書信集 第 1 章

I. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, BISHOP FAUSTUS.

Long ago, my venerable lord and most blessed priest, I came to know you through the proclamation of your most celebrated fame; long ago, by the inpouring of devoted love and longing, I gaze upon you with those eyes of the heart with which you deign to write, yet none the less I hasten also to behold you with bodily eyes—if by any means, through your intercession, I might break the bonds of my sins, and, having received the wings of that dove, fly away from the snares of the hunters and, set at rest with you, repose in the law of the Lord; so that I might quench the thirst which I conceived by reading your little works, drawing more abundantly, in your very presence, from the source whence they flowed; so that the little fire of charity, which you kindled into a fervent blaze in the lukewarm and slumbering embers of my soul, might be strengthened into a living flame by the fodder of the Scriptures brought forth from its dense thicket—a flame which, lit by the speech of your holy mouth, after its wonted manner, might exert in the breast of a sinner the force of its mighty nature, warming what is cold, illumining what is dark, and consuming the thorns of my crimes.

My soul has cleaved to you, O excellent teacher, in following after you. But let your prayers help me, that I may be able—the deeds of earth despised—to pant after the things of heaven; for the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, so that it cannot incline its ear to the divine oracles; that, forgetting my father's house and obeying the command of him who calls, I may depart from my own land and kindred, and may rather long for that land which is shown to me. For our littleness is not yet strong enough to expel the fear of its liable condition and to lay open hearts cleansed for perfect charity, that, leaving present things, we may seek eternal things, and, having cast out the bondwoman (the heir), may as free men obtain the paternal inheritance.

Wherefore I hope, my lord, that you will pray unceasingly for me, and that, as often as you deign to drench the dryness of my soil with the rain of your eloquence, you will supply me—not, as you have just now done while still unaware of my weakness, with delicate and sweet food, but with sterner fare suited to my sickness, since delicacies do not profit a fool; and that thereafter you will lend a censorious assent to my betrayers, who, after the manner of human disposition, hindered by excessive affection and turning aside from the truth of judgment, fall into falsehood out of love. Indeed, let your holiness not fear that the right hand of one who soothes is more welcome to my wounds than that of one who cuts, since I now feel, by the Lord's gift, that they can neither be healed by me and yet have grievously festered.

And therefore I choose that the righteous man should correct me with the rebuke of mercy, rather than that the sinner's oil should anoint my head. With suppliant prayer, then, I beseech you, that out of that treasury of your inner chambers, from which you are wont to bring forth things new and old, you would send—being a most skilled physician, who daily, with the aid of God's grace, heal the countless and varied sicknesses of the ailing—to my sickness also the medicines which you know to be fitting. II. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, BISHOP FAUSTUS. So far have impious negligence and negligent impiety possessed me hitherto, that I know not, my lord, what chiefly to accuse in myself, nor do I find what first to excuse in myself.

For if I should attempt to put forward any argument to excuse my excuses in my sins, I would add sin to sin without recollection of the judgment, so that I would weigh myself down with a double and greater offense; so that I, who am guilty of tardiness, would begin to be guilty of falsehood as well, and would extend my crime even to wronging man—now awaiting only a paternal sentence for the fault of sloth, but subjecting myself to the divine sentence for the vengeance of falsehood; especially since a true confession earns indulgence, and a false excuse earns offense. I prefer therefore to ask pardon by a confession as simple as it is suppliant, rather than to double my sins. You have me then, best of fathers, excellent shepherd, as the willing confessor of my own fault.

You have in the disciple's error something to correct, and in the little sheep's sickness something to heal. And it is in your power and judgment whether you wish to cut away the rottenness of my ulcer with the rigor of iron, or to cure it with the gentleness of medicines. Yet I, whichever cure you may choose, will embrace it undismayed, nor will I shun the stroke of a father's right hand, provided I obtain a portion of the promised inheritance; nor will I consider what punishment may be mine in the scourge, but whom I may have *** in the testament. For it is better for me to weep over a father than to be cast off, despised, by a father; since the affection of parents constrains in order to correct, not persists in order to punish, nor does the arrogance of the proud man bring them so much grief as the humility of the one who confesses brings them joy.

Thus that most indulgent father of the Gospel received with a glad embrace the son who had squandered the substance entrusted to him, more ready to rejoice over his return than to charge him with his fall. In short, his crimes are not cast in his teeth, neither his riotous living nor his destitution; the mere return of the convert makes up for all losses, since beyond all doubt the father's joy at his return was greater than his loss of goods. So he whom his departure had made guilty, his coming back made innocent, and mercy suffices for the heir. Nay more, the pardon of the father's clemency alone does not suffice—that he cherishes him in his arms, that he soothes him with grace—unless he also multiplies lavish gifts. He gives a ring, lest the son should again depart from the father, drawn away by faithlessness.

He gives shoes for his feet, that he may more easily despise the rough and hard things of the steep road. He gives also that very first robe which he had lost, that, having received him back from death, he might bestow upon him his former immortality. The calf too is given to the younger son on his return, which had been given as a lamb to the elder when he was setting out from Egypt, since the Father himself leads forth out of Egypt. Imitating the faith of so great a parent, hand over to sinners your aid, grant pardon to those who strive, bestow intercession; and to the son who confesses not only grant pardon yourself, but yourself plead for pardon, that the one whom in a foreign land you call free, you may behold set free in his own.

And let him who through himself lost the Lord's bounty, through you be counted worthy to attain liberty, nor let him be separated from your comfort, who is set apart for the reward. III. RURICIUS TO HIS MOST DEVOTED AND EVER MAGNIFICENT SON HESPERIUS. Affection has opened to me an approach for writing to your accord, which inexperience had blocked—affection, and that mistress of all things, love, through which rigid things are bent, stony things softened, swelling things subsided, harsh things soothed, gentle things made to swell, savage things tamed, mild things made savage, calm things kindled, dull things sharpened, foreign things made to rule, monstrous things appeased—which, working its work even in me, unbarred a tongueless mouth, drawing me forth from the safest recess of silence.

and compels me, in a life already old, to undergo new things—namely a public and fearful judgment—so that I, who hitherto followed that ancient maxim by which it is said that it is often better to keep silent than to speak, and would rather conceal my ignorance by the silence of modesty than impudently put it forth in unpolished speech, now—as unmindful of my custom as forgetful of my rusticity, as if suddenly changed from an Arion into an Orpheus—should wish, with a chattering mouth, to present myself to your most eloquent ears, not so much officiously as injuriously, while I both attempt unknown things and presume upon things unaccustomed.

