Pope Gregory IX - 358 

he will incur the indignation of Almighty God and of His Apostles, Peter and Paul.

Given at the Lateran on the third Nones of May in the 12th year of Our Pontificate.a

De Conditoris omnium, May 9b

Gregory, Servant of the servants of God, sends greetings and the Apostolic benediction to my beloved daughter, Agnes, handmaid of Christ and of the glorious Virgin blessed among women, health and apostolic benediction.

It is due to an ineffable gift from the Founder of all things and to His power that the Spirit of contemplation is so raised to the heights of the heavens that the depths of the abyss are also penetrated, as indicated by the marvelous variety of the gifts of God that you have expressed lately in your sincere letter. For from it We have gathered that you are located in the North, that you have abandoned the things which bind you to earth, such as greed, vanity, and pleasure which have the eyes of the foolish directed to themselves, while like the Queen of the South you have gone to listen to the wisdom of the true Solomon. At his feet, as in a school of virtue, you have been thoroughly vigilant and sedulously persevering. You have so learned judgment and knowledge to the point of complete goodness that once the torrent of your pleasure had been drunk, you spewed it out from this to that, at one time bringing forth from the treasury of your breast the fervor of a new desire, and at another time exposing an unchangeable will concerning the execution of an old one.

Furthermore, to the Son of the glorious Virgin, whom in His disposing kindness you have offered the splendor of Virginal purity, We, showing as much appreciation as We can, exhort you, O daughter of benediction, from the inmost affection of Our dispensing all that is good, the ministries of angels and men in a wonderful way assume the beginning and the fulfillment of perfection, the crown of everlasting glory by the increasing of devotion, and with the consequences of faith as a foundation, through

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Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, p. 358