Letter 3: Your eloquence and your devotion alike maintain their accustomed standard, and for this reason we admire your speech...

Sidonius to his lord the bishop Faustus, greeting. 1. Both your eloquence and your devotion keep to their accustomed course, and on this account we look up greatly to your speech, because you write so skillfully, and to your affection, because you write so willingly. But for the present, having first sought and obtained pardon, I think it most cautious and most wholesome, especially throughout these cities which by their situation lie much cut off and apart, while the roads are made suspect by the movements of the peoples, to forgo writing too frequently, and, with the diligence of mutual conversation thus deferred for a while, rather to take up the care of keeping silent. Although this is most harsh and most bitter between persons bound to each other by an affection that mediates between them, nevertheless it is brought about not by any causes whatever, but by very many that are sure and necessary, and which set out from differing origins. 2. Of these the first to be reckoned on the count will be this: that a letter-carrier in no way passes the guard-posts of the public highways without being questioned, and although he is in no danger, since he is free of any crime, he is nonetheless wont to suffer a great deal of difficulty, while the ever-watchful examiner searches out every secret of those who carry the dispatches. And if perchance their answer to the questions put to them wavers ever so little, whatever written instructions are not found upon them are believed to exist; and through this the one who is sent for the most part endures injury, the one who sends, ill-will, and the more so in this present time, in which the long-since established treaties of kingdoms that vie with one another are once again rendered uncertain through quarrelsome terms. 3. Besides this, our own mind lies wounded by domestic losses on this side and on that; for under the appearance of duty, or, what is truer, by necessity, driven out from my native soil and banished here by sundry uproars on every side, I suffer here the discomforts of a stranger, there the losses of one proscribed. For which reason, to compose at this moment letters that are a little too polished is something I am either asked to do unseasonably or undertake shamelessly, since to exchange letters witty in jest or refined in style is the part of fortunate men. Moreover, it is a certain barbarism of manners when the speech is cheerful and the spirit is cast down. 4. Rather, endow a soul ill at ease with itself and trembling hour by hour at the recollection of the debts owed in a life of punishment with those most frequent and most powerful supports of your prayers, you who are skilled in the prayers of the islands, which you brought from the wrestling-ground of the eremitic congregation and from the senate of the cell-dwellers of Lerins into the city as well, whose church's holy things you oversee, in no way changed from an abbot into a priest, since under the cover of your new dignity you have not relaxed the rigor of the old discipline. By these prayers, then, as I said above, most efficacious as they are, obtain that the Lord may be our portion, and that we, enrolled in the squadrons of our fellow-tribesmen the Levites, may not remain earthly men, for whom no earth remains, and that we may begin, as to depart from the gains of the age, so also from its faults. 5. The third cause, indeed the greatest, why I have refrained from writing to you, is this: that I have an immense awe of that allegorical and figured manner of composition in you, eminent in every direction through its polished words, which your letter that I received displays; though long ago I, a hoarse applauder, heard your discourses, now extempore, now, when the occasion demanded, prepared by lamplight, and especially then, when at the weekly festivals of the dedicated church of Lyons, at the request of your most holy colleagues, you were entreated to deliver an address. There, as you held forth in something midway between the spiritual rules and the forensic, being most learned in both disciplines alike, we crowded around you with our minds uplifted and our ears bent low, on the one hand doing too little to satisfy our longing, because you had satisfied our judgment. 6. For these causes I have moderated my pen and shall moderate it, having spoken briefly that I may obey, about to keep silent for a long while that I may learn. For the rest, the parts that belong to you, my lord bishop, are those of saving and singular doctrine: it is enough to apply yourself to works that will endure. For whoever listens to you teaching and disputing learns not so much to say more as to do things worthy of praise. But now, for what remains, grant pardon to a page that rustically defers to you, in which, by my own admission, if it be compared with your letter, there is a most infantile style. 7. But to what end do I, dull as I am, allege these things? For to apologize too much for ineptitudes is itself the most inept of things, in which you, the unalloyed judge, if you should dissect the matter to the full, will laugh at very many, will find fault with more. But this too I embrace: if, by reason of the charity in which you abound, you are not in every respect most sparing in your judging, that is, if your verdict should annul something concerning these jottings. For then I shall rejoice the more surely that you have approved the rest, if I learn that you have erased some of it. Deign to be mindful of us, my lord bishop.