But you will, I suppose, grant pardon to one who comes out of the bond of a necessary necessity; for a breast conscious of mutual feeling recognizes what love claims for itself by natural power in the minds of mortals. Therefore, lest by lingering longer over excuse we so prolong the page that our too-unpolished speech should offer you not only no ***, but even an unordered abundance of weariness, we now burst forth into the voice of devotion and pour out the words of our longings, commending to you our pledge, your deposit, by the reception of whom you have taken us. For to you I have entrusted the hope of my posterity, to you the comfort and solace of the present life and, if the Godhead grants it, of the life to come; to you alone I have committed all my prayers.

I have chosen you as the drawer-out and shaper of noble little stones, you as the searcher of gold, you as the discoverer of hidden water—you who know how to restore to their proper nobility the gems hidden in stones, which assuredly, amid such confusion of things, would lose their nobility if they had no one to point them out. Gold too, mixed with worthless sands, unless it is washed in waters and refined in fires by the craftsman's skill, can keep neither its splendor nor its worth. The enclosed veins of flowing waters and the channel of a stream covered over with earth, unless the diligent industry of one who seeks them out clears away the rubble, the wave of the spring will not flow.

So too the still-tender edge of the senses, beset by the cloud of ignorance as by the thickness of a rough rust, unless it is cleansed by the constant file of a teacher, cannot of itself grow bright. It is yours, then, now—yours in all these things—to answer both your reputation and likewise our judgment, lest either you should seem to have presumed unlawfully, or we to have chosen inconsiderately. IV. RURICIUS TO HIS MOST DEVOTED AND EVER MAGNIFICENT SON HESPERIUS. I have received the writings of your accord, sprinkled as much with grace as with eloquence, as much with love as with charm, as much with salt as with honey, in which there was lacking nothing of sweetness nor of savor. Though they excel with every art of speech and reasoning, yet they seem to differ from themselves in judgment alone.

For while you hasten to grant to my poor little pages—not suited to praise, but fitted by the ineptitude of rusticity for blame—more than they merit, and follow either the flow of declamation or the affection of one who is diligent, you have turned aside from the standard of right judgment. To which thing I judge that your perfection has descended, not by the fault of ignorance, but by deliberate counsel, for a threefold cause: that in a slight subject you might display both the keenness of your genius and the fluency of your speech and the abundance of your discourse.

Just as in a barren and idle sod the husbandman's strenuousness appears the more, when either he tames the rebellion of the clinging clods by the oft-repeated pressure of the plowshare, or he fertilizes excessive dryness by the spreading of dung, so that industry may produce that abundance of fruits which the nature of the soil denies—so too you have enriched the poverty of my letter with the richness of your eloquence, so that it may be, if you suppress it, praiseworthy when you speak, but if indeed you bring it forth, may strike shame both into me for false praise and into you for error of judgment. And therefore, since you have willed my unskillfulness to be the work of your modesty, beware lest, when we do not correspond to your heralding, your choice be endangered.

And so, if you trust me at all, if you take any thought for us both, hide away this volume unworthy of memory, most worthy of oblivion—if you wish both me, at your discretion, to obtain the fame of an orator, and you to obtain the character of an approved judge. V. RURICIUS TO HIS MOST DEVOTED AND EVER MAGNIFICENT SON HESPERIUS. You had promised, dearest son, that you would send me some little flowers from the little branch which you had undertaken to transfer and graft from bitterness into a domestic flavor, by whose fragrance I might learn what hope I ought to entertain of my hope—whether the very flowers, or again the buds themselves, promised by the quality of their fruit, and whether that same fruit could, by your refining, grow mild and satisfy the hearts of hearers with the sweet food of eloquence.

But because—I know not for what cause—you have put off doing this, I have found an opportune time for admonishing you, in which, in the harmony of the world, all living creatures alike—dumb beasts and tongueless ones, those that walk, that fly, and that creep—each in their own ways, with their own hissings, each with their own voices, even with discordant sound or differing mouth, yet with equal affection, as it were with one concert, burst forth into the praise of their own Author, and betray that they perceive the power which they cannot utter.

For at this season the whole world's appearance is renewed and restored, and whatever in it was hitherto squalid with neglect, troubled with cold, congealed with ice, deformed with bareness, deadened with dryness, emerges in the likeness of a resurrection, so that human frailty may learn to know the invisible from the visible and things to come from things present, and, despair laid aside, may receive the hope of a better age to come. Now too the earth, its veins closed up by barren rigor, married, as it were by a manly seed conceived in springtime, by hidden passages loosens its veins for birth. And hence it produces all things—what is sweet to delight, what is sweet to eat, what is useful for use, what is necessary for sustenance, what is pleasant to the sight, what is grateful to the smell, what is soft to the touch.

Indeed, this is that very temperate season which, embracing in a kind of bosom the substance of the new-born world—still tender, as it were in its cradle—nursed it as a most gentle foster-mother, lest the summer heat should scorch the substance hardened by no toil, or the winter cold extinguish it, or the blasts of the winds carry it away. Your undertaking therefore has a most fitting time, in which the soul, its sloth at last detested, may sharpen the dullness of its heart and, if it cannot declaim among men, may at least hasten to cry out among the cattle or to chatter among the birds. VI. RURICIUS TO THE HOLY AND MOST DEVOUT LORD FATHER, THE PRESBYTER NEPOTIANUS.

The books which your holiness sent I have received—illustrious in eloquence, perfect in knowledge, sound in doctrine, clear in purity of faith; which, rich in the abundance of sacred testimonies, eminent in authority, shining with light, easily both illumine the minds of the faithful and lay bare the errors of the faithless and refute them. Lured rather than refreshed by a very slight taste of them, I was unable, because of the cares of the world, to reach satiety. For just as the stomach, when it is parched by the heat of fevers, neither receives the sweet foods once offered to it nor seeks those taken away, so too the mind, worn out with worldly anxieties and cares, neither desires spiritual banquets when they are absent, nor partakes of them when set before it, nor perceives them when poured in.

Though these things are thus with me, you nevertheless have both proved the affection of a devoted parent and have fulfilled the ministry of a solicitous master and the office of a diligent physician, in that you sent fitting medicines to one laboring under such weariness. By which, even though, on account of my negligence, I am unable to obtain health, you nevertheless will receive a reward from the just rewarder, who is wont to render kindly thanks even on behalf of the ungrateful. Of these aforesaid books, therefore, one, as you commanded, I have kept; the other I have sent back, which you will know to be that of holy Hilary, prelate of the city of Poitiers. And because you had so directed, I have taken care to indicate it.

