Resultados25 letters/passages
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. …
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 …
symmachus · c. 375 · score 0.02
[This entry preserves only a heading reference to the year 389 AD. The main text of the letter has been lost in transmission.]
pelagius_ii · c. 585 · score 0.02
May God therefore command him to come swiftly to our rescue, before the army of this most wicked nation — God forbid — is able to seize the places still held by the state. For "those who act wickedly shall be cut off, and the enemies" [Psalm 36:9] of the Lord shall perish. Send the priest back to us quickly, God willin …
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 …
cassiodorus · c. 522 · score 0.01
It is our policy, conscript fathers, to grant rewards to upright character and to kindle men of good promise toward still better conduct by the fruit of our generosity. The examples set by rewards nourish virtue, and no one fails to strive for the highest standards of character when what conscience approves does not go …
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 …
pelagius_ii · c. 585 · score 0.01
Pelagius, bishop of the city of Rome, to his most beloved brother Aunarius. I write to commend to you the orthodox faith of the Frankish kings, and to urge you to use your influence with them on a matter of the gravest practical importance. The Lombards who occupy much of Italy are not merely a military threat to the r …
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 …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his lord Bishop Basilius, greetings. 1. By God's gift and the new example of our times, we have the old rights of friendship, and it is long since we have loved one another equally. Moreover, as regards our shared conscience, you are my patron -- though I speak presumptuously and arrogantly in saying even t …
cassiodorus · c. 522 · score 0.01
We also order this inquiry: the accounts between defensores, town councillors, and landowners must be traced, and whatever a landowner can prove he paid above the established tax rate from the recently concluded eighth indiction -- if it was neither deposited in our treasury nor shown by proper accounting to have been …
ennodius_pavia · c. 515 · score 0.01
Ennodius to Barbara. Although the world around us remains unsettled, the bonds between friends provide a stability that events cannot shake. I write to you as one who finds in correspondence a fixed point amid the general confusion. Take heart. The difficulties are real, but they are not permanent. Farewell.
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. 593 · score 0.01
Gregory to Hospito, Duke of the Barbaricini. Since no one else of your people is a Christian, I know you are better than all your kinsmen — for you alone among them have been found to be a Christian. While all the Barbaricini live like mindless animals, not knowing the true God but worshipping sticks and stones, the ve …
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 …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
This is the character that favorable report has brought us. Send word quickly if the reports match reality, so that those on perpetual guard duty — whom neither snowy days nor moonless, stormy nights persuade to sound the retreat from the walls — may catch their breath. For even when the barbarian withdraws to winter q …
libanius · c. 374 · score 0.01
To Anatolius. (361 AD) What outrages have been committed — not on the Danube near the Scythians, nor at the ends of Libya, but in Phoenicia, the most civilized region of all, where laws exist, governors are in charge, and an emperor lives under arms to keep all violence at bay. A certain Lucianus, a man holding some mi …
cassiodorus · c. 522 · score 0.01
The remedy we have devised for you, conscript fathers, with a devoted heart, we will not allow to be turned against you by bitter suspicion -- because it amounts to an injury to help in secret while appearing to intend something else. Know, therefore, that our arms have been deployed for your safety, so that whoever da …
libanius · c. 374 · score 0.01
To Agroicius and Eusebius. (361 AD) If this is how things stand, then necessity is stronger even than the gods, as the saying of the wise goes. For my part, considering both your hardships there and how affairs here are going worse for you — those who would have helped being absent — I was disheartened and thought you …
pelagius_ii · c. 585 · score 0.01
Pelagius, bishop, to his beloved son Gregory, deacon [Gregory was serving as the papal ambassador (apocrisiarius) at the imperial court in Constantinople]. We have taken care to inform you of everything necessary through Honoratus the notary, whom we have sent to you along with our brother and fellow bishop Sebastianus …