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

Epistle XLVII.

To Sabinianus, Deacon 1570 .

Gregory to Sabinianus, &c.

Thou knowest what has been done in the case of the prevaricator Maximus 1571 .  For after the most serene Lord the Emperor had sent orders that he should not be ordained 1572 , then he broke out into a higher pitch of pride.  For the men of the glorious patrician Romanus 1573 received bribes from him, and caused him to be ordained in such a manner that they would have killed Antoninus, the sub-deacon and rector of the patrimony, if he had not fled.  But I despatched letters to him, after I had learnt that he had been ordained against reason and custom, telling him not to presume to celebrate the solemnities of mass unless I should first ascertain from our most serene lords what they had ordered with regard to him.  And these my letters, having been publicly promulged or posted in the city, he caused to be publicly torn, and thus bounced forth more openly into contempt of the Apostolic See.  How I was likely to endure this thou knowest, seeing that I was before prepared rather to die than that the Church of the blessed apostle Peter should degenerate in my days.  Moreover thou art well acquainted with my ways, that I bear long; but if once I have determined not to bear, I go gladly in the face of all dangers.  Whence it is necessary with the help of God to meet danger, lest he be driven to sin to excess.  Look to what I say, and consider what great grief inspires it.

But it has come to my ears that he has sent [to Constantinople] a cleric, I know not whom, to say that the bishop Malchus 1574 was put to death in prison for money.  Now as to this there is one thing that thou mayest shortly suggest to our most serene lords;—that, if I their servant had been willing to have anything to do with the death of Lombards, the nation of the Lombards at this day would have had neither king nor dukes nor counts, and would have been divided in the utmost confusion.  But, since I fear God, I shrink from having anything to do with the death of any one.  Now the bishop Malchus was neither in prison nor in any distress; but on the day when he pleaded his cause and was sentenced he was taken without my knowledge by Boniface the notary to his house, where a dinner was prepared for him, and there he dined, and was treated with honour by the said Boniface, and in the night suddenly died, as I think you have already been informed.  Moreover I had intended to send our Exhilaratus to you in connection with that business; but, as I considered that the case was now done with, I consequently abstained from doing so.

Footnotes

He was the pope’s apocrisiarius at Constantinople.

See III. 47, note 2.

In his letter to Maximus (IV. 20), Gregory had only expressed a suspicion that the alleged order of the Emperor for his consecration had been fictitious.  He now seems to have satisfied himself that it was so.  For a review of the whole case, see III. 47, note 2.

Romanus Patricius was the Exarch of Italy.  See I. 33; II. 46; III. 31; V. 24.

See II. 20, note 5.