But this one that I have retained, since you permit it, I have arranged to copy out, so that what we cannot commit to memory we may at least take care to consign to the page. VII. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST, BISHOP BASSULUS. How much your holy devotion and devout holiness deign to love me, you prove by manifold affection, in that you send me things to be read and correct things neglected, by loving provoke love, and what you proclaim in words you teach by examples.

But since your seed does not thrive in barren and thorny ground, inasmuch as it is choked by the briars growing over it—lest the Lord of the vineyard should bid me, like that unfruitful fig tree which he so long awaits in vain, to be cut down—do you defer the harsher sentence by your prayers, until, by the richness of your teaching as by dung, the unfruitful bitterness may grow sweet.

But since with me my offenses are more than my words, and I cannot expiate my deeds by speeches, I at least pay the homage of a letter, and signify that I have sent back the book which you had lent; and another of yours likewise—if it is no longer needed—I hope you will bid to be returned by the bearer of these; and at the same time, if, God being favorable, you are to come to the festival of the saints at Gourdon, that you would let me know by those returning. VIII. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, BISHOP SIDONIUS. I recall having often heard you proclaim that we can in no way be cleansed from our iniquities unless we have confessed our crimes with a conscience that pricks us.

For who, I will not say can obtain, but can even seek indulgence, unless he joins confession to lamentation, since error requires indulgence, and indulgence does not require error? Knowing this to be most true, I have not delayed to disclose to your devotion my misdeed recently committed, lest that which, while I now reveal it, looks toward pardon, should afterward, while I keep silent, pertain to guilt. But now let us bring the very deceit into the open. I declare myself guilty before you of theft, and I pronounce that I have unlawfully presumed upon your deposit while you were unaware. Yet, that I should commit this, you yourselves gave the occasion of perpetrating the deed, either tempting me as one covetous, or wishing to instruct me as one untaught.

For the book which you had bidden me receive from my brother Leontius, I confess that I have copied out. If you approve this, acknowledge it; if you charge it against me, forgive it, since a complaint is joined to the confession. For first the will impelled me to read it, then it itself extorted that it should be copied. For when I had as yet sipped but a little of its banquet, it so enticed me with the taste of its alluring savor that, an imitator in a manner of our first parent, suddenly despising my Lord, I strove to reach satiety, and listened rather to the counsel of the persuader than to the command of the ruler. For, to make manifest all the secrets of my breast, I seemed to myself to hear the words of the very book exhorting me: why do you delay, ingrate, why do you hesitate?

You know our common Lord's will toward you, with which by diverse occasions he strives to file you smooth, and which the good shepherd is wont to thrust spiritual foods upon you even against your will. Believe me, he will charge against you more if you defer than if you copy, since he is wont to favor the eager, not to begrudge them. By these and such silent addresses I cast myself, willing and at the same time compelled, of my own accord into its bonds; I hastened eagerly to transcribe it—which now, whether I ought to return it transcribed, as it is, or ready prepared, hangs upon your decision. Yet I will gladly accept whatever penalty you impose, since I believe your decree to be my remedy, and I count your sentence to be a medicine, not a punishment. IX.

RURICIUS TO HIS ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, SIDONIUS. So has your devotion's recent preaching and ancient love enticed me, that I dare often to do injury to your ears with my ineptitudes, while I desire to touch upon your discipline as far as is granted to a barren little wit. Although to attain it is a great and difficult thing, yet to follow it is fair and sublime, since not only the attainment of the highest things, but even the very imitation of them, is to be praised; for scarcely ever does anyone wholly lack a portion of that thing toward which he has striven to climb and to come.

I long therefore, my lord, I say, I long to be refreshed by your foods, to drink from your fountain, to be filled with your banquets, to be fattened with your feasts; which, if anyone, while you distribute them, has not merely tasted them with the tip of his lips, but, as a guest desiring them with all the inward parts of his soul, has swallowed them and afterward hidden them away in the depth of his breast to be ruminated, he will begin to burst forth in continual eructations into the praise of the Lord Almighty—full in heart, fasting in mouth—while, satisfied, he hungers, and, hungering, is satisfied, to be the more filled in the regeneration. Nor can that food be lacking whose nourishment is in the Word.

That I may therefore be counted worthy to be a partaker of these delights, obtain it by your patronage, and come as helpers to me who am striving beyond the measure of my strength; and at the same time, that I may not be found a stranger to the sheepfold entrusted to you, pray, and bring back the straying sheep from the pastures of the world to the Lord's folds, since I trust that, by your intercessions, he can become a lamb who has been counted worthy to be your disciple. X. RURICIUS TO LUPUS, HIS OWN HEART. I have received the letter of your magnanimity, in which you deign to excuse yourself that the scarcity of a carrier causes you to bedew me too rarely with the dew of your eloquence, and at the same time you indicate that you wonder why, though a frequency of them is at my disposal, and an abundance of well-arranged words is not lacking, I should so often decline to write to you.

But this, I do not doubt, you have boasted by way of irony, as is the eloquence of your wit, since you yourself abound in letter-carriers and know that I labor with poverty of speech and the barrenness of a meager wit, as one who in the summer months sweats out, rather than makes flow, the course of a parched vein. You added too that, just as Patroclus to Achilles, or Theseus to Hercules, or Pirithous to Theseus, so you ought to be joined to me.

In these fables and deeds of our ancestors we ought to receive, not the prerogative of persons, but the comparison of love, so that, recalling the names of friends, we may follow their examples, and, transferring their titles to ourselves, may compare their merits; and, plucking from their deeds whatever is magnificent and honorable, may usefully adapt them to our own life; and may serve one another in pure charity, not in dyed flattery; and may strive that what the falsehood of those poets feigned in the friendships of those men, the truth of our souls may carry out in us, so that, while we seem to imitate ancient things, we may leave behind things to be imitated, and, praising the deeds of our elders, may be praised by posterity.

This, then, my lord, is the flame of my heart, which—trusting your persuasion more than my own conscience—I have dictated briefly and hurriedly while the messenger was in haste; and your skill and integrity, if it consults the modesty of a friend, will either conceal or take care to amend it. XI. RURICIUS TO HIS EXALTED AND EVER-MAGNIFICENT LORD, HIS BROTHER FREDA.

