Of which number you specially demand one from us, namely, Grimbald,
priest and monk, to be sent for this office, and to preside over the
government of the pastoral charge. To whom the whole Church, which
hath nourished him, gives her testimony from his childhood, with
true faith and holy religion, and which hath advanced him by regular
steps, according to ecclesiastical custom, to the dignity of the
priesthood. We affirm openly that he is most deserving of the honor of
the episcopate, and that he is fit to teach others also. But indeed
we wished that this might rather take place in our kingdom, and we
intended some time ago, with Christ’s permission, to accomplish it in
due time, namely, that he whom we had as a faithful son we might have
as an associate in our office, and a most trustworthy assistant in
everything that pertained to the advantage of the Church. It is not
without deep sorrow--forgive us for saying so--that we suffer him to
be torn from us, and be removed from our eyes by so vast an extent
of land and sea. But as love has no perception of loss, nor faith of
injury, and no remoteness of regions can part those whom the tie of
unfeigned affection joins together, we have most willingly assented to
your request--for to you we have no power to refuse anything--nor do
we grudge him to you, whose advantage we rejoice in as much as if it
were our own, and whose profit we count as ours: for we know that in
every place one only God is served, and that the Catholic and Apostolic
Church is one, whether it be at Rome or in the parts beyond the sea.
It is our duty, then, to make him over to you canonically; and it is
your duty to receive him reverentially, that is to say, in such way and
mode as may best conduce to the glory of your kingdom, to the honor
of the Church and our prelacy; and to send him to you along with his
electors, and with certain nobles and great personages of your kingdom,
as well bishops, presbyters, deacons, as religious laymen also, who
with their own lips promise and declare to us in the presence of our
whole church that they will treat him with fitting respect during the
whole course of his life, and that they will inviolably keep with the
strictest care the canonical decrees and the rules of the Church,
handed down to the Church by the apostles and by apostolic men, such
as they could then hear from us, and afterwards learn from him their
pastor and teacher, according to the form delivered by us to him. Which
when they shall have done, with the divine blessing and the authority
of St. Remigius, by our ministry and the laying on of hands, according
to the custom of the Church, receiving him properly ordained, and in
all things fully instructed, let them conduct him with due honor to his
own seat, glad and cheerful themselves that they are always to enjoy
his protection, and constantly to be instructed by his teaching and
example.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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