Letter 1021: We have received at the hands of the deacon Stephen, whom you sent to us, the letters of your Reverence, wherein you congratulate us on our promotion. And truly what has been offered in the kindness and earnestness of charity demands full credence, reason having prompted your pontifical order to rejoice with us. We therefore, being cheered by yo...
Book I, Letter 21
To Natalis, Bishop of Salona [modern Split, Croatia].
Gregory to Natalis.
Your deacon Stephen delivered your letter of congratulations, and we received it gladly. A greeting offered with genuine warmth deserves to be believed as such, and it's right that a bishop should share in the joy of a fellow bishop's appointment. We're glad you wrote.
I'll be honest: I took on this office with a heavy heart. But since I couldn't resist God's will, I've managed to find some peace with it. I'm writing to ask for your prayers — for me, and for the Christian flock now in my care — so that we may have the strength, with that support, to endure whatever these times throw at us.
The month of February; ninth Indiction [591 AD].
Human translation - New Advent (NPNF / ANF series)
Latin / Greek Original
Original text not yet available in this corpus.
This letter still needs a Latin or Greek source-text backfill. The source link, when available, is preserved so the text can be checked and added later.
View sourceRevision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from New Advent / NPNF.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360201021.htm
Related Letters
The acts of your synod which you have transmitted to us, in which the Archdeacon Honoratus is condemned, we perceive to be full of the seed of strifes, seeing that the same person is at one and the same time advanced to the dignity of the priesthood against his will, and removed from the office of the diaconate as though unworthy of it. And, as ...
Reports have reached me that you give yourself over too frequently and too enthusiastically to dinner parties.
Gregory to Natalis, archbishop of Salona. Whilst every kind of business demands anxious investigation of the truth, what pertains to deposition from sacerdotal rank should be considered with especial strictness, since here the matter in hand is not concerning persons constituted in a humble position, but, as it were, concerning reversal of divin...
As though forgetting the tenour of former letters, I had determined to say nothing to your Blessedness but what should savour of sweetness: but, now that in your epistle you have recurred in the way of argumentation to preceding letters, I am once more compelled to say perhaps some things that I had rather not have said. For in defense of feasts...
A second letter on the same subject as the preceding.