Letter 8006: Being confident that your Fraternity pays regard to the ordinances of the canons and the vigour of discipline, lest the falseness of one of your clerics should succeed in imposing on you so as to escape the strictness of ecclesiastical order, we have thought it right to inform you of his fault, that through your solicitude he may be subjected to...
Pope Gregory the Great→Amos, Patriarch of Jerusalem|c. 598 AD|gregory great
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Death & mourning
Gregory to Amos, Bishop of Jerusalem.
I trust that your Fraternity respects the canons and upholds proper discipline. But I must alert you to a situation, so that you are not deceived by one of your clerics who may try to escape the consequences of church discipline.
Peter, an acolyte whom I had assigned to serve under my son the deacon Sabinianus -- our representative in Constantinople -- has fled and apparently taken refuge with your church. If this is true, please take him into custody and send him back to us at the first opportunity.
If he has already left your church out of fear and is hiding somewhere in your territory, have him searched for diligently throughout all your parishes. When he is found, send him to us.
I must also inform you that he has been excommunicated. He is not to receive the body and blood of the Lord until he returns to us -- unless he is in immediate danger of death.
Book VIII, Letter 6
To Amos, Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Gregory to Amos, Bishop of Jerusalem.
Being confident that your Fraternity pays regard to the ordinances of the canons and the vigour of discipline, lest the falseness of one of your clerics should succeed in imposing on you so as to escape the strictness of ecclesiastical order, we have thought it right to inform you of his fault, that through your solicitude he may be subjected to the discipline from which he has fled. We understand, then, that Peter, an acolyte, whom we had caused to serve under our son the deacon Sabinianus, our ecclesiastical representative in the royal city, has fled, and resorted to your Church. If this is true, let your Fraternity be at pains to secure him, and send him back hither when an opportunity occurs. But if by chance, fearing this, he shall have departed from your Church, and be lurking in various places to escape detection, order him to be diligently sought for in all your parishes, and, when found, send him back to us, as we have before said. And we desire also to notify through you that he is deprived of communion: nor let him dare to receive the mysteries of the Lord's body and blood until he shall return to us, unless by chance he should be in imminent peril of death.
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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. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360208006.htm>.
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Gregory to Amos, Bishop of Jerusalem.
I trust that your Fraternity respects the canons and upholds proper discipline. But I must alert you to a situation, so that you are not deceived by one of your clerics who may try to escape the consequences of church discipline.
Peter, an acolyte whom I had assigned to serve under my son the deacon Sabinianus -- our representative in Constantinople -- has fled and apparently taken refuge with your church. If this is true, please take him into custody and send him back to us at the first opportunity.
If he has already left your church out of fear and is hiding somewhere in your territory, have him searched for diligently throughout all your parishes. When he is found, send him to us.
I must also inform you that he has been excommunicated. He is not to receive the body and blood of the Lord until he returns to us -- unless he is in immediate danger of death.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.