Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Pantaleo, Præfect.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Epistle
XXXIV.
To Pantaleo, Præfect.
Gregory to Pantaleo, Præfect of Africa.
How the law urgently prosecutes the most
abominable pravity of heretics is not unknown to your
Excellency1557
| 1557 As to imperial
edicts against the African Donatists, see I. 74, note 8. It would
seem from this and the following letter that enforcement of the laws
for their repression had been relaxed of late. It will be
observed from this and other instances that Gregory, though often in
general terms deprecating the use of force in matters of faith, did not
scruple, when occasion arose, to call in the aid of the secular arm;
and in this case with some heat and acrimony. Cf. IV. 35,
below. | . It is
therefore no light sin if these, whom both the integrity of our faith
and the strictness of the laws condemn, should find licence to creep up
again in your times. Now in those parts, so far as we have
learnt, the audacity of the Donatists has so increased that not only do
they with pestiferous assumption of authority cast out of their
churches priests of the catholic faith, but fear not even to rebaptize
those whom the water of regeneration had cleansed on a true
confession. And we are much surprised, if indeed it is so, that,
while you are placed in those parts, bad men should be allowed thus to
exceed. Consider only in the first place what kind of judgment
you will leave to be passed upon you by men, if these, who in the times
of others were with just reason put down, find under your
administration a way for their excesses. In the next place know
that our God will require at your hand the
souls of the lost, if you neglect to amend, so far as possibility
requires it of you, so great an abomination. Let not your
Excellency take amiss my thus speaking. For it is because we love
you as our own children that we point out to you what we doubt not will
be to your advantage. But send to us with all speed our brother
and fellow-bishop Paul1558
| 1558 This Paul was one
of the bishops of Numidia, against whom some charges of misconduct, not
specified, had been brought. His case has some significance as
shewing that, though the spiritual authority of the bishop of Rome over
the Church in Africa had now come to be acknowledged in a way that it
had not been in the age of Cyprian, yet there seems to have been still
some resistance to its exercise. This appears also from the fact
that it was not the primate of Numidia, but Columbus, a bishop notable
for his devotion to the Roman See, that Gregory mainly and most
confidentially corresponded with in relation to ecclesiastical affairs
(see II. 48, note 1), and that this Columbus complained of being in
disfavour with many on the ground of the frequent communications he
received from Rome (VII. 2). In the case before us
Gregory’s desire (urgently expressed in this letter to Pantaleo,
and in that which follows to the primate and Columbus, jointly), that
Paul should at once be sent to Rome for trial was not complied
with. For two years later (VI. 63) Gregory complains of this, and
also expresses surprize that the accused bishop should have been
excommunicated by the African authorities, and no news sent thereof to
himself by the primate. Then, in the following year (VII. 2),
writing to Columbus, he finds himself unable to refuse his assent to
Paul’s resorting to Constantinople to lay his case before the
Emperor. However in the year after this it seems that he did go
at length to Rome, but not so as to have his case decided there:
for Gregory sends him back to Africa to have his case inquired into,
only enjoining Columbus, to whom he writes, to do his utmost to see
justice done, he himself believing the accused to be innocent, and
attributing the charges against him to odium incurred by his measures
against the Donatists. The final issue does not appear. See
also XII. 8. | ,
lest opportunity should be
given to any one under any excuse for hindering his coming; in order
that, on ascertaining the truth more fully, we may be able, with
God’s help, to settle by a reasonable
treatment of the case how the punishment of so great a crime ought to
be proceeded with.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