Since you wished that the trifles of even my wilderness should be joined to the loveliness of your grove, I have sent, as you enjoined, fir saplings that will please not by their appearance but by their height, marvellous not for their fruits but for the foreignness of their origin, not apt for use but delightful in their charm—plants which, when they have taken root, by the density of their shade will furnish in summer the coolness of the ocean of the Cévennes; and this among those most splendid trees of diverse kinds, distinguished alike for beauty and usefulness, rich with their burden, varied with blossom, fragrant with scent. For there your industry has gathered what the nature of the soil did not bring forth.

For—to pass over from sight the redness of roses, the whiteness of lilies, the perpetual greenness of the laurel and other things of this kind, since precious things often grow cheap through abundance and daily plenty breeds disdain—there too have been gathered the exotic sweetnesses of grasses, shoots and shrubs, blooming to the sight and to use. But what there is first to be praised or wondered at, where even the intemperance of the season is tempered? For there the heat of scorching summer is driven off as much by the coolness of shade as of waters, while the harshness of winter is so little felt that, to those set within it, the mildness of the air and the song of birds give the very image of spring.

But why do I, forgetful of my own want of skill, strive with poor speech, my lord, to describe or recount the riches and delights of your estate, to whose praise even greater talents would yield? Grant therefore pardon to my presumption, which you yourselves wrung from me; for it is your own regard that compels me to become wordy in your ears, trusting that a longer letter, if it should displease my lords by its manner of address, would please you by its affection, when you understand that it is copious not for the charm of eloquence but for love of you; and likewise because I knew that your Highness reproves in your friends more the modesty of silence than the talkative boldness of familiarity. XII. RURICIUS TO CELSUS, LORD OF HIS HEART.

I tremble to open my tongueless mouth in your praise, to which I know that even greater talents rightly yield. For what shall I first recall in praise of your affection or your regard, you who have bestowed on me all the delights of the countryside, of character, and—what is greater than all these—of love; or surely, if anything of these was lacking, it must be charged to the times, not laid to our account. For with you I found everything that the heart holds dear, that the world holds famous, and you have cheated me of no pleasure whatever. Indeed, you have made the very wilderness of my little lodging desirable to me by your nearness. And for this reason I rejoice the more to be your neighbour, since he is not wholly bad who is joined to the good.

But lest a too-long discourse, by its very ineptitude, breed in us distaste, I bid a most ample farewell; and I make known that I have sent, as you bade, a glassmaker, whose work should imitate love by its lustre, not by its fragility—so that the affection which was left to us by our parents, handed down by our master, and confirmed by the sharing of life, may be polished by prosperity, and by adversity be broken by no storm of whirlwinds at all.

For just as the precious purity of gold and silver, if it has been corrupted by the admixture of bronze or lead or any other baser material, unless it be purged by the testing of fire, can have neither its natural splendour nor its sound—for it renders neither brightness to the sight nor ringing to the hearing, but resounds the more hoarsely if struck, and harshly... This thought, then, best of brothers, not my own but the Lord's, let us regard and follow alike, and so govern our life in mid-course with the Lord himself as our pilot that, although fair weather smile upon us, a more favourable breeze invite, and a calm sea allure, yet, knowing that that flat plain of the sea below can suddenly rise up like mountains, we may by no means suffer our ship to be driven into the deep, where either a tempest may break it apart or a wave engulf it.

XIII. RURICIUS TO CELSUS, LORD OF HIS HEART. I have received the letter of your brotherhood, which brought me no small disquiet. For I fear lest you may have understood my poor little letters otherwise than they were sent by me, and that on this account you seem to mark me, as it were, for rash presumption, while you ask me to pray for you and to admonish you often. Should I, best of brothers, dare to chastise you—I who cannot chastise myself? Should I chastise you, you who look upon me, still tossing in the whirlwinds of the world as in a sea's surges in an unsteady skiff, as though from a loftier watchtower or a more eminent hill? Should I chastise you, you who, with the Lord as your pilot, ... to the harbour of pardon through the indulgence of penance?

I by no means, beloved brother, wrote thus as though to bite you with a malicious tooth while flattering myself, nor to wound you, but to bind you to me by the familiarity of a letter. For if you consider well, those words are of wishes, not of deeds, and of one wishing rather than admonishing, since I set forth not what we should do, but how I wished that we might live. But if you were to examine the deeds of my past and present life, you would be ashamed to bear witness, as an intimate and most secret brother, to things which I was not ashamed to promise with God as witness; for which crimes of mine I rather hope that you would entreat the Lord, so that those whom in this world he willed to be partners in friendship and kinship, he may command to be sharers of good things in the world to come. XIIII.

RURICIUS TO CELSUS, LORD OF HIS HEART. I have sent the horse, such as you had ordered: gentle in its tameness, strong in limb, firm in vigour, excelling in form, well put together in build, even-tempered in spirit, neither over-hasty in speed nor sluggish in slowness; whose rein and goad is the will of its rider; to whom, for carrying a burden, both the willing and the power are alike at hand, so that it neither yields under what is placed upon it nor casts off its load. These things, then, having been made known as was fitting, with a greeting first set forth and a pledge dispensed, we beg the promised: that for the festival of the saints you may deign, God favouring, to come to us together with your sister—to bestow honour on the patrons, affection on the brethren, and grace upon the people. XV.

RURICIUS TO HIS OWN AND SPECIAL LORD IN CHRIST THE LORD, HIS PATRON BISHOP AEONIUS. On learning of the passing of my lord, your predecessor Leontius—of holy and venerable memory with me—I was confounded in soul and mind, and for long and grievously saddened, both because, my sins hindering, I had not been counted worthy to meet so great a prelate, and because I was deprived of such a father. For though I did not enjoy the sight of his outer man, yet I delighted in the grace of his inner man and clung to him unceasingly with the keen edge of my mind; through whom and in whom he was in a manner present to me—beheld with the gaze, heard in his speech, touched by contact, and held in embrace—since dear ones nowhere behold themselves better than in the heart, in the very seat of love itself.

Hence I desired all the more to see with bodily eyes him whom I so beheld with spiritual eyes. But to my grief his own merits gave the consolation which those things had earlier afforded as solace; for I am confident that he whom paternal piety loved, he also guards by diligent intercession. But these things I had reported to your Holiness, as it were conversing with you and seeking from you relief for that very sorrow, dictating love so directing me. But now, as I had set out to say, having learned of the summoning of my lord and of the ordination of your apostolate, I was thinking of sending to your office.

