Letter 3,17 - to Sub-deacon Gratiosus. January 593
"For those choosing a religious vocation we should take care, with suitable consideration, that the occurrence of some hardship neither makes them inactive, nor undermines the strength (Heaven forbid!) of their holy way of life. For this reason we order with the present authority that you should hand over the following property to the Abbess Flora, with the right of possession for her indubitable ownership. The house is located in this city in the fourth region, next to a place called the 'White Hens', the property of the Holy Church of Rome, over which we preside with God's authority, and in which a patrician lady, Campana, is known to have once lived. Hand it over with the garden also and the lodgings, which a doorway encloses within the same house.
Thus with Christ's help, the abbess can construct a convent in this house, where she can live with her community (..)."
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 247.
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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