Letter 1015: Your devotion has done what it always does — both extending concern about us and entrusting yours to us.

Bishop Avitus to the illustrious gentleman Apollinaris. Your devotion did the customary thing, both by extending your solicitude on our behalf and by believing ours to be on your behalf. For indeed, when the report of your departure had been received, we hung in the utmost dread and trepidation; because it was being told to us by various reports that you, at the summons of the lords whom you attend, had all alike been called forth together. Whence the awareness of my own sins brought it about that, the fewer there remained to me, the more I understood there was to be feared from those remaining. But thanks be to God, who by a prosperous return has recalled your people into gladness and you yourself into your homeland. May Christ preserve this liberty, for whatever yet remains, in accordance with our common desires, so that for us it may be possible both to be consoled for your absence and to come to your presence.

Avitus episcopus viro illustri Apollinari. Fecit pietas vestra rem solitam sollicitudinem tam porrigendo de nobis quam de vobis nostram credendo. Nam revera nuntio vestri discessus accepto in summo metu et trepidatione pependimus; quia nobis diversis nuntiis dicebatur vos dominorum, quibus observatis, accitu cunctos pariter evocatos. Vnde faciebat hoc meorum con- scientia peccatorum, ut quantum mihi pauciores remanserant, tanto intellegerem re- manentibus plus timendum. Sed deo gratias, quia prospero reditu in laetitiam vestros vosque revocavit in patriam. Servet Christus hanc, quod superest, desideriis communi- bus libertatem, ut nobis et consolari absentiam vestram sit possibile et ad praesentiam pervenire.