Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 519

Gregory to Marcellus, proconsul of Dalmatia. We have received the letter of your Greatness, in which you have indicated that you have incurred our displeasure, and that on this account, by a satisfaction directly rendered, you wish to have our favour. And indeed such reports have reached us concerning your Greatness as ought by no means to have been committed by a faithful man. For all assert that you are the authors of the cause of so great an evil against Maximus, through whom the spoiling of that Church and the perdition of so many souls, and the audacity of unheard-of presumption, took its beginning.

And indeed, as for what you ask—that you wish to have our favour—it is fitting that for such deeds as these you ought, as is fitting, to make satisfaction to our Redeemer with the whole intent of your mind and with tears; for if satisfaction be not made to Him, what can our remission or favour confer upon you for certain? Yet so long as we perceive you to be still involved in the ruins of the presumptuous and in the defences of the erring, we do not see of what sort your satisfaction is either to God or to men. For then let your Greatness openly and evidently know that it makes satisfaction to God and to men, if it both recall the devious things to rectitude and the presumptuous things to the norm of humility. And if this be done, know that thereby you will receive both the favour of God and that of men.