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. …
theodoret_cyrrhus · c. 440 · score 0.02
To Ibas, Bishop of Edessa [one of the major cities of Roman Mesopotamia, modern Urfa in southeastern Turkey], I believe it is part of God's providential care for our common salvation that he allows certain calamities to fall upon some people. For the chastened, such misfortunes become a healing remedy. For those alread …
chrysostom · c. 380 · score 0.02
For that which has never taken place has now come to pass, the barbarians leaving their own country have overrun an infinite space of our territory, and that many times over, and having set fire to the land, and captured the towns they are not minded to return home again, but after the manner of men who are keeping hol …
chrysostom · c. 405 · score 0.02
Moreover she besought me to take refuge in her house, which had a fortress and was impregnable, that I might escape the hands of the bishop and monks. This however I could not be induced to do, but remained in the villa, knowing nothing of the plans which were devised after these things. For even then they were not con …
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 0.01
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 …
basil_caesarea · c. 371 · score 0.01
I will not describe them one by one, lest the weakness of my account make the evidence of our catastrophe less convincing. Here is the sum of it: congregations have been driven from their houses of worship and are gathering in the open wilderness. It is a terrible sight -- women, children, the elderly, and the infirm e …
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 …
innocent_i · c. 406 · score 0.01
Rescript of the Emperor Honorius sent to the Emperor Arcadius. 1. Although regarding the statue of a woman, carried about through the provinces as a new precedent, and through the talk of detractors spread throughout the whole world, I have already urged in other letters that through repentance for such a deed and aban …
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 the Lord Bishop Graecus [Bishop of Marseille]. Here once again our Amantius — that gossipmonger of ours — returns to his Marseille, doubtless planning to bring home some profit from the city's markets, if only a favorable cargo-ship should arrive. Through him I would chatter at length in a lighter vein, if my heart …
epistulae_wisigothicae · c. 633 · score 0.01
An epistola from the Fourth Council of Toledo [633] addressed to the Visigothic clergy, communicating the council's... [This letter from the Epistulae Wisigothicae (Letter 24) represents official correspondence of the Visigothic clergy in Spain. The full Latin text requires further translation.]
basil_caesarea · c. 371 · score 0.01
No respect is shown to gray hair, to a lifetime of practical godliness, to a life lived according to the Gospel from youth to old age. No criminal is condemned without evidence, but bishops are being convicted on slander alone. Some have been banished without even the pretense of a trial. Others have been carried off t …
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 …
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 …
gregory_great · c. 591 · score 0.01
Gregory to John, bishop of Velitrae. Given the present dangers [the Lombard invasions that were making many Italian towns unsafe], the episcopal seat of your church is to be transferred to a more secure location. This decision has been made for the safety of the clergy and people and for the continuation of proper epis …
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 …
chrysostom · c. 405 · score 0.01
The tribune, having heard this, took the soldiers which he had and went out. For they were afraid lest the enemy should make an assault also upon the city, and all were in terror, and in an agony of alarm the very soil of their country being in jeopardy, so that even the old men undertook the defense of the walls. Whil …
basil_caesarea · c. 361 · score 0.01
I remember well, from what our fathers told us and from documents we still have, that the great bishop Dionysius [Bishop of Rome, c. 259–268], distinguished in your see for both sound faith and every other virtue, wrote letters to my church in Caesarea [capital of Cappadocia, in modern central Turkey], encouraged our f …
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 …
synesius_cyrene · c. 405 · score 0.01
To my Brother. I have acquired three hundred lances and the same number of scimitars. As for double-edged swords, I never had more than ten — they do not manufacture those long iron weapons in our country. But I think the scimitars strike the enemy's bodies with a more devastating blow anyway. [The letter continues wit …