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 …
augustine_hippo · c. 404 · score 0.02
Your letter filled our heart with great sorrow, in which you asked that I reply at some length; yet for such evils, more lengthy groaning and weeping are owed than lengthy books. For the whole world is afflicted by such calamities that almost no part of the earth exists where such things as you described are not commit …
synesius_cyrene · c. 409 · score 0.02
To my Brother. How sad that we have only bad news to share when we write. The enemy has occupied Battia, attacked Aprosylis, burned the threshing floors, ravaged the fields, and sold the women into slavery. As for the men — no quarter was given. They used to take the boys alive, but now, I suppose, they do not have eno …
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 …
augustine_hippo · c. 404 · score 0.02
It was in the hidden judgment and mercy of God to provide for the salvation of those kings in that way. Against King Antiochus, who killed the Maccabees with cruel torments, God chose not to provide in the same way but punished the hard king's heart with more severe judgment through their most glorious suffering. What …
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 …
augustine_hippo · c. 423 · score 0.01
Augustine to Bishop Honoratus, greetings. You have asked me the most difficult practical question a bishop can face: when the barbarians approach, should the bishop flee? I have thought about this for a long time — longer than you might expect, because the question is not hypothetical for us in Africa. The barbarians a …
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 …
augustine_hippo · c. 404 · score 0.01
We should not be so contrary to ourselves as to believe when we read and then complain when they are fulfilled. Rather, even those who were unbelieving when they read or heard these things written in the holy Books should now at least believe when they see them being fulfilled — so that from these great pressures, as i …
augustine_hippo · c. 423 · score 0.01
Their advance is relentless. The cities that stand in their path will face siege, destruction, and massacre. The bishops in those cities will face the question you have asked me. My answer, for myself, is this: I will not flee. I cannot. My people cannot flee, and I will not leave them. If the Lord takes me, he takes m …
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 …
gregory_great · c. 594 · score 0.01
Gregory to the Emperor Mauricius. Our most devout and God-appointed sovereign, among his many pressing cares, also watches over the preservation of peace among the clergy with genuine spiritual concern -- rightly and wisely recognizing that no one can govern earthly affairs well unless he knows how to handle the things …
basil_caesarea · c. 372 · score 0.01
To Barses, truly God-beloved bishop, worthy of all honor -- Basil sends greetings in the Lord. Since my dear brother Domninus is traveling to you, I gladly take the opportunity to write. I greet you through him, praying to God that we may be preserved long enough in this life to see you and enjoy the good gifts you pos …
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 …
theodoret_cyrrhus · c. 440 · score 0.01
To Eustathius, Bishop of Aegae, The story of the noble Mary belongs in a tragedy. As she herself says, and as several others confirm, she is a daughter of the distinguished Eudaemon. In the catastrophe that has overtaken Libya [likely the Vandal conquest of North Africa], she has fallen from her father's free estate in …
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 …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius to his friend Felix. Gozolas, a Jew by nationality and a client of your household — a man whose person would be dear to me as well, if his religion were not an object of contempt — carries this letter, which I have written in a state of deep anxiety. The armed forces of the nations surrounding us terrify our l …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
Sidonius To His Dear Ecdicius, greetings. Duo nunc pariter mala sustinent Arverni tui. 'quaenam?' inquis. praesentiam Seronati et absentiam tuam. Seronati, inquam: de cuius ut primum etiam nomine loquar, sic mihi videtur quasi praescia futurorum lusisse fortuna, sicuti ex adverso maiores nostri proelia, quibus nihil es …
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 …
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 …
jerome · c. 412 · score 0.01
Her particular service to the Church — and I say this deliberately, because the Church in Rome does not recognize it and should — was in the Origenist controversy. When Rufinus's translations began circulating at Rome, and when fashionable households started treating Origen's allegorizing speculation as the latest inte …
gregory_great · c. 594 · score 0.01
Before him, pagan rulers who knew nothing of the true God but worshipped idols of wood and stone still paid the highest respect to their priests. How much more fitting, then, that a Christian emperor should honor the priests of the true God, when pagan rulers knew how to honor priests who served gods of wood and stone? …
sidonius_apollinaris · c. 467 · score 0.01
To Pannychius. You know that Seronatus [a corrupt Roman official who collaborated with the Visigoths] is returning to Toulouse — or if you do not know yet (and I believe you do not), learn it from these signs. Already Euanthius is hurrying ahead to Clausetia, assembling work-crews to clear whatever autumn leaves may ha …