Collection
Book of Pastoral Rule
Written at the reluctant outset of Gregory's pontificate in 590 and addressed to John of Ravenna, who had pressed him to explain his attempt to flee the papacy, the *Regula Pastoralis* asks who is fit to govern souls, how such a person must live, how he must adapt his speech to hearers who differ in temperament and condition, and how he must guard himself against the pride his own success will breed. It moves from diagnosis of the office, to the ruler's inward life, to a long casuistry of preaching organized around thirty-six paired conditions of soul, and finally to a brief warning against complacency in the preacher who has done well. Behind every page stands Gregory's conviction that souls are particular people, and that the same truth mishandled can wound the hearer it was meant to heal.