Gregory to Guduin, duke of Naples. Since among the many good things which are often reported to us concerning Your Greatness, this is said to be the more praiseworthy in you, that you love chastity and, as is fitting, keep discipline, we have wondered greatly that, in the case of that soldier who by diabolical instigation ruined a handmaid of God, no most rigorous vengeance has hitherto been executed. For it would have been very fitting to your character and goodness that the vengeance should reach us before the iniquity of the perpetrated crime.
But since we believe that the vengeance for this wickedness has been suspended not by your will but by the surreptitious dealings of others, lest this sin should be able to oppress either the rank of the undisciplined soldiery or those places in which it was committed, we exhort you, without any excuse or delay, showing what zeal you have toward the guarding of chastity, so to correct so great a crime strictly, for the example of others, that you may both render God—against whom that man perpetrated this injury and whose fear he despised—placable toward you, and that we may render you thanks for the rectitude of your zeal. For we by no means allow so great an iniquity to remain unavenged.