Letter 4,12 - to Maximian, bishop of Syracuse. October 593
" We have received repeated reports of such great evils being done in that province, that we might believe that it will soon perish (Heaven forbid!), due to the sins it commits.
For the bearer of this letter, on arriving here, complained tearfully that for several years before he had been supported by some man over possession of the church of Messina and its fonts. He said that he had been forcibly married to that man's female slave, through various persuasions, and asserted that from that union he already had some poor young boys. And he is even said now to have forcibly separated her from him, removing her and selling her to some other person.
If this is true, your Beloved sees how unheard of and cruel evil it is. And for that reason we suggest that you inquire into and disperse this very great wickedness, with that vivacity which we know full well you show in holy causes."
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 297
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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