To Januarius, Bishop of Cagliari, on Unruly Clergy, a Widow’s Bequest and Idol Worship

Gregory to Januarius, bishop of Sardinia. [a]

It has come to our ears that some of your clergy, puffed up with a spirit of pride, which is a serious thing to say, neglect to obey your fraternity’s commands. Busying themselves instead with the services and labors of others, they abandon the business of their own church, where they are needed. For this reason we greatly wonder why you do not keep up the rule of discipline, and, when they wander loosely at large, hold them back with the rein of strict control to the requirements of the office they have taken on. It is said also that some of these defiant clerics, to get support against you, resort to the patronage of our defensor Vitalis. So we have sent him a letter telling him not to dare from now on to support any of your clerics against you without good reason; but if any case of fault should arise that is not serious and deserves pardon, to approach you as an intercessor rather than as the supporter of the culprit. Be on your guard, then, that no such report reaches us again of your subjects despising you.

We have also learned that a certain widow left her property to the monastery of Saint Julian, and that this property has been plundered by one of your clerics, who used to direct the dead woman’s affairs while she lived; and that he is now avoiding making restitution. So we urge you, if what is said proves true, to have him compelled by strict proceedings to hurry to restore the property left to the monastery without any loss. Let him be forced to give up, even with the loss of his good name, what he ought not to have dared to take, if he wished to keep his honor unstained. But what a cause of shame it is that we should seem to be urging your fraternity to restrain your own cleric under the firmness of discipline, I believe you yourself feel in your own heart.

Also, we earnestly urge your fraternity to keep watch with a shepherd’s vigilance against worshipers of idols, soothsayers and diviners. Speak out publicly among the people against those who do such things, and by persuasive exhortation call them back from the contagion of so great a sacrilege, from such a testing of the judgment of God, and from peril in the present life. If, however, you find them unwilling to amend and correct themselves from such practices, we want you to lay hold of them with burning zeal. If they are slaves, chastise them with beatings and torments, by which they may be brought to amend. But if they are free men, they should be brought to repentance by fitting and strict confinement, so that those who scorn to listen to the saving words that would call them back from the peril of death may at any rate be brought back by bodily torments to the soundness of mind that is desired. [c]

We have also been told that you entrusted the care of your patrimony to certain laymen, and that they, after being caught plundering your peasants and running away as a result, refuse to give back the property, which they shamefully keep as though it were in their own power, since they are not subject to your control; and they also scorn to give you an account of what they have done. If this is so, it is fitting that you investigate the matter strictly, and examine thoroughly the case between them and the peasants of your church. And whatever fraud is found in them, let them be compelled to make restitution for it, with the penalty fixed by the laws. But for the future your fraternity must take care that church property is not entrusted to secular men who do not live under your rule, but to approved clerics who hold office under you. Then, if any wrongdoing is found in them, you may be able to correct what has been done unlawfully, as with persons under you, whom the obligation of their position summons before you rather than excuses.