Quote from Letter 9.52 to Demetrian and Valerian, clergy of Fermo. November 598
Both the statutes of holy canons and eval authority allow Church properties to be spent legally on the ransoming of captives. Thus, you have informed us that about eighteen years ago, a most reverend gentleman, Fabius, once bishop of the church of Fermo, paid the enemy eleven pounds of gold from the same church, for the ransoms of your father and you two, of our brother and fellow-bishop Passivus (then a cleric), and of your mother also.
Therefore, in case someone might ask you to restore what you gave at some stage, we propose with the authority of this order that your suspicion should be removed. We have decided that from now on you and your heirs should not endure the trouble of being asked again at any time, and that on one should expose you to an inquiry. For reasonable justice demands that what has been spent through the zeal of piety ought not to lead to a burden or an affliction for those redeemed.
Both the statutes of holy canons and eval authority allow Church properties to be spent legally on the ransoming of captives. Thus, you have informed us that about eighteen years ago, a most reverend gentleman, Fabius, once bishop of the church of Fermo, paid the enemy eleven pounds of gold from the same church, for the ransoms of your father and you two, of our brother and fellow-bishop Passivus (then a cleric), and of your mother also.
Therefore, in case someone might ask you to restore what you gave at some stage, we propose with the authority of this order that your suspicion should be removed. We have decided that from now on you and your heirs should not endure the trouble of being asked again at any time, and that on one should expose you to an inquiry. For reasonable justice demands that what has been spent through the zeal of piety ought not to lead to a burden or an affliction for those redeemed.
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), II, 576
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