---
title: "Epistle 105 (Book IX): To Serenus, Bishop of Massilia"
author: "Gregory the Great"
tradition: "Imperial"
era: "Early Medieval"
genre: "Letter"
source: "Translated by James Barmby, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. XIII (Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1898)."
accession: "STROMATA № 190"
url: "https://www.thestromata.com/texts/epistle-105-serenus-gregory"
downloaded: "2026-09-14"
---

# Epistle 105 (Book IX): To Serenus, Bishop of Massilia
*Gregory the Great*

> Downloaded from The Stromata (thestromata.com). Free for personal, educational, and ministry use.

## Introduction

In 599, word reached Rome that Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, had been smashing religious images in his own churches, a zealous move against idolatry that Gregory the Great, writing back, both praises and firmly checks. His argument became one of the most quoted lines in the history of Christian art: pictures let the illiterate "read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books." Preserve the images, he tells Serenus, but stop the people from worshipping them - teach the difference. Short, direct, and pastoral rather than theoretical, this letter reads less like doctrine than like one bishop correcting another in real time.

---

Gregory to Serenus,

That we have been so long in sending a letter to your Fraternity attribute not to sluggishness, but to press of  business. We now commend to you in all respects the bearer of these presents, our most beloved son  Cyriacus, the Father of our Monastery, that no delay may detain him in the city of Massilia, but that he may  proceed under God's protection to our brother and fellow-bishop Syagrius[9] with the succour of your  Holiness.  

Furthermore we notify to you that it has come to our ears that your Fraternity, seeing certain adorers of  images, broke and threw down these same images in Churches. And we commend you indeed for your  zeal against anything made with hands being an object of adoration; but we signify to you that you ought not  to have broken these images. For pictorial representation is made use of in Churches for this reason; that  such as are ignorant of letters may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books.  Your Fraternity therefore should have both preserved the images and prohibited the people from adoration  of them, to the end that both those who are ignorant of letters might have wherewith to gather a knowledge of  the history, and that the people might by no means sin by adoration of a pictorial representation.

---

Source: Translated by James Barmby, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. XIII (Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1898).  
Previously prepared for an earlier version of The Stromata. Accessed July 2026.  
Translation: Author died 604. Standard NPNF translation by James Barmby, public domain; confirmed via explicit colophon citing the Roberts/Donaldson/Schaff church fathers compilation.