Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XII:
The Book of Pastoral Rule, and Selected Epistles, of Gregory the Great.: Epistle LXV

Epistle LXV.

To Mauricius Augustus 1514 .

Gregory to Mauricius, &c.

He is guilty before Almighty God who is not pure of offence towards our most serene lords in all he does and says.  I, however, unworthy servant of your Piety, speak in this my representation neither as a bishop, nor as your servant in right of the republic, but as of private right, since, most serene Lord, you have been mine since the time when you were not yet lord of all.

On the arrival here of the most illustrious Longinus, the equerry (stratore), I received the law of my lords, to which, being at the time worn out by bodily sickness, I was unable to make any reply.  In it the piety of my lords has ordained that it shall not be lawful for any one who is engaged in any public administration to enter on an ecclesiastical office.  And this I greatly commended, knowing by most evident proof that one who is in haste to desert a secular condition and enter on an ecclesiastical office is not wishing to relinquish secular affairs, but to change them.  But, at its being said in the same law that it should not be lawful for him to become a monk, I was altogether surprised, seeing that his accounts can be rendered through a monastery, and it can be arranged for his debts also to be recovered from the place into which he is received.  For with whatever devout intention a person may have wished to become a monk, he should first restore what he has wrongly gotten, and take thought for his soul all the more truly as he is the more disencumbered.  It is added in the same law that no one who has been marked on the hand 1515 may become a monk.  This ordinance, I confess to my lords, has alarmed me greatly, since by p. 141b it the way to heaven is closed against many, and what has been lawful until now is made unlawful.  For there are many who are able to live a religious life even in a secular condition:  but there are very many who cannot in any wise be saved with God unless they give up all things.  But what am I, in speaking thus to my lords, but dust and a worm?  Yet still, feeling that this ordinance makes against God, who is the Author of all, I cannot keep silence to my lords.  For power over all men has been given from heaven to the piety of my lords to this end, that they who aspire to what is good may be helped, and that the way to heaven may be more widely open, so that an earthly kingdom may wait upon the heavenly kingdom.  And lo, it is said in plain words that one who has once been marked to serve as an earthly soldier may not, unless he has either completed his service or been rejected for weakness of body, serve as the soldier of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To this, behold, Christ through me the last of His servants and of yours will answer, saying; From a notary I made thee a Count of the bodyguard; from Count of the bodyguard I made thee a Cæsar; from a Cæsar I made thee Emperor; and not only so, but also a father of emperors.  I have committed my priests into thy hand; and dost thou withdraw thy soldiers from my service?  Answer thy servant, most pious lord, I beseech thee; what wilt thou answer to thy Lord when He comes and thus speaks?

But peradventure it is believed that no one among them turns monk with a pure motive.  I, your unworthy servant, know how many soldiers who have become monks in my own days have done miracles, have wrought signs and mighty deeds.  But by this law it is forbidden that even one of such as these should become a monk.

Let my Lord enquire, I beg, what former emperor ever enacted such a law, and consider more thoroughly whether it ought to have been enacted.  And indeed it is a very serious consideration, that now at this time any are forbidden to leave the world; a time when the end of the world is drawing nigh.  For lo! there will be no delay:  the heavens on fire, the earth on fire, the elements blazing, with angels and archangels, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, the tremendous Judge will appear.  Should He remit all sins, and say only that this law has been promulged against Himself, what excuse, pray, will there be?  Wherefore by the same tremendous Judge I beseech you, that all those tears, all those prayers, all those fasts, all those alms of my Lord, may not on any ground lose their lustre before the eyes of Almighty God:  but let your Piety, either by interpretation or alteration, modify the force of this law, since the army of my lords against their enemies increases the more when the army of God has been increased for prayer.

I indeed, being subject to your command, have caused this law to be transmitted through various parts of the world; and, inasmuch as the law itself is by no means agreeable to Almighty God, lo, I have by this my representation declared this to my most serene lords.  On both sides, then, I have discharged my duty, having both yielded obedience to the Emperor, and not kept silence as to what I feel in behalf of God.

Footnotes

This letter is supposed to have been written in the third Indiction (a.d. 592–3); the law complained of having been issued in the previous year.  The epistle, which follows, to the Emperor’s physician on the same subject, shews how much Gregory had it at heart.  Some five years later it appears from a letter to divers metropolitans, dated December, a.d. 597 (VIII. 5), that an amicable agreement had meanwhile been come to, both the Emperor and the Pope having made some concessions.  Cf. also the end of Ep. 24 in Book X.

Cf. below, “in terrena militia signatus.”  It appears that not slaves only, but soldiers also, were sometime marked on the hand.  Cf. Cyprian, Ad Donatum, “Te quem jam spiritualibus castris militia signavit.”