To the Lord Bishop Patiens*
A.D. 474
[1] ONE man deems happiness to consist in one thing, a second in another; my own belief is that he lives most to his own advantage who lives for others, and does heaven's work on earth by pitying the poverty and misfortune of the faithful. You may wonder at what I aim in these remarks. At yourself, most blessed father, for my sentiments refer especially to you, |92 who are not content to succour only the distress which lies within your cognizance, but push your inquiries to the very frontiers of Gaul, and without respect of persons, consider each case of want upon its merits. [2] Does poverty or infirmity prevent a man from making his way to you in person? He loses nothing; your free hand anticipates the needs of those whose feet are unable to bring them to you. Your watchful eye ranges over other provinces than your own; the spreading tide of your benevolence bears consolation to the straitened, however far away. And so it happens that you often wipe tears from eyes which you have never seen, because the reserve of the absent touches you no less than the plaints of those near at hand. [3] I say nothing of your daily labour to relieve the need of your impoverished fellow countrymen, of your unceasing vigils, your prayers, your charity. I pass over the tact with which you combine the hospitable and the ascetic virtues, so that the king is never tired of praising your breakfasts and the queen your fasts. I omit your embellishment of the church committed to your care until the spectator hardly knows which to admire most, the new fabric which you erect, or the old which you restore. [4] I do not mention the churches that rise in so many districts under your auspices, or the rich additions to their ornaments. I dismiss the fact that under your administration the faithful are increased and multiplied, while heretics alone diminish. I shall not tell how your apostolic chase for souls involves the wild Photinians in the spiritual mesh of homily; or how barbarians once converted by your eloquence pursue your track until, like a thrice-fortunate fisher of men, you |93 draw them up at last out of the profound gulfs of error. [5] It may be true that some of these good deeds are not peculiar to you, and are shared by colleagues; but there is one which is yours, as lawyers say, as a first charge, and which even your modesty cannot deny; it is this, that when the Gothic ravages were over, and the crops were all destroyed by fire, you distributed corn to the destitute throughout all the ruined land of Gaul at your own expense, though it would have been relief enough to our starving peoples if the grain had come to them, not as a free gift, but by the usual paths of commerce. We saw the roads encumbered with your grain-carts. Along the Saône and Rhone we saw more than one granary which you had entirely filled. [6] The legends of the heathen are eclipsed; Triptolemus must yield his pride of place, whom his fatherland of Greece deified for his discovery of corn; Greece, famed for her architects, her sculptors and her artists, who consecrated temples, and fashioned statues, and painted effigies in his honour. A doubtful story fables that this son of Ceres came wandering among peoples savage and acorn-fed, and that from two ships, to which poetry later assigned the form of dragons, he distributed the unknown seed. But you brought supplies from either Mediterranean shore, and, if need were, you would have sought them among the cities of the Tyrrhenian sea; your granaries filled not two paltry ships, but the basins of two great rivers. [7] If you disapprove, as unsuited to your profession, a comparison drawn from the Achaean superstition of Eleusis, I will recall instead the historic prescience of the patriarch Joseph, who by his foresight provided a remedy for the famine which had to follow the seven lean years; I omit |94 for the moment his mystic and typical significance.But I hold that man morally as great, who copes with a similar disaster without any warning in advance. [8] I cannot exactly tell the sum of gratitude which all the people owe you, inhabitants of Arles and Riez, Avignon, Orange, Viviers, Valence, and Trois Châteaux ; it is beyond my power to count the total thanks of men who were fed without having to count out a penny. But for the city of Clermont I can speak, and in its name I give you endless thanks; all the more, that your help had no obvious inducement; we did not belong to your province; no convenient waterway led to us, we had no money to offer. [9] Measureless gratitude I give you on their behalf; they owe it to the abundant largess of your grain that they have now their own sufficiency once more. If now I have properly fulfilled the duty entrusted to me, I will cease to be the mouthpiece of others, and speak out of my own knowledge. I would have you know that your glory travels over all Aquitaine; all pray for your welfare, their hearts go out to you in love and praise, in longing and loyal devotion. In these evil times you have proved yourself a good priest, a good father, and as good as a good year to men who would have deemed it worth while to risk starvation if there had been no other means of discovering the measure of your generosity. Deign to hold me in remembrance, my Lord Bishop.
* Partly translated by Fertig, Part ii, p. 24.
This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2003. All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.
Greek text is rendered using the Scholars Press SPIonic font, free from here .