To Mellitus the Abbot, on the Temples of the Angles

Gregory to Mellitus, abbot in France. [a]

Since the departure of our company that is with you, we have been in great suspense, having heard nothing of how your journey has gone. But when Almighty God has brought you to our most reverend brother, Bishop Augustine, tell him what I have long been turning over in my mind about the matter of the Angles: that the temples of the idols in that nation should not be destroyed, but the idols themselves that are in them should be. Let blessed water be prepared and sprinkled in these temples, let altars be built, and let relics be placed in them. For if these temples are well built, they must be transferred from the worship of idols to the service of the true God. Then, when the people themselves see that these temples are not destroyed, they may put away error from their hearts, and, knowing and adoring the true God, may come more readily to the places they are used to.

And since they are in the habit of killing many oxen in sacrifice to demons, they should also have some festival of this kind in a changed form. So on the day of dedication, or on the anniversaries of the holy martyrs whose relics are placed there, let them make themselves tents of tree branches around these temples that have been changed into churches, and celebrate the festival with religious feasting. Let them no longer sacrifice animals to the devil, but kill animals to the praise of God for their own eating, and give thanks to the Giver of all for their abundance. So, while some outward joys are kept for them, they may more easily turn their minds to inward joys. For it is certainly impossible to cut away everything at once from hard hearts, since one who tries to climb to the highest place must rise by steps or paces, and not by leaps. So the Lord did make himself known to the people of Israel in Egypt; but he still kept for them, in his own worship, the use of the sacrifices they had been accustomed to offer to the devil, commanding them to sacrifice animals to himself. This was so that, their hearts being changed, they would drop some things in the sacrifice and keep others. Though the animals were the same as those they had been used to offering, yet because they sacrificed them to God and not to idols, they would no longer be the same sacrifices.

This, then, your love must say to our brother already mentioned, so that, being now in that country, he may consider well how he should arrange everything. God keep you safe, most beloved son. Given on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of July, in the nineteenth year of the reign of our most pious lord Maurice Tiberius Augustus, the eighteenth year after the consulship of the same our lord, in the fourth indiction.