To Donus, Bishop of Messina, on Ransoming Faustinus’s Daughters

Gregory to Donus, bishop of Messina. The rulings both of the sacred canons and of the laws allow the vessels of the church to be sold to ransom captives. Now Faustinus, who carries this letter, is shown to have taken on a debt of three hundred and thirty solidi in order to ransom his daughters from the yoke of captivity. Thirty of these have been repaid, and it is certain that he does not have the means to repay the rest. So by this letter we urge your fraternity by all means to give him about eleven pounds, by weight, of the silver belonging to the Meriensian church that is in your keeping, taking his receipt for it. He is known to be a soldier of that church. In this way, once the silver is sold and the debt paid, he may be freed from the bond of his obligation. But your fraternity should also take care of this: if that church has so much in ready money, he should receive the amount written above from it; but if not, you must supply him with the sum we have named, for the purpose in view, from the consecrated vessels. For just as it is a very serious thing to sell the church’s vessels for no good reason, so on the other hand it is wrong, under pressing need of this kind, for a church so greatly desolated to put its property before its captives, or to be slow in ransoming them. [a]