Letter 1,19 - to Natalis, bishop of Salona. January 591.
"We have found that the acts that you have directed to us, carried out in the conclave of your council, by which Archdeacon Honaratus is indicted, are full of seeds of dispute. For at one and the same time a person is unwillingly promoted to the rank of priest, and is removed from the office of deacon as if undeserving.
And just as it is right that nobody should be compelled to be promoted against there wishes, even so I think it should be agreed similarly that nobody who is innocent, should be unjustly demoted from the office of his order.
However, since it is discord hateful to God that excuses your party, we advise you to restore his place and function to Archdeacon Honoratus, and in concord show the servitude suited to the service of God."
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 133.
About Me & About the Project
- Arnold Smeets
- BIO - I am a theologian. Radio broadcaster at Dutch Public Broadcast Organisation KRO-NCRV and Senior Research Fellow at CPO (Centre for Patristic Studies), the Netherlands. In 2007 I took my degree cum laude at the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Tilburg on a semiotic analysis of three letters of Pope Gregory the Great (Ad Leandrum, concerning his own conversion, and Ep. xi,37 and Ep. xi,56, two instructions on the mission of the English). PROJECT - Every few days I'll blog a paragraph and twitter a line from one of Gregory the Great's Letters. Passages from the letters are quoted with kind permission of the publishers, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, Canada.
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