Quote from Letter 6,29 to Fortunatus, bishop of Naples. April 596
If it should happen perhaps that pagans have been bought from foreign lands as merchandise, and within three mounthsm while an appropriate buyer is being found for them, they should flee to a church and say that they want to become Christians, or even announce a wish of this sort outside a church, then the owner should receive the price for them from the purchaser, a Christian of course. But if, after the prescribed three months, any slave of this kind should declare his wish and should want to become a Christian, no master should dare either to buy him thereafter of sell him, with any sort of excuse at all. But he should certainly be lead to the reward of freedom, because the master is known to have kept him not for sale, but for service to himself.
If it should happen perhaps that pagans have been bought from foreign lands as merchandise, and within three mounthsm while an appropriate buyer is being found for them, they should flee to a church and say that they want to become Christians, or even announce a wish of this sort outside a church, then the owner should receive the price for them from the purchaser, a Christian of course. But if, after the prescribed three months, any slave of this kind should declare his wish and should want to become a Christian, no master should dare either to buy him thereafter of sell him, with any sort of excuse at all. But he should certainly be lead to the reward of freedom, because the master is known to have kept him not for sale, but for service to himself.
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), II, 424
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