Resultados25 letters/passages
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.02
When they came, they spared neither religion, nor rank, nor age; they had no pity even for wailing infants. Children were forced to die before they could be said to have begun living, and little ones, oblivious to their fate, could be seen smiling in the hands of their killers. It was generally believed the invaders we …
salvian_marseille · c. 450 · score 0.02
To the most holy Lord Salonius, bishop of Geneva, from Salvian, greetings. The question you raise about the relationship between divine providence and human freedom in the context of the barbarian catastrophe is one I have been wrestling with in the work I am currently writing, and I want to share my current thinking. …
synesius_cyrene · c. 409 · score 0.02
To Simplicius. When you asked Cerialis to bring me your congratulations, you did him an unintended favor — you kept me ignorant for five days of what a contemptible man he is. Our cities had some hope for anyone Simplicius deemed worth knowing. But he quickly disgraced not you — may your reputation never depend on any …
theodoret_cyrrhus · c. 440 · score 0.02
To Apellion. The sufferings of the people of Carthage would demand — and in their magnitude might exceed — the full power of tragic language, even of an Aeschylus or a Sophocles. Carthage was in the old days taken by the Romans only after tremendous effort. Time and again she contended with Rome for mastery of the worl …
chrysostom · c. 405 · score 0.02
And when day dawned all the city was migrating outside the walls under trees and groves, celebrating the festival, like scattered sheep. 4. All which happened afterwards I leave you to imagine; for as I said before it is not possible to describe each separate incident. The worst of it is that these evils, great and ser …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.02
Like him too he had with him a Cerberus, not three headed but many headed, ready to seize and rend everything within his reach. He tore betrothed daughters from their mothers' arms and sold high-born maidens in marriage to those greediest of men, the merchants of Syria. No plea of poverty induced him to spare either wa …
athanasius_alexandria · c. 339 · score 0.01
Upon this license of iniquity and disorder, their deeds were worse than in time of war, and more cruel than those of robbers. Some of them were plundering whatever fell in their way; others dividing among themselves the sums which some had laid up there ; the wine, of which there was a large quantity, they either drank …
synesius_cyrene · c. 410 · score 0.01
To my Brother. We may concede that there are worse things than women shrieking, beating their breasts, and tearing their hair when they see the enemy or hear he is coming. Still, Plato considers it scandalous that they will not stand up like hens defending their chicks — giving the human race a reputation as the most c …
jerome · c. 396 · score 0.01
How was it that the soothsayer Balaam, in prophesying the mysteries of Christ [Numbers 24:15-19], spoke more plainly of Him than almost any other prophet? I answered as best I could. Then, unrolling the scroll further, she reached the list of all the halting-places by which the people traveled from Egypt to the waters …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
To Syagrius [a young Gallo-Roman aristocrat, great-grandson of a consul, living among the Burgundians]. You are the great-grandson of a consul — and through the male line, though that matters less to my present point. You are descended from a poet [Syagrius's ancestor, the consul, was also a literary man] whose statues …
athanasius_alexandria · c. 339 · score 0.01
The church and the holy Baptistery were set on fire, and straightway groans, shrieks, and lamentations, were heard through the city; while the citizens in their indignation at these enormities, cried shame upon the governor, and protested against the violence used to them. For holy and undefiled virgins were being stri …
cassiodorus · c. 522 · score 0.01
What the invaders suffered is well known -- but I choose to pass over the details, lest the spirit of our allied prince be embarrassed by another's disgrace. How highly the East regarded our court can be understood from this: the Eastern emperor freely granted peace to those who had offended him, though he had refused …
gregory_great · c. 594 · score 0.01
Whatever it was my duty to do in humility, I have not neglected. But if I am disregarded in my reproof, I will have no choice but to bring the matter before the Church. May Almighty God show you, brother, how great a love for you constrains me in saying these things, and how deeply I grieve in this matter -- not agains …
jerome · c. 390 · score 0.01
Count the disasters of our generation: Adrianople, where an emperor and his army were swallowed by the earth [the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD, where Emperor Valens was killed by the Visigoths]. The walls of Rome themselves are no longer a guarantee of safety. What the world outside those walls looks like, I do not n …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his dear Namatius, greetings. 1. The dictator Julius Caesar, who they say administered military affairs with greater generalship than any other, was claimed in turn by the rival pursuits of writing and reading. And though in the person of this one man the military and oratorical sciences competed for primac …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
Families that had been wealthy for generations found themselves refugees overnight. Noble women who had never walked anywhere except in a litter ended up walking across Campania with nothing. Among them were women whose entire sense of identity had been built around their social position, their marriages, their househo …
chrysostom · c. 405 · score 0.01
And women from the oratories who had stripped themselves for baptism just at that time, fled unclothed, from terror at this grievous assault, not being permitted to put on the modest apparel which befits women; indeed many received wounds before they were expelled, and the baptismal pools were filled with blood, and th …
cassiodorus · c. 522 · score 0.01
We return to this subject a third time because nothing we have written matters more for the future of our kingdom. The strength of arms wins battles; the strength of learning wins the future. We have observed that among certain of our Gothic subjects, learning is regarded as a soft pursuit, suitable only for those unab …
symmachus · c. 370 · score 0.01
[This letter survives only as a fragment -- the main text has been lost in transmission.]
columbanus · c. 613 · score 0.01
You are awaited by the whole, you have the power of ordering all things, of declaring war, arousing the generals, bidding arms to be taken up, forming the battle-array, sounding the trumpets on every side, and finally of entering the conflict with your own person in the van; since for long, alas, as is obvious in this …
gregory_great · c. 594 · score 0.01
Since the city of Aufinum has been recovered, with God's help, and since great care must be taken for its church, especially since Hospoton, the master of soldiers in Italy, has sought our help in this matter, we have taken care to send this present letter to your fraternity so that you may go there as visitor. You mus …
cassiodorus · c. 522 · score 0.01
They will be troubled by the usual tax demands. They will tremble at the face of the tax collector -- they who previously did not know what it was to receive orders from the authorities. Wearied by a blissful ignorance of such matters, they will begin to dread the same levies through which they were once feared. And in …
epistulae_wisigothicae · c. 608 · score 0.01
To my brothers in the faith and service of Christ, I write this final letter — final in this collection, though God willing not in my life — as a kind of accounting of where we stand and where we are going. The conversion of the Visigothic kingdom to Catholic Christianity was the great event of our generation, and it w …
jerome · c. 413 · score 0.01
5. Why do I still delay to relate the sequel? When her wedding day was now close at hand and when a marriage chamber was being got ready for the bride and bridegroom; secretly without any witnesses and with only the night to comfort her, she is said to have nerved herself with such considerations as these: What ails yo …
symmachus · c. 375 · score 0.01
[Note: The source text survives only as a single sentence fragment, likely due to a lacuna in the manuscript tradition.] It is proper to inhabit it, impious and cruel to abandon it. Farewell.