De Visione Taionis Episcopus

APPENDIX. CONCERNING THE VISION OF BISHOP TAIO. (From Baronius, Annals, at the year 646.) ... In the year which is considered the last of Chindasuind, king of the Spains, when the same Saint Martin had begun to sit as Roman pontiff, a revelation is said to have occurred, divinely made concerning the books of the Moralia of Pope Saint Gregory. We shall describe it in the very same words in which it is found written; and if you find it covered with the rags of antiquity, do not shrink; but, stripping those away, consider the naked sense gleaming with the whiteness and simplicity of truth, as one to whom all writers who have pursued the affairs of the Spains rightly subscribe without any controversy. For it runs thus: Chindasvind, king of the Goths, in the city of Toledo, with all the clergy, wonderfully summoned a synodal decree of thirty bishops to be celebrated in the fifth year of his reign. He sent Taio, bishop of Caesaraugusta, a man sufficiently imbued with literary learning and a friend of the scriptures, to Rome at his own request, by sea, for the remaining books of the Moralia. And when he was put off from day to day by the Roman pope, as if the little book could not easily be found in the archive of the Roman Church because of the multitude of volumes sought, he, spending the night, and beseeching the Lord's mercy at the feet of the blessed apostle Peter the prince, was shown by an angel the chest in which it was being read.

Soon the pope, as he had foreseen, found himself reproached, and with great reverence he granted him assistance for the writing and sent him back to the Spaniards for reading; because they retained only that exposition of the books of blessed Job which had been brought by blessed Leander, bishop of Hispalis, and long ago honorably conveyed. Indeed, Bishop Taio was asked and adjured by Pope Martin I how so truthfully the place of those books had been shown to him; after much entreaty, he confessed with great eagerness that one night he had sought from the doorkeepers of the church of the blessed apostle Peter to be allowed to keep vigil. And when he obtained this, at midnight, as he lay prostrate before the tomb of the blessed apostle Peter with excessive lamentations, a heavenly light was sent forth, and the whole church was illuminated by such indescribable brightness that the church’s candelabra did not shine even a little; and together with that light, along with the voices of those singing psalms and the lamps of those gleaming, throngs of saints entered. Finally, when he was struck with excessive terror, after their prayer was completed, two white-clad old men gradually came out from that assembly of saints in the part where the bishop was engaged in prayer, and began to give a pendant. And when they found him nearly dead, having greeted him gently, they restored him to his proper senses.

And when they were asked by them for what reason such a great labor was undertaken, or who was hastening from the west seeking such a long voyage, they listened to this and that reported by him, as if unknowing, as a thing worth the effort. Then, after consoling him with many words, they showed him the suitable place where the books themselves lay hidden. Therefore, when those holy ones were asked what that throng of saints was, accompanying them with such bright light, they answered, saying that Peter was the apostle of Christ, and likewise Paul, holding each other by the hand, together with all the successors of the church resting in that place. Moreover, when they were asked who the lords were who were having such a remarkable conversation with him, one of them answered that he was Gregory, whose book he himself desired to see; and that he had come so that his vast labor might be rewarded, and his very long desire might be increased. Then, when asked whether the wise Augustine was present in that holy multitude, since he had always from his very cradle loved to read his books as well as those of Saint Gregory himself with great eagerness, he is reported to have answered only this: That most illustrious man and most pleasing to all expectation, Augustine, whom you seek, a higher place holds him from us.

For indeed, that they are said to have appeared only to those who were buried in that basilica of the saint seems to be answered by Augustine being held in another place; and thus what is written is to be corrected, that he was held in a higher place: otherwise, how could it truly be said that Augustine was placed in a more eminent place in heaven, when the very princes of the apostles and several other martyred pontiffs buried in the same church appeared in that vision? But the author continues: When he began to prostrate himself at their feet, that most holy man, unique from his eyes, vanished together with the light, to the terror of the doorkeepers and of them themselves; and from that day, in that same apostolic see, the venerable Taio was held glorious by all, who before was despised as worthless. Thus far the writing, which you have reviewed in the appendix to the Seventh Council of Toledo. But what those books were which the bishop of Caesaraugusta so lamented to be lacking in Spain, we can understand from the letter of the same Saint Gregory to Leander, where these words are read: "Because I cannot see you, separated by a great expanse of land, the one thing which love for you has dictated to me has caused me to send to your holiness the book of the Pastoral Rule, which I wrote at the beginning of my episcopate, and the books which I made long ago in exposition of Blessed Job, coming with our common son, the presbyter Probinus.

And indeed, I did not send to your Charity the codices of the third and fourth parts of that work, because I find only those which I have already given from those same parts to the monasteries. Therefore, let your Holiness diligently peruse these, etc. Thus you see that the Spaniards lacked the first and second parts of the Moralia; nor is it surprising that those books could not easily be found by Pope Martin, which were not so readily at hand even for Gregory himself that he could send them to Leander, to whom he had inscribed the entire work, nor could he find other parts of the same work except those which, as he says, he had given to the monasteries. Rodericus Toletanus is to be corrected when he says that that part of the books of the Moralia was lost through the negligence of the Spaniards, for the recovery of which Taio, bishop of Caesaraugusta, undertook a journey to Rome. But in this he does not please us when he says that such a legation was decreed to Rome by the Seventh Council of Toledo; since that council happened to be celebrated two years earlier, namely in the year of the Lord 646, at which time I think Taio had not yet been created bishop of Caesaraugusta, who is found subscribing to the Eighth Council of Toledo almost in the last place, as a junior. But also in the historian Ambrosius I have wondered that he says this happened under the Roman pontiff Theodore, when that writing, most faithfully rendered by the most accurate man Garcia, testifies that it happened under Pope Martin. (Thus far Baron, as above.)