Letter 1028: Although I deserved to receive no letters from your Blessedness, yet I also do not forget my own forgetfulness; I blame my negligence, I stir up my sluggishness with goads of love, that one who will not pay what he owes of his own accord, may learn even under blows to render it. Furthermore, I inform you that I have prepared a full representatio...
Book I, Letter 28
To Sebastian, Bishop of Rhisinum [a town in Dalmatia, on the eastern Adriatic coast].
Gregory to Sebastian.
I owe you a letter — I know that — and the truth is I've been neglecting the correspondence I should have sent. So: consider yourself prodded. I'm writing partly out of affection and partly to hold myself to the obligation I've let slide.
I want you to know that I've written the most urgent appeal I could manage to our most devout lords [the Emperor and Empress], asking that the blessed Lord Patriarch Anastasius of Antioch — who was removed from his See and has been living in exile — be permitted to come to Rome, to the threshold of the blessed Apostle Peter, with his right to wear the pallium [the woolen vestment that marks a patriarch's authority] fully restored, to celebrate Mass alongside me. My hope was that even if he can't return to his own See, he could at least live here with me at his full dignity.
Something has come up that's made me hold off on sending what I'd written. The bearer of this letter will explain. In the meantime, please find out what Lord Anastasius himself wants done about this, and write to let me know.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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