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590-603] his pontificate writing almost once a month to the Rector Siciliae, the subdeacon whom he long employed in positions of trust in different parts of Italy. The letters shew minute care for justice, for the suppression of unjust exactions, for the redress of grievances, as well as for the maintenance of proprietary rights: besides the great landlord, there speaks the great bishop and shepherd of the souls of men. No matter was too small for the pope's attention, whether it was a safeguard for the interests of a convert from Judaism, a direction as to the disposal of cows and calves, of houses and granaries, or a criticism of the provision for personal needs. "You have sent us," he once wrote, "a miserable horse and five good donkeys. The horse I cannot ride because it is miserable, nor the donkeys, good though they be, because they are donkeys." Different views have been taken of this interesting correspondence between Gregory and his factor, but at least it reveals the very close attention which the pope paid to detail in the oversight of the vast possessions of his see. "As we ought not to allow property belonging to the Church to be lost, so we deem it a breach of law to try to take what belongs to others," are words which might serve as a motto for his relation towards temporal things. With minute care he stopped the abuses which had stained the administration under his predecessors. But above all the pope endeavoured to shew inpractical alms-giving the fervent charity of his heart. John the Deacon tells that there was still preserved, nearly three hundred years later, among the muniments of the Lateran, a large book in which the names of the recipients of his benefactions, in Rome or the suburbs, in the Campagna and on the coast, were set down. In nothing was he more insistent than in the duty of ransoming captives, those taken in the wars and sold as slaves in markets even so far away as Libya. Many letters deal with the subject, convey his exhortations to bishops to join in the work and return thanks for the gifts he had received to help it. Thus did the largest landowner in Italy endeavour to discharge the duties of his trust.

From his administration of the papal patrimony we pass naturally to his policy as a ruler, his dealings with the affairs of the world, as a statesman and as a pope.

As a statesman his first and closest concern was with the Lombards. Already he had been concerned in endeavouring to protect Rome and the parts of Italy still unconquered: that had been the special object of his long embassy at Constantinople. The emperors had given no aid, but the Franks had caused a diversion by thrice attacking the Lombards in flank. But the snake was not killed, hardly scotched; and before Gregory had been long on the throne peace between Franks and Lombards had been made by the new king Agilulf, who had married Theodelinda, the late king's widow, and he turned the thoughts of the Lombards towards the extension of their conquests from imperial Rome.