Death Of A Bishop (1)

Quote from Letter 5,20 to Cyprian, deacon of the Sicilian patrimony. February 595

I have received the very bitter letters of your Beloved about the death of Lord Maximian in the month of November. And indeed he has come to the rewards he longed for, but we must feel sorry for the unlucky people of the city of Syracuse, who did not deserve to have such a bishop for a long time.
Therefore let your Beloved take care that just such a person should be chosen for consecration in the same church, who after our Lord Maximian should not appear to obtain the same position of control without deserving it. And I certainly believe that the majority would elect the priest Trajan, who is said to have an honest mind.



Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, translated by John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMPS, 2004), II, 338