Quote from Letter 4,32 to Fantinus, the defender. August 594.
(And) because he owed one hunderd and fifty gold coins, I wanted his [Cosmas, the debtor from Syria] creditors to make some sort of agreement with him. For the law states also that a free man should by no means be held for the sake of a debt, if there were no further items which might be added to the same debt. And so, as he asserts, it is possible for his creditors to consent to eighty gold coins. But because he is asking a lot for them to seek eighty gold coins from a person who has nothing, we have sent over sixty gold coins to you through your notary, so that, when you have careful talks with the same creditors, you may provide an account.
For they cannot hold his son, as they are said to be holding him, according to the laws. And, if it can be done, let them settle for something less than what we have given. And whatever remains of the same sixty gold coins, hand it over to Cosmas himself, so that he can live on it with his son.
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 321
About Me & About the Project
- Arnold Smeets
- BIO - I am a theologian. Radio broadcaster at Dutch Public Broadcast Organisation KRO-NCRV and Senior Research Fellow at CPO (Centre for Patristic Studies), the Netherlands. In 2007 I took my degree cum laude at the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Tilburg on a semiotic analysis of three letters of Pope Gregory the Great (Ad Leandrum, concerning his own conversion, and Ep. xi,37 and Ep. xi,56, two instructions on the mission of the English). PROJECT - Every few days I'll blog a paragraph and twitter a line from one of Gregory the Great's Letters. Passages from the letters are quoted with kind permission of the publishers, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, Canada.
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