To Januarius, Bishop of Cagliari, on Plowing on the Lord’s Day

Gregory to Januarius, and so on. [a]

Paul the apostle, the preacher of Almighty God, says, “Do not rebuke an elder.” But this rule of his is to be kept in cases where an elder’s fault does not, by his example, drag the hearts of the young to ruin. When an elder sets the young an example that leads to their ruin, he must be struck with a severe rebuke. For it is written, “You are all a snare to the young.” And again the prophet says, “The sinner a hundred years old is accursed.” But such great wickedness has been reported to us of your old age that, were we not humanely disposed, we would strike you with a final curse. For I have been told that on the Lord’s day, before celebrating the solemn rites of mass, you went out and plowed up the crop of the bearer of this letter, and after plowing it up you celebrated the solemn rites of mass. And after mass you did not fear to dig up the boundary markers of that property. Everyone who hears of such deeds knows what punishment ought to follow them. [b]

We had, however, been in doubt whether there could be such perversity in you as this. But our son Cyriacus the abbot, when we questioned him, declared that when he was at Cagliari he knew it to be so. And since we still spare your gray hairs, come to your senses at last, old man, and restrain yourself from such levity of behavior and such perverse deeds. The nearer you come to death, the more careful and fearful you ought to become. A sentence of punishment had in fact been issued against you; but since we know the simplicity that goes with your old age, we hold our peace for the present. Those, however, on whose advice you did these things we decree to be excommunicated for two months, yet on this condition: if within the two months anything should happen to them, as happens to all mortals, they are not to be deprived of the blessing of the viaticum. But from now on take care to keep away from their counsels. Otherwise, if you become their disciple in evil when you ought to have been their master in good, we will no longer spare either your simplicity or your old age.