But you have forestalled the service of my humility with your gifts, which have conferred on me greater confidence in writing, since I presume that whom you have made worthy by your generosity, you do not hold estranged from your affections. And therefore, as you give me to understand, since you deign to esteem me so highly, I wish abundant well-being to your Blessedness by letter, and at the same time with special prayer I beg that you would deign to deal with me with such affection that I may know lord Leontius to have been sent ahead and exchanged, rather than lost. XVI. RURICIUS TO THE VENERABLE LORD, ADMIRABLE AND TO BE RANKED WITH ALL THE SAINTS, HIS BROTHER, THE SEER SIDONIUS.

Long ago, dearest brother, I came to know you when most widespread fame proclaimed you, and in the seat of love I beheld you with those eyes of the mind by which you yourself better despise earthly things and consider the heavenly and divine; from which I have inscribed the name of him by whose gift I saw that you had been endowed. And therefore, while I diligently admire you in the mirror of my heart and vehemently the beauty of your inner man, you have stirred the inmost depths of my soul to longing—depths which have been moved to so great an affection for you by purest love, that I long to discern even with bodily eyes him whom I contemplate with spiritual eyes.

Wherefore, bidding you a very great farewell in Christ the Lord, I beg more particularly that, together with my lord bishop—whom by his condescension I trust will come to us—you would do violence to yourselves to visit our humility, so that, set together in one place, we may reap fruit from each other's presence, while the intent of the questioner becomes the instruction of the respondent, and there comes about, as it were, a mutual profit of the learner and the teacher. Peace, peace, peace. XVII. RURICIUS THE BISHOP TO POMERIUS THE ABBOT, LORD OF HIS SOUL AND TO BE CHERISHED WITH ALL THE INMOST DEPTHS OF LOVE IN CHRIST THE LORD. It is written, as you yourselves better know: 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.' Now then forgive me, if you charge me with anything, for you should know that the Lord has taken vengeance.

You should know that we were led by such trackless ways into solitudes so hidden that the spirit shudders to recount them, the mind shrinks back, and speech fails.

For we came upon a path blocked with branches, narrow in space, bristling with thorns, closed off with stumps, overgrown with briars, rough with mould, hampered with heaps of rocks, paved over with a tangle of roots, mired with bottomless filth—so that amid such varied and manifold evils the form of the danger was not single, while the strength of the roots held back the horses' feet and the rottenness of the soil gave them no footing; a path stretched up so high upon the mountains and sunk so deep into the valleys that we believed ourselves to be making our way across a billowing sea, with the blasts of raging winds stirring it, while day was snatched from our eyes by mists and clouds—for even though the sun's ray shone upon the world, its splendour and warmth could not reach us through the denseness of the forest; while the height of the wretched ferns so pressed upon us along the way, and such a flood of dew so sprinkled us, that, shrunk with cold or constrained, we sought the warmth of a great fire even on the dog-days of summer.

But when we had reached the place to which our purpose was tending, hemmed in by waters and drenched, we began to perish of thirst; for although, as we said, there was a chill in the air, yet there was warmth in the spring, a stench in the river, a scorching in the field, a sweltering heat in the camp. And, to sum up everything in brief speech, know that we made our journey by such a road as no one would desire to take even to paradise—not to say, to exile.

Wherefore, since our Lord ordained that I should fall into all these things and that you should escape them—distinguishing my sins from your merits even by a visible journey, so that you who go spiritually by the strait and laborious way should not tread the straits of this road, while we who go by the broad and spacious way, ever looking back, should incur its injuries—pray to the Lord, to whom we confess all things are possible, that, though by a different road, he may yet cause us to come together to one city, into which his mercy can bring us, and your merits you. XVIII. RURICIUS THE BISHOP TO HIS MOST SWEET AND LIKE-MINDED SON OMMATIUS. Know that, if I did not write to your sweetness by Venerius, it was due not to negligence nor to any reproach, but to occupation.

Hence I have sent this by Amelius, by which I bid you a very great farewell and admonish you ever to remember your resolve. Let neither a more enticing sight call your soul, now consecrated to God, away from the journey begun, nor a sweeter sound corrupt it, nor a sweeter taste taint it, nor a softer touch solicit it, nor a more pleasant smell allure it—lest through the windows of the body death be let in to the soul; nor, holding the plough, look back contrary to the Lord's word, lest the furrow lose the straightness of its line; but rather cling with all your senses to him to whom, by his own inspiration, you have vowed yourself, and adhere fixed in heart, so that when even one alluring form of the aforesaid vices assails you, it may not be able to approach a breast fortified by firm faith and divine meditation.

And however much you may seem to be set amid crowds, entering into the chamber of your heart with your door shut, cease not to pray to the Lord, so that he who sees in secret may say to you, as he said to holy Moses crying out to him not with voice but with heart: 'Why do you cry to me?' And I hope that in such prayers you may deign to remember me also, and that the longing for sweetest and most wholesome rest may bring you quickly to us, even if our affection does not draw you back. I. RURICIUS TO HIS EXALTED LORDS AND BROTHERS, MOST BOUND TO HIM IN CHRIST THE LORD, NAMATIUS AND CERAUNIA. The ancient sages said that two friends have one soul, which I declare and prove to be exceedingly true.

For after I departed from your brotherhood, I feel myself to be divided and know that a part of me has remained with you, nor do I seem to myself to be whole while you are absent. And since I do not find myself in myself, having returned to you I seek myself among you; and there I perceive that, as much of myself as I have left with you, so much of yourselves I have carried away with me.

And thus, before the longed-for union of our pledges comes about, by the Lord's consent, there has already been made between us a division of souls—a division more to be embraced than avoided by those who love, through which there comes about in their hearts a sincere transfusion of whole charity, by whose bonds I rejoice to have been bound by you, and bound by such chains I exult, and I desire rather to be tied by their fastenings than loosed—by which I am confident that you too are bound fast. Therefore, as you return, I bid a most ample farewell, and giving thanks for all, I leave aside what pertains to your praise. I signify that I have therefore kept silence, because, as is said, in one's own praises boasting is odious.

For your praise has become mine, and therefore, as I said, I have judged it better to be silent about your magnanimity, since whatever I shall have said about you, I seem to myself to have bestowed upon myself. II. RURICIUS TO HIS EXALTED LORDS AND BROTHERS, MOST BOUND TO HIM IN CHRIST THE LORD, NAMATIUS AND CERAUNIA. Among the other thanks which are rightly to be rendered by me to you, I give immense thanks for the presence and visitation of our common patron, lord Postuminus, because you caused our little lodging to be made illustrious by his prayers; for, while he shows us his faith, he bestows on us a blessing.

