Epistle
XLIX.
To Leander, Bishop.
Gregory to Leander, Bishop of Hispalis
(
Seville
).
With what ardour I am athirst to see thee thou readest
in the tables of thine own heart, since thou lovest me
exceedingly. But since I cannot see thee, separated as thou art
from me by long tracts of country, I have done what charity towards
thee dictated, namely to transmit to thy 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
thou knewest 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 thy Charity, having already given those sheets
only of the said parts to monasteries. These, then, which I send
let thy 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
thy Charity, seeing that I say so little to him whom more than all I
love.