Letter 5029: With a view to the advantage of the Church it is our will and pleasure, that, if you are held bound by no condition of, or liability to, bodily service, and hast not been a cleric of any other city, and if there is no canonical objection to you, thou take the office of guardian of the Church, that you may execute incorruptly and with alacrity wh...
Book V, Letter 29
To Vincomalus, Guardian (Defensorem).
Gregory to Vincomalus, etc.
With a view to the advantage of the Church it is our will and pleasure, that, if you are held bound by no condition of, or liability to, bodily service, and hast not been a cleric of any other city, and if there is no canonical objection to you, thou take the office of guardian of the Church, that you may execute incorruptly and with alacrity whatever may be enjoined you by us for the benefit of the poor, using this privilege which after deliberation we have conferred upon you, so as to do your diligence faithfully in accomplishing all that may be enjoined on you by us, as having to render an account of your doings under the judgment of our God. This epistle we have dictated, to be committed to writing, to Paterius, notary of our Church; In the month of March, Indiction 13.
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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/360205029.htm>.
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Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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