Letter 3,42 - to Felix, bishop of Siponto. june 593
"We expect your Fraternity to convert some people to God by your preaching, and to recall evil-doers to righteousness. We are greatly saddened over this matter, because in the depravity of your grandson Felix, by contrast, your fault has been clearly shown, as it was you who brought up such a person.
We had heard that the above-mentioned Felix deceived and seduced the daughter of our deacon, Evangelus. If this is true, although he should be punished with a heavy penalty, according to law, yet we alleviate the harshness of the law to some extent, seeing that it should be settled in the following way. That is, he should either marry the girl he defiled or else, if he thinks he must refuse, he should certainly receive quite severe corporal punishment, and should be excommunicated, and shut away in a monastery, where he can pay penance."
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 263.
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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