To Rusticiana the Patrician, Urging Her Return to Rome

Gregory to Rusticiana, and so on. [a] I remember writing to your excellency before now and urging you again and again to lose no time in coming back to the threshold of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles. What your great delight in the city of Constantinople means, and your forgetting of the city of Rome, I do not know. So far I have not been thought worthy of any word from you on this point. For how far it would profit your soul for reaping the rewards of eternal life, and how far it would also suit in every way your glorious daughter, the lady Eusebia, we are giving our full attention to, and you may consider it no less fully. But if you ask my son Peter, your servant, whom I have found wise beyond his years and eager to reach maturity, you will learn how great is the love of everyone who lives here for your excellency, and how great their desire to be thought worthy of seeing you again.

And if, with the Lord teaching us, we are admonished in Holy Scripture to love even our enemies, we ought to consider how wrong it is to show no love even to those who love us. But if perhaps we are said to be loved, we know for certain that no one can have affection for those he does not wish to see. If, however, you are afraid of the swords and wars of Italy, you should observe carefully how great is the protection of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, in this city, where, without a large body of people and without military help, we have been preserved, under God, for so many years among swords. We say this because we love. But may Almighty God grant whatever he sees to be of benefit to your soul forever, and to the renown of your house at the present time.

I have received from the hands of my son, whom I mentioned, the roughly seven pounds of gold your excellency sent for the ransom of captives. But I pray that the heavenly grace which granted you to give them for the reward of your soul may also grant me to distribute them without any taint of sin, so that we may not be stained by the very thing by which you wipe away sins. May Almighty God, who looks on the weakness of your body and your life far from home, comfort you always by his grace, and by the life and health of my most dear son the lord Strategius. So may he bring him up both for you through many years and for himself through eternity, and fill you and all your house with present good, and grant you grace from above. We further ask that the glorious lord Eudoxius be greeted on our behalf. [b]