Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To all the Bishops of Italy.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Epistle
XVII.
To all the Bishops of Italy.
Gregory to all, &c.
Inasmuch as the abominable Autharit1318
| 1318 Autharit
(al. Autharith, called by Paul. Diac.
Authari), who died at Pavia in this year (a.d. 591) had been king of the Lombards for six years,
having effected extensive conquests in Italy. “Rex
Authari apud Ticinum Nonas Septembris veneno, ut tradunt, accepto
moritur, postquam sex regnaverat annos.” (Paul. Diac. de
gestis Longob. iii. 36). It is he who is said to have
advanced to Rhegium at the toe of Italy. and there, riding up to a
pillar in the sea, to have touched it with the point of his spear, and
said, “As far as this shall the boundaries of the Lombards
extend.” (Paul. Diac. iii. 33.) He had been a
determined Arian. He was succeeded by Agilulph, whom his widow
Theodelinda, a Catholic Bavarian princess, selected as her
consort. With her Gregory carried on a very friendly
correspondence and probably through her influence, Agilulph himself,
originally an Arian, is said to have been converted to
Catholicity. Gregory’s letters to Theodelinda are IV. 4,
38; IX. 43; XIV. 12. | during this Easter solemnity which has
been lately completed, forbade children of Lombards being baptized in
the catholic faith, for which sin the Divine Majesty cut him off, so
that he should not see the solemnity of another Easter, it becomes your
Fraternity to warn all the Lombards in your districts, seeing that
grievous mortality is everywhere
imminent, that they should reconcile
these their children who have been baptized in Arian heresy to the
catholic faith, and so appease the wrath of the Almighty Lord which hangs over them. Warn, then, those whom
you can; with all the power of persuasion you possess seize on them,
and bring them to a right faith; preach to them eternal life without
end; that, when you shall come into the sight of the strict judge, you
may be able, in consequence of your solicitude, to shew in your own
persons a shepherd’s gains.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
