Quote from Letter 8.10 to Eusebius of Thessaloniki, Urbicus of Dyrrachium, Constantius of Milan, Andrew of Nicopolis, John of Corinth, John of Prima Justiana, John of Crete, John of Scutari, John of Larissa, Marinianus of Ravenna, Januarius of Cagliari in Sardinia and all the bishops of Sicily. November 597
I have taken care to send over to your Fraternities the law that our most pious emperor gave me, stating that those who are perhaps under the obligation to military service or to public accounts, should not be put on ecclesiastical habit or become monks in monasteries, while they are escaping from the danger of law cases of their own.
I exhort you most of all that such men are as implicated in secular actions, should not be accepted hastily into the clergy of the Church. For while they live in ecclesiastical clothing, they live in the same way as they lived before, and they are in no way keen to escape from a worldly state, but simply want to change their relationship to it.
I have taken care to send over to your Fraternities the law that our most pious emperor gave me, stating that those who are perhaps under the obligation to military service or to public accounts, should not be put on ecclesiastical habit or become monks in monasteries, while they are escaping from the danger of law cases of their own.
I exhort you most of all that such men are as implicated in secular actions, should not be accepted hastily into the clergy of the Church. For while they live in ecclesiastical clothing, they live in the same way as they lived before, and they are in no way keen to escape from a worldly state, but simply want to change their relationship to it.
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), II, 508
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