On Correspondence

Letter 2,20 - to Jobinus, praetorian prefect of Illyria. March 592.

"Although the rarity of letter-carriers, due to the enemy's occupation of the route, prevents us from delivering our offices of paternal love, yet whenever the occasion arises, we do not hesitate to visit your Excellency with exchanges of letters, so that those whose appearance we cannot see in our presence, we are able to look at to some extent with alternating correspondence.
And so we rejoice that our Lord has been willing to take care of an afflicted province, through the government of your Eminence, so that what he ulcerates on the one hand with the scourge of the barbarian devastation, on the other hand He may cure through your Eminence, as if through some added good health.
Pay attention therefore to the dignity bestowed on you from the gift alone of the Giver, and from the very administration of the rule granted to you, make your Creator more easily appeased towards you."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 205.