by a strict mandate the punishment of any you find to be such as have been described. I beg you to stop with a rescuing hand the ruin of those who are perishing, to apply the medicine of correction to minds gone mad, and to cure them of the poisonous bite of error. In this way, when the darkness of pestilent depravity has been driven away by the remedy of your provision, and the true faith has shed the rays of its serenity abroad in those parts, a heavenly triumph may await you before the eyes of our Redeemer. For those whom you defend outwardly from the enemy you also set free inwardly from the poison of the devil’s deceit, which is a still more glorious thing.