The Ancient Enemy

Letter 2,39 - to bishop Columbus. 23 July 592

"It is well known, dearest brother in Christ, that the ancient enemy, who first used cunning persuasion to depose man from the delights of paradise to this life of misery, and then in this act at once inflicted the penalty of mortality on the human race, is now trying with the same cunning to infect the shepherds of the Lord's sheep, pouring his poison through them, to capture their flocks more easily, and to claim them as already rightfully under his own control.
But we who, although undeserving, have received the government of the apostolic see in the place of Peter, prince of the apostles, are forced by the office itself of the pontificate to oppose our universal enemy with all the effort we can muster.
And so the bearers of this present letter, Constantius and Mustelus, presenting a petition, have suggested to us, as is asserted by the archdeacons of the church of Pudentia, that Maximian, bishop of the same church, in the place where he lives, has been corrupted by a bribe from the Donatists, and has allowed a bishop to be elected with a new license, although the Catholic faith prohibited this from continuing and persisting, even if an earlier use might have permitted it.
Because of this therefore we have thought it necessary to advise your Fraternity with the present letter that, when our private secretary Hilary reaches you, and a universal council of your bishops has been arranged, with the terror of a coming judgment before their eyes, the same affair should be examined with a careful and sagacious inquiry.
If the bearers of this letter endorse this charge, with documents pertinent to the aforesaid bishop, he must be stripped in every way of the dignity of the office he holds, so that he may return to the profits of penitence through the acknowledgement of his sin, and so other may not resume to try such things. For it is just that he who has sold our Lord, Jesus Christ, to a heretic, accepting money they say, should of course be removed from handling the mysteries of his sacrosanct body and blood."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 217.