And although he was a most vigilant inspector, a most importunate exactor, a most rigorous executor, yet we have weighed all these things as gentle by your grace and the consideration of his holiness; for, as it is written, 'charity bears all things, charity never fails,' especially since we believe that what he seemed to exact, he has by God's kindness bestowed upon us. And so, with the divinity favourable, on his return I gave—not because they were necessary, but because he himself wished it—the things by which, desiring it for your undivided brotherhood, I bid a most ample farewell, and in mind anticipate my journey and the sight of you, and signify that all things, as you bade and as was worthy and due, have been inspected, handed over, and confirmed.

Nor do I fear that it should offend your minds even a little that one item seems to have been withdrawn from the deed of dowry, since you will recognize that what is lacking in number has not only been made up for, but even increased, in merit. III. RURICIUS TO HIS EXALTED LORDS AND BROTHERS, MOST BOUND TO HIM IN CHRIST THE LORD, NAMATIUS AND CERAUNIA. How grievously I have been struck by the cruelty of the news of your mourning, you can more easily gather, by your mutual love, than I can convey by letter; for my spirit, worn out by excessive grief, refuses to set forth what it shudders to recall. I grieve, most devoted brothers, and from my whole heart I suffer together with you at so bitter a misfortune of yours.

For although for the present I am separated from you in body, yet I am ever joined to you in mind; and since I do not withdraw from you in soul, I believe that I share in your laments, because, according to the divine sentence, 'when one member suffers, all the members suffer together in the body.' For we are not only made one body in Christ by faith, but are also knit together by the union of our children. Hence too, had so great an inclemency of the weather permitted, I would myself have come to console you in place of letters. But what shall we do, best of brothers—we who can resist the divine command neither by power...

so neither ought we by will; and with all watchfulness we ought to take care lest, while we weep with excessive grief over our sweet pledges, we be found blasphemous or in some way injurious toward the Lord, and lest the author of death himself, having found occasion, more grievously pierce our soul than he struck us by the loss of our dear ones. Therefore in all bitterness or grief we must flee to him, and to him with our whole heart must all our misfortunes be referred—he who heals the wounded, who relieves the sorrowful, who consoles the afflicted; and that sentence of holy Job must by all means be spoken: 'The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it has pleased the Lord, so also it has been done; blessed be the name of the Lord.'

These things, then, lords of my heart, I have presumed to write to you for this reason: that the common grief which I knew I could not mitigate by my words, I might at least somewhat moderate by divine utterances. And truly you can take no small consolation from Christ's will in this—that, inasmuch as an untimely death awaited him, he deigned to take to himself such a one as those of whom he said the kingdom of heaven is, so that you might both have a patron in your son and grieve the less for the one lost, whom you saw taken up by the Lord. IIII. RURICIUS TO HIS EXALTED LORDS AND BROTHERS, MOST BOUND TO HIM IN CHRIST THE LORD, NAMATIUS AND CERAUNIA.

Often, dearest brothers, on account of the most bitter mishap of our common mourning, I have resolved to write to you or to come to you, but always both bodily infirmity has drawn me back from setting out on the journey, and excessive grief of heart from the office of letter-writing. For whenever I have tried to bend my mind to writing, at once my senses shuddered, my mind shrank back, and so weeping always came to me in place of words, so that I would drench the page with a shower of tears before I traced anything with the pen—as that one said, indicating a father's tenderness over the loss of a son: 'Twice he had striven to fashion the disaster in gold, twice the father's hands fell'; or rather, as is said by me, 'because my soul refused to be consoled.' Not without cause.

For I have lost a daughter whom I rejoiced both to have received as mine and that you had borne; I have lost the solace of life, the hope of posterity, the glory of the family, the joy of the heart, the light of the eyes. Nor have I been struck with a single bereavement. For with the daughter I also lost the brothers, by whose affection I was consoled, by whose union I boasted. The bond of our brotherhood has been torn asunder, most dear brothers; the pledge of our mutual love has been taken from you. Woe is me, best of brothers—while I lose your deposit, by whose handing-over you had won me, I have lost you together with it; and therefore in the single degree of one tie I sigh that the solaces of many ties have been taken from me.

Yet the one fatherland which had been acquired for me through her herself I shall not lose, since I shall judge above all this land—which she occupied with her body—to be my fatherland. But whither do I proceed, forgetful of duty, mindful of grace, driven on by grief, and with the wound somewhat closed over by time I rip open afresh, by reviving memory as by a new cutting; and I, who rather desired to console you through the divine promises, take no consolation myself? Yet I will set forth to you the causes of this recurring grief. For somehow my spirit, worn out by sorrow, had already begun to receive consolation by the apostolic exhortation, in which he says:

'I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others who have no hope'—but when our wretched common one arrived, and I beheld him without that gem with which he had formerly shone, through which he was wont to be both more acceptable and more pleasing to me, then, as though stripped of his own ornament, he appeared to me unseemly. He knows, dearest brothers—he who searches out the secrets of hearts—that thus grief was suddenly doubled to me, and thus each day, by reason of so great a natural endowment of the one and the desolation of the other, my feeling and my mourning are doubled, so that I can neither look upon this one nor remember that one without tears, and I often say that prophetic word: 'Who will give water to my head and to my eyes a fountain of tears?'

But he wept for the sins of his people, while I weep for my own, which have pressed both me and you by their weight and number; I weep, as it were, his death and my life, her dead and myself surviving. You presumed something far different of yourself, venerable sister, as though from our merits, when, deceived by excessive love, you promised yourself so much from our prayers—me protesting against it—that you believed both your house would be saved by our intercession and your daughter, so to speak, would be immortal through me. But my merits quickly appeared—merits which both wounded me with an incurable wound and struck you, believing otherwise than was fitting concerning a sinner, with the bereavement of so great a pledge.

But now at least, venerable sister in Christ the Lord, you will recognize both that you believed falsely and that I spoke truly. But for too long, forgetful of the heavenly precepts, we yield assent to human grief. We must return to the divine precepts, lest we so bewail her dead in body that we ourselves die in heart. Withdrawing, therefore, a little from present things, let us again ponder things to come, so that those whom present things weaken, things to come may strengthen. We ought, dearest brothers, to bear that condition of human frailty which both the prophets and the apostles and all the holy and just, or—what is greater—the Lord of all our own deigned to take upon himself.

