64.—Of a Saint Gregory.
Gregory thought over it, and said to the king: “The power that thou has conferred upon me, has no influence, unless I have it from the holy father Silvester”; and he told the king of the great miracle performed by the holy father on the emperor Constantine. The king said that he would willingly see him, and would go with him, and prepared and made arrangements for [the government of] his kingdom. He took with him forty thousand men, good horsemen and foot-soldiers; he also took with him many valuables and many precious stones, with which to do honour to the holy father, Saint Silvester.[(1)] Gregory took with him the most learned men that he had under him, and went from Babiloni through Persia, through Greater Armenia, and through many other countries, and went through the Iron Gates which lie between two seas, and reach into Great Tartary towards Ruwschea; through Walchi, Pulgeri, through Ungeren, Frigaul, through Lamparten, through Duschkan, and so they came dry-footed to Rome, as they had not passed over the sea. And when they were near Rome, Silvester sent to them all the blind, lame, and sick, that Gregory might heal them, as he wished to test his sanctity. When the king, Derthat, saw the people, he was angry, and thought the Pope was making fun of him. Gregory, without being angry, said: “I know well what he means”; and ordered that water should be brought to him; and he knelt on his knees, and prayed to Almighty God that those who will be sprinkled with the water, will become sound. He then took a sponge on a stick, and sprinkled the people with it; and he who was touched by it, was healed. The blind received sight. The Pope, Silvester, heard of this, and went with all his clergy, and with the whole city of Rome, to meet him, and shewed him deference and honour. They were a whole year going by land, from Babilony to Rome. Gregory asked the Pope Silvester to give him power to free his clergy and his people from the jurisdiction of Rome, because he was so far that he could not always go to the Chair; then he gave him the power of a patriarch, and whoever wished to have this power, could not obtain it elsewhere than at Rome, and would have to send an embassy to Rome every three years. This he vowed to him, and arranged that all those who were of his faith, ecclesiastical or lay, should be subject to the Chair at Rome, and whoever would not be so, should be under the ban of the Pope, be he bishop, lord, or menial, rich or poor, in his land, and this oath the king and all his knights also took. This lasted three hundred years after the time of Gregory, that they were subject to the Chair, after which they no longer went to the Chair, and themselves chose a patriarch. Their patriarch they call Kathagnes, and a king they call Takchauer.[(2)]