In All Fairness

Letter 1,47 to Deacon Honaratus. June 591.

"The glorious military commander Theodore, who is known to have taken on the dukedom of the island of Sardinia, is carrying out many things there contrary to the orders of his most holy emperor (...). For this reason we want you to inform our most holy emperor at an appropriate time about what the provincials of the aforesaid island justly and properly demand.
For already in the seventh indiction, an imperial decree addressed to the glorious gentleman Edantius, then duke of Sardinia, had arrived ordering all the troublesome sections to be removed, so that its orders, proceeding from the generosity of His Holiness, might be obeyed, unchanged by any dukes who happened to be in charge at the time, and so that their reward should nog be dissipated by costs of administration.
Thus they will pass a quiet life under the merciful command of their emperor, and at the arrival of the eternal judge, they will receive, with increased recompense, the consideration peacefully bestowed by them upon their own subjects."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 172.