Letter 2010: If we administer safely the priestly office which we have received, without doubt both Divine assistance and the affection of our spiritual sons will not be wanting to us. Wherefore let your Fraternity take care to show yourself in all things such that the testimony which the clergy, the nobility, and all the people together, of the city of Napl...
Book II, Letter 10
To Paulus, Bishop of Naples.
Gregory to Paulus, etc.
If we administer safely the priestly office which we have received, without doubt both Divine assistance and the affection of our spiritual sons will not be wanting to us. Wherefore let your Fraternity take care to show yourself in all things such that the testimony which the clergy, the nobility, and all the people together, of the city of Naples bears to you may be strengthened by the increase of your goodness. You ought, then, so to bind yourself to continual employment in exhorting the aforesaid people that the Divine husbandman may store in his garners the fruit of your word, which you shall have gathered from them by your labours. But till such time as we shall be able, God revealing to us His will, to deliberate concerning the things which our aforesaid sons request us should be done, we grant leave for clerics to be ordained from the ranks of the laity, and also for manumissions to be solemnly celebrated before you in the same church. Moreover we desire you to observe without hesitation the customs of the clerical order and of the presbyters of the above-named church: and do thou also keep such diligent watch in the instruction of the same, that, abstaining from all that is unsuitable or unlawful, they may stand fast, under your exhortations, ministering with due obedience, in the service of our God. The month of January, the tenth Indiction.
About this page
Source. Translated by James Barmby. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 12. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360202010.htm>.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
The one who neither transgresses himself nor leads others to transgress has achieved a double crown.
Virtue must be practiced with all one's strength — not merely admired from a distance.
We have chosen you for this task because you combine energy with good judgment -- a rare combination and one that...
Although it has distressed us in no slight degree to hear of the injury that you have suffered, yet we have matter of consolation in learning that the affair is to your credit, in that, so far as the account sent to us has disclosed the facts, you have suffered in the cause of uprightness and equity. Wherefore, that it may redound to the greater...
The case before you involves the bishop Dulcinius and property that belongs — or is claimed to belong — to the...