It befits us not to lament, but rather to give thanks to God and to rejoice, that we had a daughter such as we wished, for as long as he who had given her permitted, and that we did not lose her such as we wished, but, at his very command, sent her ahead to Christ. For to have children is of a general benefit, but to have good ones is of a special reward; as to live is common to all, but to live well and to depart well from this life belongs to few—yet not by the condition of nature, but of fault, nor by divine prescription, but by one's own will. And therefore let not our heart be troubled, nor let us weep for our daughter on account of her loss, but on account of our longing—lest we seem either unbelieving toward the Lord's promises or resistant toward his precepts.

Let them weep for their children who can have no hope of resurrection—a hope which their own faithlessness, not the divine sentence, has taken from them. Let the dead weep for their dead, whom they reckon to have perished forever; let them have no rest from their grief who do not believe there is rest for the dead. But for us, whose hope and portion is Christ—hope in the land of the dying, portion in the region of the living—for whom this death is the end not of nature but of the present life, since we believe it is to be restored unto something better, according to the apostle's sentence: 'when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption'—with the prophet it must be said:

'The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has been done; blessed be the name of the Lord'—because in temptation patience must be held fast, lest it compel us to sin either by mouth or by heart. And so let ready faith wipe away our tears, since we believe that our dear ones do not so much lose life as change it, that they leave a world full of toils and griefs and hasten to the region of blessedness, that they go forth from a laborious pilgrimage and arrive at the fatherland of rest—whence too the prophet says: 'Bring my soul out of prison, that it may confess to your name.' Believe me, dearest brothers, that she, now secure concerning her own rest, is anxious concerning our salvation; who, if she could mingle conversation with us, would say this:

'Do not, devout parents, do not weep for me, nor, ungrateful to so kind a Lord, show yourselves by the laments of excessive love. Granted, your tenderness had this at the time of my summoning; but now your faith ought, with time, to temper your grief, since, even if I am dead to you, I live to God. Or can you possibly love me more than the Lord, who made me as he willed, redeemed me because he willed, and, when he willed, in his tenderness took me up? Or what greater consolation of your grief can you have than that our Lord deigned to deliver up his only Son for us unto death? And when the Son of God vowed to die according to the flesh, ought a human being so bitterly to recoil from the condition of the human lot?'

Wherefore, most devout parents, weep rather for your own sins and think upon the satisfaction for your offences, so that—if you love me in Christ, since you cannot truly love me unless you love me in the Lord—you may be counted worthy to come into the bosom of the patriarch, where the Lord, for the purity of my innocence and for his own tenderness, has placed me, since his mercy is better than life; that there together we may be able to exult with joys not false but true, not temporal but eternal.

With such precepts, my excellent brothers, and with others like them, and with the Lord's promises, it is fitting that we console ourselves, as we do; for just as with the Lord things to come are already accomplished, so the faithful Catholic ought already in a certain manner to hold as present the heavenly promises which he trusts will be fulfilled in their own time — to anticipate them by hope, to possess them by faith, to obtain them by works. For these are the things that furnish us with solace in our griefs, with confidence amid adversities, with moderation in prosperity, lest we be either lifted up by good fortune, or give way before what is adverse, or be consumed by what is sorrowful. These things therefore, dearest brothers, to be sent to you for a kind of shared consolation, I have dictated not without great anguish of soul.

Nor was it the abundance of words that compelled me to draw out my discourse somewhat at length, but the surging of our spirits, that a long and frequent recollection might soothe the longing which remembrance had kindled. And in this too let us prove an equal grace toward our common daughter, and, as her life had bound us together, so may her memory keep us in the same love. V. To the lofty lord and to my brother most devoted in Christ the Lord, Namatius — Ruricius.

We who seek out an occasion for writing as a duty of our close bond ought not to let slip one that is offered, so that the mediating word may give us back a certain portion of presence — a word which is sent forth and not lost, is given and yet retained, seems to depart and yet does not withdraw; it is dispatched by me, received by you, written by me, read by you, and yet is not divided, since though, as it were, divided it is held whole in the heart of each, because after the manner of the divine Word it is handed over and yet does not go out, is conferred upon the needy and yet is not taken from its author — the gain of the receiver without loss to the giver, enriching the poor without diminishing the possessor. VI. To his own lord and special patron in Christ the Lord, the bishop Chronopius — Ruricius the bishop.

In ordaining and in governing the Lord's flock, among watchmen and overseers there ought to be not presumption but reason, and concern for guarding rather than contention for usurping, lest they incur the mark of hirelings while they keep not the discipline of shepherds, and be found, as the Apostle says, to seek not Christ's glory but their own, while they prefer to receive praise from men rather than to await reward from the Lord — seekers after present gain and despisers of an eternal recompense.

Wherefore, as the same Apostle teaches, if we are at one in a peaceful assembling for holy work, if we love without dissimulation, if we minister with care, if we are members of one Head, we ought with one mind to be rulers of the body; for the sheepfolds of the Lord's flock can be many in number, yet not diverse through variety of faith — so that, as the Lord himself deigned to foretell, no manifold schism may arise through us, with us falling apart through envy and dividing the Lord's flock through dissension, but rather, as we gather the Lord's sheep through the unity of a single doctrine, there may come to be among us one flock and one Shepherd, who, as he is King of kings and Lord of lords, Priest of priests and Pontiff of pontiffs, may likewise be understood to be Shepherd of shepherds.

For this reason, out of zeal of charity, not of covetousness, I have sent these things to your holiness through my presbyter on behalf of the diocese of Gemiliacum, concerning which I had written to you long ago, lest, if I had kept silent, it be reckoned to negligence rather than to concord, and I seem to have yielded to unreasonable reasoning rather than to peace — so that, if you acknowledge that the things I say are true, or the things I claim are just, you may suffer neither me to bear injury any longer nor yourselves disquiet. VII. To the lofty and ever-magnificent lord and brother Elaphius — Ruricius the bishop. So, by God's favor, has the fame of your works spread abroad, that all who are set in toils beg with every entreaty of prayers to be commended to your brotherliness, since they do not doubt that their effort will have its effect with you.

