Protest Against A Law

Letter 3,62 - to the Emperor Maurice. August 593

"In [this new law] your Lordship's piety enacted that anyone involved in public administration should not be allowed to obtain an ecclesiastical office. I praise this greatly, knowing most clearly that one who hastens to obtain ecclesiastical offices, while giving up a secular occupation, wants to change what is secular, not relinquish it.
But I was totally amazed that in the same law it is stated that this person should not be allowed to become monk, while his accounts can be handled through a monastery, and it can be arranged also that his debts may be recovered from that place which accepts him. For, although nobody with a devout mind would have wanted to become a monk before repaying what was wrongly taken, he could also think about his own soul all the more truthfully, as he is the more lightly burdened.
In this law it has been added that no one marked on the hand should be allowed to become a monk. This regulation, I confess to my Lordship, had greatly alarmed me. For through it, the path to Heaven is closed for many men, and what has been legal up till now, is prohibited from being legal. For there are many who can lead a religious life, even in a secular condition. And there are very many who could not in any way be saved in the presence of God, unless they gave up everything.
However, as I say this to my Lordship, what am I but dust and worm? And yet because I feel that this regulation turns against God, the author of all things, I cannot be silent before my Lordship's piety for this reason, that those who seek good things are given help, that the path of Heaven is opened more widely, and that an earthly kingdom is in service to the heavenly kingdom."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 280.