Letter 1,34 - to Peter, bishop of Terracina. March 591.
"The Jew, Joseph, bearer of this letter, has informed us, concerning a certain place in which the Jews residing in the castle of Terracina had been accustomed to meet together, to celebrate their holy festivals, that your Fraternity had expelled them from it, and that they had migrated to another place to carry out their religious festivities in a similar manner, with your knowledge also, and with your consent.
And now they complain that they are being expelled once again from the same place.
But if that is so, we want your Fraternity to avoid that sort of complaint, and we want them to be allowed to gather as their custom was, at that place which they obtained for their meeting with your consent, as we said above.
For one must bring those who disagree with the Christian religion to the unity of faith, with clemency and kindness, by making suggestions and being persuasive.
Otherwise, they mau be repelled by threats and terrors, when they could be invited to believe in Christ through the sweetness of preaching and the coming terror of the future judge."
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 155.
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