Letter 1019: I received your letters after a long time.

Bishop Avitus to the Bishop of Lyon. I received your letters after a long time. In them, however sorrowful you may know me to be, you ought not on that account to believe me negligent in preserving our charity. For God is truly my witness that out of the greatness of your affection my groaning likewise becomes the greater. Nor am I able, without great grief on your behalf, to point out how gravely Your Holiness has been forestalled by the readiness of pardon. You have equipped our adversaries with your own arms; you have betrayed our secrets to the unperfected; you have sung the Lord's song in a foreign land [Psalm 137]; you have brought forth, as it were, the vessels of the Lord for a banqueting spectacle, to be handed over to the Syrians; you have exposed them like Noah laid bare to mockeries that will never want for reproach. Whether they resist or comply, equality has crept in dangerously upon the truth. Surely, if what you thought ought to be made public was precious to you, even the fault of King Hezekiah ought to have frightened you, whom Scripture marked out as sinning through boastfulness [2 Kings 20:12-18]. But since you say that the alarm of the one being converted has been wiped away, it is right that we should say with exultation: This is the change of the right hand of the Most High [Psalm 77:10]. For as to the fact that the brutish ones contradict you so vainly, threatening thus: it is more to be wondered at that, God protecting, anyone however weak should be able to be without teeth and ragings. They, since they were groaning that the disciples of their own perdition were perishing, begin to lose their masters as well. Such gains are wholesomely sought out before God and before men. There is nothing violent in receiving one who seeks it. So that the blessing to be bestowed may confirm the devotion of one who is willing, it is not robbery but grace. What Christ deigns to accept, we cannot say has been seized by force. As for the rest, since you believe that I must be consulted concerning the status of the convert, I determine that by divine inspiration a man can rise to any grade of the priesthood, provided there is nothing, either in the matter of marriage or in any rule and conduct, that bars him from the clergy. For why should he not feed the flock of Christ, who has wisely perceived that those he had been feeding were not sheep? And who, because he is neither thief nor robber, having entered by the door, has rightly chosen the altars, destined to be a shepherd? Why should he not be raised up in our priesthood, who out of love of humility wished to be fallen from his own? Let him be a true priest drawn from a layman, who was content to be made a layman out of a false priest. Let him hold his own people in our Church, who in his own Church despised what belonged to another. The fullness of heavenly grace will give increase to such great goods, so that both he who grieved may, having attained it, begin to rejoice, and this man may daily understand more fruitfully that he has gone ahead of those whom he left behind. King Sigismund to Symmachus, Pope of the city of Rome. While I do not presume to deny to those who petition me the sacred pledges of relics, with which you have enriched your Gaul through me by a spiritual recompense, it is necessary that I too should request the patronage of the saints at the watering fountain of your apostolate. And although there is still among us, from your gift, something that ought to be celebrated with the zeal of the Catholic religion, yet it also befits a just devotion to understand this: that by sending the dutiful services of a written discourse we should seek out those addresses by which your pontificate either taught me, when present, with admonitions, or won me, when absent, by intercessions. Nor does the favorable occasion that has been found embrace only the homage of the present page; but, with the deacon Julian, a venerable man, appointed as bearer to you, we hasten in spirit to the presiding head of the universal Church, representing ourselves before him. For indeed my longing grows with the recollection of your benefits; nor can those things ever slip from my senses which either the pontifical kindness or the royal graciousness lavished upon us in your Italy, since, after a familiarity to be preferred to the advantages of all munificence, because there it more freely loosed me with my return, here it more tenaciously girded me with affection. Let your prayer, as for what remains, press on the more attentively on your behalf. For in the increase of the sheep the shepherd's guardianship grows. Presenting us at the sacred thresholds of the apostles with constant remembrance, while I live, obtain progress for the one who is your special preacher there where you obtained his beginning. Frequent us with letters, in so far as possibility or liberty allows, by which your teaching and well-being may flourish for us; and, as we have hoped above, confer upon us the protections of the venerable relics that are to be sought by us: by the veneration of which may we deserve always to have most blessed Peter both in power and yourself in his gift.

