The Book of Pastoral Rule

The Book of Pastoral Rule and Selected Epistles · Saint Gregory the Great (the Dialogist)

1. Preface.
2. Prologue.
3. That the unskilful venture not to approach an office of authority.
4. That none should enter on a place of government who practise not in life what they have learnt by study.
5. Of the weight of government; and that all manner of adversity is to be despised, and prosperity feared.
6. That for the most part the occupation of government dissipates the solidity of the mind.
7. Of those who are able to profit others by virtuous example in supreme rule, but fly from it in pursuit of their own ease.
8. That those who fly from the burden of rule through humility are then truly humble when they resist not the divine decrees.
9. That sometimes some laudably desire the office of preaching, while others, as laudably, are drawn to it by compulsion.
10. Of those who covet pre-eminence, and seize on the language of the Apostle to serve the purpose of their own cupidity.
11. That the mind of those who wish for pre-eminence for the most part flatters itself with a feigned promise of good works.
12. What manner of man ought to come to rule.
13. What manner of man ought not to come to rule.
14. How one who has in due order arrived at a place of rule ought to demean himself in it.
15. That the ruler should be pure in thought.
16. That the ruler should be always chief in action.
17. That the ruler should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech.
18. That the ruler should be a near neighbour to every one in compassion, and exalted above all in contemplation.
19. That the ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, but, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evildoers.
20. That the ruler relax not his care for the things that are within in his occupation among the things that are without, nor neglect to provide for the things that are without in his solicitude for the things that are within.
21. That the ruler should not set his heart on pleasing men, and yet should give heed to what ought to please them.
22. That the ruler ought to be careful to understand how commonly vices pass themselves off as virtues.
23. What the ruler's discrimination should be between correction and connivance, between fervour and gentleness.
24. How intent the ruler ought to be on meditations in the Sacred Law.
25. Prologue.
26. What diversity there ought to be in the art of preaching.
27. How the poor and the rich should be admonished.
28. How the joyful and the sad are to be admonished.
29. How subjects and prelates are to be admonished.
30. How servants and masters are to be admonished.
31. How the wise and the dull are to be admonished.
32. How the impudent and bashful are to be admonished.
33. How the forward and the faint-hearted are to be admonished.
34. How the impatient and the patient are to be admonished.
35. How the kindly-disposed and the envious are to be admonished.
36. How the simple and the crafty are to be admonished.
37. How the whole and the sick are to be admonished.
38. How those who fear scourges and those who contemn them are to be admonished.
39. How the silent and the talkative are to be admonished.
40. How the slothful and the hasty are to be admonished.
41. How the meek and the passionate are to be admonished.
42. How the humble and the haughty are to be admonished.
43. How the obstinate and the fickle are to be admonished.
44. How those who use food intemperately and those who use it sparingly are to be admonished.
45. How to be admonished are those who give away what is their own, and those who seize what belongs to others.
46. How those are to be admonished who desire not the things of others, but keep their own; and those who give of their own, yet seize on those of others.
47. How those that are at variance and those that are at peace are to be admonished.
48. How sowers of strifes and peacemakers are to be admonished.
49. How the rude in sacred learning, and those who are learned but not humble, are to be admonished.
50. How those are to be admonished who decline the office of preaching out of too great humility, and those who seize on it with precipitate haste.
51. How those are to be admonished with whom everything succeeds according to their wish, and those with whom nothing does.
52. How the married and the single are to be admonished.
53. How those are to be admonished who have had experience of the sins of the flesh, and those who have not.
54. How they are to be admonished who lament sins of deed, and those who lament only sins of thought.
55. How those are to be admonished who abstain not from the sins which they bewail, and those who, abstaining from them, bewail them not.
56. How those are to be admonished who praise the unlawful things of which they are conscious, and those who while condemning them, in no wise guard against them.
57. How those are to be admonished who sin from sudden impulse and those who sin deliberately.
58. How those are to be admonished who commit very small but frequent faults, and those who, while avoiding such as are very small, are sometimes plunged in such as are grievous.
59. How those are to be admonished who do not even begin good things, and those who do not finish them when begun.
60. How those are to be admonished who do bad things secretly and good things openly, and those who do contrariwise.
61. Concerning the exhortation to be addressed many at once, that It may so aid the virtues of each among them that vices contrary to such virtues may not grow up through it.
62. Of the exhortation to be applied to one person, who labours under contrary passions.
63. That sometimes lighter vices are to be left alone, that more grievous ones may be removed.
64. That deep things ought not to be preached at all to weak souls.
65. Of the work and the voice of preaching.
66. How the Preacher, When He Has Accomplished All Aright, Should Return to Himself, Lest Either His Life or His Preaching Lift Him Up.