Letter 1023: Avitus, bishop, to the most excellent Lord Sigismund.

Throughout the whole span of my life I acknowledge that I have been made a debtor in the offering of my duty, but more pressingly so on account of the present festival, which occupies your concern no less with examining the attempts of the heretics than with celebrating the observances of our own party. For indeed, since adversaries gather by a kind of yearly contagion, you must take care with attentive labor that it does not sprout up again through the fraud of foreign cunning [the heretics' deceit] -- something which, in the name of God, your victory has already cut down by its celebrated valor, however much, with Christ favoring and with you present, it may now keep its distance. Hence that older source of anxiety, the Genevan gathering [the assembly at Geneva], which, after the manner of its first origin, sounded the serpent's venom into manly minds by the hiss of womanish speech. Wherefore, if I am worthy of it, I desire to know as soon as possible whether, in the presence of the lord your father in his clemency, any mention has arisen of that ordinance which let in the plague of the Bonosiacs [followers of Bonosus, who denied Christ's full divinity], roused up from its infernal lairs, with Catholics and Arians contending; or whether there still survives the grief of that credulity -- or rather of that pretense -- which a written promise, not stamped upon men's minds but inscribed on tablets, little by little recalls into the old credulity of its own dogma. For if this is indeed still mingled, as it had begun to be, with the communion of the Arian fellowship, then our triumph shines all the more gloriously under your rule, since, with two heresies reduced into one, and with us gaining no less than refuting, both the number of the schismatics decreases and the number of schisms. Look therefore graciously upon this service of my curiosity, and as to the feasts of your own special patron the apostle, hasten word to our expectation, and double the gifts of your address to us.

Avitus episcopus domno Sigismundo. Omni quidem vitae meae tempore debitorem me offerendi officii factum agnosco, sed impensius festivitate praesenti, quae sollicitudinem vestram non minus explorandis haereticorum conatibus quam nostrae partis occupat cultibus celebrandis. Si quidem per annuum quoddam contagium congregatis adversis attento vobis labore curandum est, ne alienae calliditatis fraude pullulet. quod in dei nomine iam vestra victoria celebrabili virtute succidit, quamlibet Christo propitio praesentibus vobis absistat. Hinc illa sollicitudine priscior constipatio Genavensis, quae in morem originis primae virilibus animis virus anguis sibilo feminei sermonis insonuit. Vnde illud, si mereor, quamprimum scire desidero, utrum in domno clementiae vestrae patre mentio illius ordinationis acciderit, quae Bonosiacorum pestem ab infernalibus latebris excitatam catholicis Arrianisque certantibus intromisit; vel si servatur adhuc credulitatis, immo simulationis illius dolor, quem non impressum animis, sed chartulis exaratum paulatim in antiquam sui dogmatis credulitatem revocat litterata promissio. Quae certe si adhuc, ut coeperat, societatis Arrianae communioni inmixta est, claret gloriosior sub principatu vestro noster triumphus, cum duabus haeresibus in unam redactis non minus adquiren- tibus quam convincentibus nobis et scismaticorum numerus decrescit et scismatum. Hinc ergo servitium curiositatis meae dignanter adspicite et de peculiaris patroni vestri apostoli festis expectationi nostrae properatis et compellationis vestrae munera duplicate.