Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 152

Gregory to the patrician of Nansa. While you describe to me the sweetness of contemplation, you have renewed for me the groaning over my ruin, because I heard what I have lost within, while unworthy I ascended without to the summit of governance. Know that I am so smitten with grief that I scarcely suffice to speak, for the shadows of sorrow beset the eyes of my mind. Sad is whatever is beheld; whatever is believed delightful appears mournful to my heart. For I ponder from what a summit of my own tranquillity I have fallen, and to what a downcast height of outward advancement I have ascended. And for my sins, sent into the exile of occupation from the face of the Ruler, I say, as it were with the voices of ruined Judaea, with the prophet: 'He that comforted me is departed far from me' (Lamentations 1:16).

But that, making a likeness of cause and name, you fashion clauses and exclamations through your writings—surely, dearest brother, you are calling a monkey a lion. This we perceive you to do in the way in which we often call scabby whelps 'leopards' or 'tigers.' For I, good man, have as it were lost my sons, because through earthly cares I have let go of right works. Do not therefore call me Naomi, that is, 'the fair'; but call me Mara, because I am full of bitterness (Ruth 1:20). But as to what you say to me—that I ought not to have written that I plough in the Lord's field 'with a heifer' (Amos 6:13)—since, in the linen cloth shown to blessed Peter, both oxen and all wild beasts were offered, you yourself know that it was added: 'Kill and eat' (Acts 10:13).

You therefore, who had not yet slain those same beasts, why did you already wish to eat through obedience? Or do you not know that the beast about which you wrote refused to be slain by the sword of your mouth? Those, then, which you have been able to slay through compunction—of these it is necessary that you be sated in the hunger of your own desire. But concerning the case of our brethren, as you wrote, so I judge it will be, if God helps; about which I ought by no means now to have written to our most serene lords of affairs, because at the very outset one must not begin with complaints. But I have written to my most beloved son Honoratus the deacon, that he may at an opportune time suggest it to them fittingly, and indicate to me the answer with speed.

Lord Alexander, lord Theodore, my son Marinus, lady Esicia, lady Eudoxia, and lady Dominica, I ask to be greeted on my behalf. (Cf. John the Deacon, Book I, chapter 48.) Gregory to Anastasius, bishop of Antioch. The letters of your blessedness I received as a weary man receives rest, a sick man health, a thirsty man a fountain, a man in the heat a shade. For those words seemed not to be uttered through the tongue of the flesh, but thus he laid open the spiritual love he bore, as if he were speaking through his very self. But very hard was what followed, because your love bade me carry earthly burdens;

and me whom before you loved spiritually, afterwards—as I suppose—loving me temporally, you have pressed down, with a burden laid upon me, even to the earth, so that, utterly losing the rectitude of my mind and losing the edge of contemplation, I say—not through the spirit of prophecy, but through experience: 'I am bowed down, and I am humbled exceedingly' (Psalm 118:107). For I am shaken by many waves of affairs, and afflicted by the tempests of a tumultuous life, so that I rightly say: 'I am come into the depth of the sea, and a tempest hath overwhelmed me' (Psalm 68:3).

To me, then, in peril, stretch out the hand of your prayer, you who stand on the shore of the virtues. But that you call me the mouth of the Lord, that you call me a lamp, that you declare that I profit many—this too befalls me unto the heaping up of my iniquities, so that, when iniquity ought to be avenged in me, I receive praises instead of vengeance. But by what tumults of earthly affairs I am here worn down, I cannot express in words; which nevertheless you can gather from the brevity of the letter, in which I speak too little to him whom I love more than all. Moreover I have judged that, so far as I was able, I have petitioned by prayers from our most serene lords, that you, with your honour restored, might come to the thresholds of Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles;

and, for as long as it shall so please God, may they grant me to dwell here with me; so that, when I shall have been counted worthy to see you, we may relieve the weariness of our pilgrimage by speaking to one another of our eternal homeland.