Letter 3032: If I were not groaning with a shaken heart over the fall of a friend, there is much I would say about you — lying in...

Bishop Avitus to the most illustrious Heraclius. If I were not, my spirit stricken, groaning over the misfortune that has befallen a friend, I would surely heap up many reproaches, namely that the care of mountains to be scaled moves you more than the care of verses, as you lie in your little bed in fear of a lying gout, while your physicians, hale and hearty in their accustomed art, lean upon feet more than poetic ones. But in grief I have dictated these lines, and in haste, having been summoned, as you see, to the burial of our common son, the late Protadius: yet even in this very thing let me bestow some consolation upon his father. Moreover, if it is dear to your heart, now that an utter ruin has been wrought upon us, to be fortified against the dread incursions with the Rhone as our boundary, hold fast yet a while, until I return; and look after our Ceratius, who has some things from my purse and not a few from yours, since he declares me to you a warlike man of letters [scholasticus], taking from his mother's wisdom the fact that he gladly flees the barbarians, and from his father's valor the fact that he has not turned his back on letters. Heraclius to Avitus, bishop of Vienne. You have indeed disclosed so great a cause for grief, one that the reply owed by epistolary duty might bring to a close, that the wound inflicted by the harshest news compelled me to serve tears more than letters. Nevertheless, fearing the fault of silence, I have stolen, as best I could, a few words even amid my sighs. The times, then, prove to whom the mark of dread is more rightly to be ascribed, and which man the safeguarding of the entrusted strongholds marks out as the more fearful. I, having disdained the cages of the city, set forth the steadfastness of my heart in plain terms amid dangers close at hand, so that I might reach the open expanses of the unenclosed country, and thereby display the boldness of my courage by the freedom of my dwelling. You, however, when the rumor was learned, flocked together to the enclosures of the city like the servants of the winds; and the man whom in days of peace the countryside had continuously kept, they now do not lead forth from the hiding places of the walls. For truly, just as the city formerly demanded you, so now the possession you have left behind seeks you, settled as you are within the ramparts.

Avitus episcopus viro illustrissimo Heraclio. Nisi dolendum amici casum animo concussus gemerem, multa profecto exaggera- rem, quod vos in lectulo mendacis podagrae metu, medici vegetos de arte consueta, plus quam poeticae pedibus innitentes montium scandendorum magis moveat cura, quam versuum. Maestus vero has et cum festinatione dictavi, evocatus videlicet ad sepulturam communis filii quondam Protadi: sic tamen vel in hoc ipso patri aliquid consolationis impendat. Vobis porro si cordi est, facta de nobis ex asse iac- tura, ab incursibus formidandis Rodano limitante muniri, tenete adhuc, dum redeo, et Ceratium nostrum de meo habentem aliqua, de vestro nonnulla, quia me scholasticum vobis adserit bellicosum sumens de matris sapientia, quod libenter barbaros fugit, de virtute paterna, quod litteris terga non praebuit. Heraclius Avito Viennensi episcopo. Indicastis quidem tantam doloris causam, quae epistularis officii responso clau- deretur, ut durissimo nuntio vulnus inflictum plus me lacrimis cogeret servire quam litteris. Tamen metuens silentii culpam vel suspiriis pauca meis, ut potui, verba furatus sum. Probant igitur tempora, cui rectius adscribatur nota formidinis, quem magis trepidum provisio claustris commissa designet. Ego urbis caveas dedignatus inter vicina discrimini constantiam pectoris planis exposui, ut tamdiu ad patentium locorum aequora pervenirem, ut virtutis audaciam libertate habitationis ostenderem. Vos autem rumore comperto ad saepta urbis tamquam ventorum famuli convolastis et quem pacis diebus iugiter rura tenuerant, nunc de murorum latebris non educunt. Enim vero quam vos ante civitas flagitabat. tam nunc intra moenia collocatum quaerit relicta possessio. DE DVBIIS NOMINIBVS P. 591, 3 K. Squalor generis masculini, ut Avitus: squalore vicino FLODOARDVS HISTORIARVM ECCLESIAE REMENSIS LIB. III CAP. 21. [Hincmarus Remensis archiepiscopus] Adoni Viennensi archiepiscopo scribit inter cetera pro epistola beati Aviti ad sanctum Remigium scripta, quam quidam Rotfridus monachus ei dixerat se apud eundem Adonem legisse. ALCIMI ECDICII AVITI VIENNENSIS EPISCOPI EX HOMILIARVM LIBRO QVAE RESTANT.