Letter 4050: You have the authority I am giving you for this purpose.
Gregory to John, abbot.
Go to the monastery of St. Andrew. There are monks there whose behavior is unacceptable — I have received reports and I believe them. You are to examine the situation, correct what can be corrected, and deal firmly with what cannot be corrected through gentleness.
You have the authority I am giving you for this purpose. Use it. A monastery that tolerates vicious conduct among its members is not a monastery in any meaningful sense; it is simply a group of men sharing a building. The purpose of the monastic life is the formation of souls, and souls are not formed by looking the other way.
Be firm, be fair, and report to me what you find and what you do about it.
Gregory
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
AD JOANNEM ABBATEM.
Ad monasterium sancti Andrea proficiscatur , vitios0s
coerciturus ac puniturus.
Gregorius Joanni abbati * de Regio
Ea que ad correptionem religiosarum pertinent
personarum nos prelerire nec decet, nec convenit.
Pervenit itaque ad nos in monaslerio sancli Andrez,
quod juxta » Vulcanum est positum, multa perpe-
lrari facinora. Atque ideo auctoritalis nostre pre-
ceptione 8u{7:!:um ad id te-monasterium prolicisci
necesse est, et omnia que dicuntur sublili investi-
gatione discutere. Et $i ita, quod absit, inveneris,
Sic in jllos regulariter vindicabis, ut digna eos coer-
citio a pravis et illicitis de cxtero doceat aclibus
adsLinere.
Revision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from Unreviewed source import.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_1849_77
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