"Each Day I Groan"

Letter 1,30 - to John ex-consul, patrician and quaestor. February 591.

"I have been made bishop not of the Romans but of the Lombards, whose treaties are swords and whose gratitude is revenge. Just see where your patronage has led me. Each day I groan and oppressed by occupations, I cannot breathe any more.
But you who are still able to do so, flee from the occupations of this world; because the more someone had made progress in it, the more fully, as I see it, he shrinks from the love of God.
Furthermore I have sent over a very sacred key from the body of Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles, which placed over the sick, normally produces many brilliant miracles."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 150.