Book V, Letter 49 #catechesis/fathers/gregory-the-great-pope
Register of Letters · Gregory the Great, Pope (c. 540-604) · Church Fathers
To Leander, Bishop.
Gregory to Leander, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville).
With what ardour I am thirsty to see you you read in the tables of your own heart, since you love me exceedingly. But since I cannot see you, separated as you are from me by long tracts of country, I have done what charity towards you dictated, namely to transmit to your Holiness, on the arrival here of our common son Probinus the presbyter, the book of Pastoral Rule, which I wrote at the commencement of my episcopate, and the books which you knew I had already composed on the exposition of the blessed Job. Some sheets indeed of the third and fourth parts of that work I have not sent to your Charity, having already given those sheets only of the said parts to monasteries. These, then, which I send let your Holiness earnestly peruse, and more earnestly deplore my sins, lest it be to my more serious blame that I am seen as it were to know what I omit to do. But with how great tumults of business I am oppressed in this Church the very brevity of my epistle will signify to your Charity, seeing that I say so little to him whom more than all I love.
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Translated by James Barmby. 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. fathers/360205049.htm