Hence also the bearer of this letter, Ulfila by name, whom the presbyter Pharetrius commended to me by his own letters, has asked of you a letter of commendation, which I have freely granted him both for the divine command and for our mutual one. By these I give most hearty greeting to your undivided charity, and I have presumed to commend the aforesaid man out of brotherly affection, not out of pontifical authority; for in a sinner dignity loses its dignity, to whom an unmerited honor is a burden rather than an honor. Although I trust that this is pleasing to you on account of our bond, yet, if you bestow upon me any true or substitute love, I hope you will rather grieve with me than rejoice, since so great a thing does not raise up one who is unworthy and utterly undeserving, but rather casts him down. VIII.

To the holy and apostolic lord, to be cultivated by me beyond all others in Christ the Lord with special devotion and affection, his patron and pope Aeonius — Ruricius the bishop. As often as holy or apostolic men — whom works of mercy commend, and the merits of their works, and the life of their merits, and the fame of every virtue makes known — are compelled by those weighed down under a mass of hardships to be sought after, then, while these afflicted ones seek the solace of a letter for their toil, they confer a benefit upon our own longing; and, since their toil is our sorrow, yet through the bestowal of a service their necessity becomes in a manner our charity, for, while we yield to their petition, we satisfy our own desire; and so it comes about that the need of the petitioner is the advantage of the giver.

And so to our brother and fellow-presbyter, Possessor by name — which is worse rather than in actual means, since what he had he poured out for the ransom of a brother, and was made a possessor of paradise while he ceased to be a possessor of worldly property — to him asking a letter of commendation to your apostolate I have freely granted it. And if your holiness deigns to learn his case more fully, let it think it worthwhile to read over the letter which our brother bishop Eumerius sent through this very man to my humble self, and there it will recognize how it ought both to take counsel for him according to custom and to grieve with him out of mutual charity.

He who, in order to set a brother free from enemies, chose rather to be a captive of his creditors, and, that the other might not be deprived of life by a most cruel death, himself was made an exile from his fatherland. ..................... IX. .... Considering the saying of the holy apostle Paul, where, writing to the Romans, he says: I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that I have often purposed to come to you, but have been hindered until now — we too, urged on by shame, are compelled to say: we have very often wished to direct our writings to your most sincere piety, but we have been hindered until now, hindered indeed by him who is wont always to oppose a good will, envying, namely, our progress and your affection, our affection and your progress.

Our progress and your affection — because your teaching is our instruction, and our letter is a contribution to your longing; and again, your progress and our affection — because our instruction is your reward, and the temporary contribution to your longing is the affection of our discourse.

For thus, in the few days — which your affection truly made for me both few and very short — while our gaze cannot be satisfied by the contemplation of you, but rather, the more it sees, the more it is set afire, when we both longed for you present and still sought you set before our face, you watered our senses with the purest fountain of your kindly heart; so that, however I may henceforth receive no precious gifts of your holy lips, I yet possess your presence within the secret places of my mind, and behold your likeness in the mirror of my heart — a likeness which charity has there painted so perfect that it can be effaced by the forgetfulness of no age, since by constant remembrance it is renewed at every moment.

For there I converse with you more secretly according to the wont of your piety; there too I treat fully of the rule of a better life; there I kiss you with the lips of my mind and embrace you with the hands of my heart. Whence it comes about that true love — which is nourished in my inmost being by the living figuration of your countenance and is kindled by the little fire of charity — promises me in turn the requital of your love, and my spirit stands surety to me for your spirit, while I question my heart, conscious of our mutual love, as to how much I ought to presume of you.

Wherefore, the access of writing to you having at last and finally been opened by your prayers, I offer in these lines my greeting and seek your intercession for a sinner, asking this with a special prayer: that you so beseech the mercy of our God with unceasing petitions that — all my ** being blotted out, and all my faults being relieved through your help by his accustomed clemency and abundant goodness — even if not to the same reward, yet at least to the same harbor of rest he may bid us come; so that, inasmuch as here, on account of the stretches of land that lie between, we often cannot see one another with the eyes of the body, we may at least there rejoice in mutual presence — so that, when a crown of merits shall be rendered to you by the just Judge, pardon for my offenses may not be denied to me by the most merciful Redeemer and most perfect Advocate.

May he himself deign to plead the cause of the sinner before judgment, that he may not punish the fault in judgment; for the Almighty surely knows how neither in the goodness of his clemency to lose the truth of judgment, nor in the severity of judgment to forfeit the goodness of clemency. And therefore by the ineffable working of his mercy and power may he deign to grant you that those whom here he has joined in truth, there he may not separate in dwelling. Recalling your promise, I ask in a special way that your holiness not only not detain brother Pomerius, but even compel him to come to us, and transmit his portion to us undivided through us both.

Nor judge that he departs from you, if he comes to me; for you too will find yourselves here in me, and with him, while you remain in body, you will come, as we trust, in heart. But thence too you will be able to have no small fruit, if our rusticity profits something in the fear of God through his teaching. X. To the lord of his own soul, to be cherished with his inmost being in Christ the Lord, the abbot Pomerius — Ruricius the bishop. The wise men of this world said that two friends have one soul, which I also affirm to be true by ecclesiastical testimony, where it says: and of the believers there was one soul and heart — one indeed in charity, not in number, and in simplicity of faith, not in singularity of person. This therefore I preach and approve.

For from the time I departed from your oneness of mind, I feel myself divided, and I perceive that my portion has remained with you, nor do I believe myself to be whole while you are absent; and, since I do not find myself in myself, I seek myself with you, having returned to you, and there I behold that I have left as much of myself with you as I have carried off of yours with me.

And I render thanks to almighty God for so admirable a deed of his, that he deigned to grant it by a general dispensation, so that among those whom the intervals of places set apart, the mind might pass to and fro free and shut in by no laws of absence, and nothing might be so impenetrable that it should not lie open to the gazings of the mind, but through the heart's beholding they might behold one another there, with the dearness of grace running between, where charity itself abides.

And therefore, offering greeting to your most full piety toward me — as far as I conjecture by my own mind — I beg with every entreaty of prayers: if you repay me an equal affection, if you love us with a like charity, if our love works anything in your inmost being, if our affection has penetrated to the very marrow of your heart, if it has so subdued you with the sweetness of its power for my sake, as it has me for yours, that you can neither resist its command nor wish to — then to a longing brother hasten, you yourself longing, to come as quickly as may be, by a kindly favor, both to discharge a promised debt and to assuage a mutual affection; for, set before one another, we shall bestow upon each other equal grace from our contemplation and conversation, and so much, if (as you are loved) you love, shall be repaid by me to your charity, as you yourself shall have rendered to mine.