Avitus episcopus Lugdunensi episcopo. Epistolas vestras post longum tempus accepi: in quibus me servandae caritatis, quamlibet noveritis tristem, nec sic debetis credere neglegentem. Nam vere testis deus est, quod ex magnitudine vestri affectus fit animo meo maior et gemitus. Nec valeo sine grandi vobis dolore suggerere, quam graviter sanctitas vestra de veniae facilitate praeventa sit. Instruxistis adversarios armis vestris, prodidistis imperfectis secreta nostra, cantastis canticum domini in terra aliena; protulistis velut vasa dominica spectaculo convivali, quae Syris dentur; exposuistis velut nudatum Noe cachinnis numquam obprobrio carituris. Si renituntur aut secuntur, periculose sub- repsit aequalitas veritati. Certe si pretiosum vobis erat, quod publicari debere puta- stis, terrere vel Ezechiae regis culpa vos debuit. quem iactantia notavit scriptura peccantem. Sed cum trepidationem dicatis animo convertentis abstersam, iustum est, ut cum exultatione dicamus: Haec est mutatio dexterae excelsi. Nam quod vobis inaniter contradicunt beluati sic minantes: deo protegente quod debilis quisque, plus mirum est, carere dentibus et furoribus possit. Qui cum gemerent perditionis suae perire discipulos, perdere incipiunt et magistros. Salubriter coram deo vel hominibus lucra talia conquiruntur. Nihil in recipiendo expetente violentum est. Vt volentis devotionem benedictio praestanda confirmet, non est rapina sed gratia. Quod Christus dignatur accipere, dicere non possumus invasisse. De reliquo autem, quia me super conversi statu creditis consulendum, definio inspiratione divina ad quemlibet sacerdotii gradum hominem posse consurgere, si non est aut in ratione coniugii aut in quacumque regula moribusque, quod prohibeat clericatum. Cur enim non pascat Christi gregem, qui sapienter advertit oves non esse, quas paverat? quique, quia non fur latroque, merito pastor futurus per ostia ingressus elegit altaria? Quare non fiat in sacerdotio nostro erectus, qui amore humilitatis a suo voluit esse deciduus? Sit verax sacerdos ex laico, qui fieri laicus ex fallace sacerdote contentus est. Teneat in ecclesia nostra plebem suam, qui in sua contempsit alienam. Datura est tantis bonis augmentum caelestis gratiae plenitudo, ut et ille consecutus incipiat gaudere, qui doluit, et hic cotidie fructuosior praeisse se magis intellegat, quos reliquit. Sigismundus rex Symmacho papae urbis Romae. Dum sacra reliquiarum pignera, quibus per me Galliam vestram spiritali remunera- tione ditastis, negare petentibus non praesumo, me quoque sanctorum patrocinia postu- lare ad irriguum vestri apostolatus fontem necesse est. Quamquam etsi est adhuc apud nos de dono vestro, quod catholicae religionis debeat studio celebrari, etiam illud tamen convenit iustae devotionis intellegi, ut directis litterarii sermonis officiis allo- quia illa captemus, quibus me pontificatus vester vel praesentem monitis docuit, vel absentem intercessionibus adquisivit. Nec nunc paginae praesentis obsequium opportuni- tas reperta complectitur: sed destinato ad vos diacono portitore, viro venerabili Iuliano, ad universalis ecclesiae praesulem spiritu repraesentante concurrimus. Crescit quippe beneficiorum recordatione desiderium: nec umquam meis elabi sensibus possunt, quae nobis apud Italiam vestram vel pontificalis benignitas vel civilitas regalis impendit, cum post familiaritatem totius munificentiae commodis praeferendam, quia istic liberius laxavit reditu, illic tenacius cinxit affectu. Attentior pro vestris, quod superest, in- cumbat oratio. In augmento namque ovium crescit custodia pastoralis. Sacris nos apostolorum liminibus commemoratione adsidua praesentantes specialem, dum vixero, praedicatorem vestri, ubi obtinuistis initium, impetrate profectum. Litteris nos, in quantum possibilitas patitur aut libertas, quibus nobis doctrina et incolumitas vestra floreat, frequentate et, ut supra speravimus, ambienda nobis venerabilium reliquiarum conferte praesidia: quarum cultu beatissimum Petrum in virtute et vos semper habere mereamur in munere.