Words And Works

Letter 3,57 - to the patrician Italica. August 593

"But let almighty God bring it about that, just as we have good feelings about you, so your mind may give a good response to us, and you may exhibit in your works the sweetness that you expend on your words.
For the most glorious health and beauty on the surface of a body is worth nothing if there is a wound deep within. And that discord is all the more to be avoided, for which external peace provides a cover up. But in the aforesaid letter, your excellency tried earnestly to recall to our memory that this had been written to you. That in cases concerning the poor, we wanted to make no decisions with you that cause offence, or that ring with the din of a public court. We remember writing this, and know that, with God's help, we restrain ourselves from quarrelsome cases with ecclesiastical moderation. And in accordance with apostolic good sense, we happily put up with the plundering of our goods. But we believe that you know this, that our silence and patience will not create a legal precedent for future popes after me in matters of the poor."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 277.