To Peter the Subdeacon, on Restoring What Was Taken by Force

Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Peter the subdeacon. [a]

The set of instructions I gave you when you went to Sicily must be read through carefully, so that the greatest care is taken concerning bishops, that they do not mix themselves up in secular cases, except so far as the need to defend the poor compels them. But what is set down in the same instructions concerning monks or clergy ought, I think, not to be departed from in any respect. Let your experience watch over these things with such close attention as may fulfill my desire in this matter. [b]

Further, it has come to my ears that from the time of Antoninus the defensor until now, during these last ten years, many people have suffered certain acts of violence from the Roman church. Some complain openly that their boundaries have been invaded by force, their slaves taken away, and their goods carried off by force, and not by any process of law. In all such cases I want your experience to keep careful watch. Whatever in these last ten years is found to have been taken away by violence, or kept unjustly in the name of the church, restore it, by the authority of this my order, to the one it is found to belong to. Otherwise one who has suffered violence would be obliged to come to me and take on the labor of so long a journey, and then it could not be established here before me whether or not he was telling the truth. So, keeping in view the majesty of the Judge who is to come, restore everything that has been sinfully taken away, knowing that you bring me great gain if you gather a heavenly reward rather than riches.

But we have learned that what most of them complain of is the loss of their slaves. They say that if any man’s slave, perhaps running away from his master, has declared that he belongs to the church, the rectors of the church have at once kept him as a slave of the church, without any trial of the case, upholding the slave’s word with a high hand. This displeases me as much as it is abhorrent to the judgment of truth. So I want your experience to correct without delay whatever is found to have been done in this way. It is also right that any such slaves now kept in the church’s possession, since they were taken away without trial, should be given back before trial; so that, if holy church has any lawful claim to them, those who hold them may then be dispossessed by the regular process of law. Correct all these things beyond recall, since you will truly be a soldier of the blessed apostle Peter if in his causes you guard the truth, even when he gains nothing by it.

But if you see anything that may justly be claimed as belonging to the church, take care never to try to press such a claim by force. This is especially so since I have made a decree, under pain of anathema, that our church may never set up its title-boards on any farm in town or country. Whatever may reasonably be claimed for the poor ought also to be defended by reason; otherwise, a good thing being done in a way that is not good, we may be convicted of injustice before Almighty God even in what we rightly seek. Moreover, I beg you, let noble laymen and the glorious praetor love you for your humility, not dread you for your pride. And yet, if you happen to learn that they are doing any injustice to the needy, turn your humility at once into loftiness, so as to be always submissive to them when they do well and opposed to them when they do wrong. But behave in such a way that your humility is not slack nor your authority rigid, so that uprightness seasons humility, and humility makes your very uprightness gentle.

Further, since it has been the custom for bishops to gather here for the anniversary of the pontiff, forbid them to come for the day of my ordination, since foolish and empty excess does not please me. But if they must gather, let them come for the anniversary of Peter, the prince of the apostles, to give thanks to him by whose bounty they are pastors. Farewell. Given on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of April, in the ninth year of the emperor Maurice.