No Flock Without a Shepherd

Letter 1,32 - to Romanus, patrician and exarch of italy. February 591.

"It has come to our notice that your excellency has already detained Blandus, the bishop of the city of Ortona, in the city of Ravenna for a long time. And it happens that a church without a bishop, and its people, just like a flock without a shepherd, disperse, and in that place infants die without baptism for the remission of their sins. Again, because we do not believe that your Excellency would have held him, unless for some likely case of aberration, it is necessary that a synod be held and the matter be brought out into the open, if any charge would be brought against him."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 152.