Quote from Letter 5,3 to Dominic, bishop of Carthage. September 594
(A)nd we would all want heretics always to be suppressed by Catholic priests with vigor and logic, nevertheless, as we look into it in more detail, we are entirely concerned that an offense should nog be created (Heaven forbid!) through the things which were done among you by the primates of other councils. For at the conclusion of your activities, you brought forward a decision, in which you advised them about tracking down heretics, but at the same time you added a rider that those who neglect to do so myst be punished with a loss of possessions and honors.
It is best therefore, dearest brother, that in these external matters needing correction, internal charity should first be preserved, and in our minds we should be subject even to persons of lower rank, which we judge the special quality of your Gravity. For then, with all your forces united, you will then meet the errors of the heretics more successfully, as you follow the custom of your priesthood and apply yourself to the protection of Church harmony among your fellow priests.
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), II: 324
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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