A Safe Place

Letter 1,50 - to the defender Symmachus. June 591.

"My son Deacon Boniface has said to me that your Experience had written that the monastery once founded by Lavinia, a religious woman, exists fully prepared and that monks ought to be ordained therein. I have certainly applauded your forethought. But I wish that another place should be provided besides that place which has already been freed for this purpose.However, I want this to be done in such a way that a place should be sought over the sea, considering the uncertainty of the time, a place which is either protected by the disposition of the place, or could certainly be fortified without great labor.
Thus we can send monks there, whereby the island itself, which had not had a monastery until now, ought to be improved even in the following of this Christian way of life.
To implement and provide for this establishment, we have sent Abbot Orosius, bearer of the present order, with whom your Experience may go around the coast of Corsica. And of whatever private person such a place can be found, we are ready to pay a just price for it, so that we can make some lasting establishment."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 174.