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To Sabinianus, Deacon.
Gregory to Sabinianus, etc.
You know what has been done in the case of the prevaricator Maximus. For after the most serene Lord the Emperor had sent orders that he should not be ordained , then he broke out into a higher pitch of pride. For the men of the glorious patrician Romanus received bribes from him, and caused him to be ordained in such a manner that they would have killed Antoninus, the subdeacon and rector of the patrimony, if he had not fled. But I dispatched letters to him, after I had learned that he had been ordained against reason and custom, telling him not to presume to celebrate the solemnities of Mass unless I should first ascertain from our most serene lords what they had ordered with regard to him. And these my letters, having been publicly promulged or posted in the city, he caused to be publicly torn, and thus bounced forth more openly into contempt of the Apostolic See. How I was likely to endure this you know, seeing that I was before prepared rather to die than that the Church of the blessed apostle Peter should degenerate in my days. Moreover you are well acquainted with my ways, that I bear long; but if once I have determined not to bear, I go gladly in the face of all dangers. Whence it is necessary with the help of God to meet danger, lest he be driven to sin to excess. Look to what I say, and consider what great grief inspires it.
But it has come to my ears that he has sent [to Constantinople] a cleric, I know not whom, to say that the bishop Malchus was put to death in prison for money. Now as to this there is one thing that you may shortly suggest to our most serene lords — that, if I their servant had been willing to have anything to do with the death of Lombards, the nation of the Lombards at this day would have had neither king nor dukes nor counts, and would have been divided in the utmost confusion. But, since I fear God, I shrink from having anything to do with the death of any one. Now the bishop Malchus was neither in prison nor in any distress; but on the day when he pleaded his cause and was sentenced he was taken without my knowledge by Boniface the notary to his house, where a dinner was prepared for him, and there he dined, and was treated with honour by the said Boniface, and in the night suddenly died, as I think you have already been informed. Moreover I had intended to send our Exhilaratus to you in connection with that business; but, as I considered that the case was now done with, I consequently abstained from doing so.
Source. Translated by James Barmby. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 12. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360204047.htm>.
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