Letter 3034: Avitus, bishop, to the most distinguished Heraclius.

Bishop Avitus to the most illustrious gentleman Heraclius. If I were not, stricken in mind, groaning over the misfortune of a friend, I would assuredly pile up many reproaches: that you, lying on your couch in dread of a lying attack of gout, are moved more by anxiety over scaling mountains than over verses, while the physicians, hale and hearty, lean upon their accustomed art, relying on feet more than poetic ones. But it is in grief, and with haste, that I have dictated these lines, summoned, as you see, to the burial of our common son, the late Protadius: yet may even this very circumstance afford the father some measure of consolation. As for you, if you have it at heart, now that you have suffered loss in our regard down to the last penny, to be fortified against fearful incursions by the Rhone marking the boundary, hold out a while longer, until I return; and keep our Ceratius too, who has some things of mine and not a few of yours, since he asserts that I am a warlike scholar, taking from his mother's wisdom that he gladly flees the barbarians, and from his father's valor that he has not turned his back upon letters. Heraclius to Avitus, Bishop of Vienne. You have indeed disclosed so great a cause of grief that, even were it to be closed off by the reply that epistolary duty demands, the wound inflicted by that most cruel news would compel me to serve tears rather than letters. Yet, fearing the fault of silence, I have stolen a few words, as best I could, even from my sighs. The times themselves, then, prove to whom the mark of fear may more rightly be ascribed, and whom the more trembling that precaution entrusted to barriers marks out. I, scorning the enclosures of the city, amid dangers close at hand laid bare my steadfastness of heart in the open, so as to reach at last the level expanses of unprotected places, that I might display the boldness of valor by the freedom of my dwelling-place. You, however, on hearing the rumor, flew together to the city's defenses like the servants of the winds, and him whom in days of peace the countryside continually held, they now do not lead out from the hiding-places of the walls. And indeed, the man whom before the city used to demand of you, now the property you left behind seeks him out, settled within the ramparts. [The remainder of this record is editorial apparatus from the edition, not part of the letters: a grammatical note from the De Dubiis Nominibus (p. 591, 3 Keil) -- "squalor, of the masculine gender, as in Avitus: 'with neighboring squalor'"; a notice from Flodoard's History of the Church of Reims, Book III, chapter 21 -- "Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, writes to Ado, archbishop of Vienne, among other matters concerning a letter of the blessed Avitus written to Saint Remigius, which a certain monk Rotfrid had told him he had read in Ado's possession"; and the heading: "Of Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, what survives from the book of homilies."]

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.