EPISTULA III Sidonius domino papae Fausto salutem. 1. Servat consuetudinem suam tam facundia vestra quam pietas, atque ob hoc granditer, quod diserte scribitis, eloquium suspicimus, quod libenter, affectum. ceterum ad praesens petita venia prius impetrataque cautissimum reor ac saluberrimum per has maxume civitates, quae multum situ segreges agunt, dum sunt gentium motibus itinera suspecta, stilo frequentiori renuntiare dilataque tantisper mutui sedulitate sermonis curam potius assumere conticescendi. quod inter obstrictas affectu mediante personas asperrimum quamquam atque acerbissimum est, non tamen causis efficitur qualibuscumque, sed plurimis certis et necessariis quaeque diversis proficiscuntur ex originibus. 2. quarum ista calculo primore numerabitur, quod custodias aggerum publicorum nequaquam tabellarius transit inrequisitus, qui etsi periculi nihil, utpote crimine vacans, plurimum sane perpeti solet difficultatis, dum secretum omne gerulorum pervigil explorator indagat. quorum si forte responsio quantulumcumque ad interrogata trepidaverit, quae non inveniuntur scripta mandata creduntur; ac per hoc sustinet iniuriam plerumque qui mittitur, qui mittit invidiam, plusque in hoc tempore, quo aemulantum invicem sese pridem foedera statuta regnorum denuo per condiciones discordiosas ancipitia redduntur. 3. praeter hoc ipsa mens nostra domesticis hinc inde dispendiis saucia iacet; nam per officii imaginem vel, quod est verius, necessitatem solo patrio exactus, hoc relegatus variis quaquaversum fragoribus quia patior hic incommoda peregrini, illic damna proscripti. quocirca solvere modo litteras paulo politiores aut intempestive petor aut inpudenter aggredior, quas vel ioco lepidas vel stilo cultas alternare felicium est. porro autem quidam barbarismus est morum sermo iucundus et animus afflictus. 4. quin potius animam male sibi consciam et per horas ad recordata poenalis vitae debita contremescentem frequentissimis tuis illis et valentissimis orationum munerare suffragiis, precum peritus insulanarum, quas de palaestra congregationis heremitidis et de senatu Lirinensium cellulanorum in urbem quoque, cuius ecclesiae sacra superinspicis, transtulisti, nil ab abbate mutatus per sacerdotem, quippe cum novae dignitatis obtentu rigorem veteris disciplinae non relaxaveris. his igitur, ut supra dixi, precatibus efficacissimis obtine, ut portio nostra sit dominus atque ut ascripti turmis contribulium levitarum non remaneamus terreni, quibus terra non remanet inchoemusque ut a saeculi lucris, sic quoque a culpis peregrinari. 5. tertia est causa vel maxuma, exinde scribere tibi cur supersederim, quod immane suspicio dictandi istud in vobis tropologicum genus ac figuratum limatisque plurifariam verbis eminentissimum, quod vestra quam sumpsimus epistula ostendit: licet olim praedicationes tuas, nunc repentinas, nunc, ratio cum poposcisset, elucubratas, raucus plosor audierim, tunc praecipue, cum in Lugdunensis ecclesiae dedicatae festis hebdomadalibus collegarum sacrosanctorum rogatu exorareris, ut perorares. ubi te inter spiritales regulas vel forenses medioximum quiddam contionantem, quippe utrarumque doctissimum disciplinarum, pariter erectis sensibus auribusque curvatis ambiebamus, hinc parum factitantem desiderio nostro, quia iudicio satisfeceras. 6. hisce de causis temperavi stilo temperaboque, breviter locutus, ut paream, longum taciturus, ut discam. sunt de cetero tuae partes, domine papa, doctrinae salutaris singularisque: victuris operibus incumbere incumbere satis. neque enim, quisquis auscultat docentem te disputantemque, plus loqui discit quam facere laudanda. nunc vero, quod restat, donate venia paginam rusticanter vobis obsecundantem, cui me quoque auctore, si vestris litteris comparetur, stilus infantissimus inest. 7. sed ista quorsum stolidus allego? nam nimis deprecari ineptias ipsas est ineptissimum, in quibus tu merus arbiter, si rem ex asse discingas, ridebis plurima, plura culpabis. sed et illud amplector, si pro caritate qua polles non fueris usquequaque censendi continentissimus, id est, si sententia tua quippiam super his apicibus antiquet. tunc enim certius te probasse reliqua gaudebo, si liturasse aliqua cognovero. memor nostri esse dignare, domine papa.