To John, Bishop of Squillace, on the Rights of the Castellian Monastery

Gregory to John, and so on. [a] It is plainly a very serious thing, and contrary to what a priest should aim at, to want to disturb privileges once granted to any monastery and to try to bring to nothing what was arranged for its peace. Now the monks of the Castellian monastery in your fraternity’s city have complained to us that you are taking steps to impose on that monastery certain things contrary to what your predecessors allowed and long custom confirmed, and to disturb its ancient arrangements by a harmful novelty. So by this letter we urge your fraternity that, if this is so, you stop troubling this monastery on any pretext. Do not try, taking any opportunity to seize what is not yours, to overturn what has long been secured to it. Make it your concern instead to keep all its privileges intact, without any objection, and know that you have no more right with regard to this monastery than your predecessors had. [b]

They have also complained that your fraternity has taken certain things from the monastery under the appearance of a customary gift. So if you remember receiving anything improperly, you must give it back without delay, so that the sin of greed may not weigh heavily against you, when a priest’s generosity ought to have shown you open-handed toward monasteries. So while you keep everything that, as we have said, your predecessors allowed and kept, take care to watch carefully over the conduct and lives of the monks living there. If you find anyone living badly, or (God forbid) guilty of any sin of impurity, correct him with strict correction according to the rule. For just as we want your fraternity to refrain from improper seizures, so we urge you to be careful in every way about what belongs to right discipline and the care of souls. [c]

The monks of this monastery have also told us that the fortified town called Squillace is built on ground belonging to their monastery, and that for this reason those who live there bound themselves in writing to make a yearly payment. But afterward, they say, the people scorned it and idly held back the payment they had agreed to. So let your fraternity take care to learn the truth exactly. If you find it to be so, see to it insistently that they do not delay giving what they promised and what reason also requires, so that they may hold what they have in peace and the rights of the monastery may suffer no loss. [d]

The monks of this monastery have further complained to us that their abbot has given your fraternity, by deed of gift, some six hundred feet of land within the fortified town of Squillace, on the pretext of building a church. So it is our will that as much land as the walls of the church, once built, can enclose shall be claimed as the church’s. But whatever lies outside the walls of that church must go back without dispute into the possession of the monastery. For neither the laws of the world nor the sacred canons allow the property of a monastery to be separated from its ownership under any title. For this reason, give back this gift of land, which was granted against reason. [e]