Letter 2017: I am greatly surprised that the person on whose behalf you deign to intercede — who denied his guilt to me alone...

Bishop Avitus to the most illustrious Ansemundus. I am exceedingly surprised that the person on whose behalf you deign to intercede — the one who, while I was stationed at Lyon, alone denied the crime that the whole community was loudly proclaiming — has now come round to such repentance that he begs you for pardon. But if he asks for it in good faith, it must be established that the man confesses the full sequence of his guilt as well. Therefore, although in all cases, out of the regard which you bestow upon me, I am not free to do anything other than what you command, nevertheless I cannot — since this has seemed best to you — before granting the remission, refrain from setting forth at length the thing that grieves me. For your piety knows, and has often heard it read in church, how many degrees Holy Scripture sets out within the very evil of adultery itself. In the first place, by the lapse of fornication he sinned who, inflamed with lust, sought after a woman lacking a marriage bond; in the second place, he sinned who, by a theft damnable above all things, violated the chastity of an unmarried marriage bed. And since the human mind reckons nothing more grievous than this injury, consider for yourselves how the chastity of heavenly justice is moved if a man has — to say no more — even looked wantonly upon a bride consecrated to Christ and endowed with a blessing in the bridal chamber of the holy altar. Yet I hear that this young man himself says that he did not violate a virgin, since the carnality of many men before him had already abused her with their shameful overtures. For this reason, since nothing could free a man guilty of a manifest crime except his own making of amends and your intercession, it cannot be said how greatly I marvel that this man, for the sake of his own reconciliation, confesses the crimes of others. In this matter I accuse the priestly negligence of our times. We do not search out such things; the unexplored magnitude of the crimes offers itself to us. Why does he seek an accomplice in his evils? Why does he allege that others are stained? And would that his own obscenity had restrained itself at least to the point of staying hidden. Next, let him choose which of two he prefers. If he was the first to sin in the flesh against the girl, let him await what the Apostle foretells: "If any man shall violate the temple of God, God shall destroy him" [1 Corinthians 3:17]. But if he aggravated by increase a corruption which he had not begun, what can be devised more shameful, what more horrible, than that not even this should have kept him from a harlot — the very thing on account of which alone God permits a husband to be separated from his wife? Nor, if you consider, am I the only one stirred on this account. The devout parents groan over the crime that has been committed, and, mourning as though for a child that is lost, they avow their bereavement with lamentations. What shall I say of the grief of the mother, whom the shameful life of her now long-ruined husband has widowed in a way worse than any death? And although he was wont to be easily moved, yet patiently had this son borne these things — a son without piety, a husband without offspring, a father without an heir. And, moreover, there is nourished by his own zeal a noble evil, however nobly it sprang from high-born adulterers: yet in such a way that in the birth of this doomed monstrous thing there is no increase of the lineage, but rather a testimony of its disgrace. And indeed, with the defense which God has granted me in you kept intact, I dread more the guilt of the aforesaid man than his power. But I beg, let him not be angry with one who says these things. I am a watchman, I hold the flock, it is not permitted to me to be silent. And would that the sinner might take on human feelings — he for whom it is customary to slip through weakness and to return to making amends; but otherwise, to swell with the wrath of guilt, to be puffed up by pride, to reek with wantonness, is the manner of a bull. Therefore, though he should belch out against me the diverse flames of his terrors, though he should perhaps summon me to the hearing of the Roman church and, if it still please him, even say that I too have sons: I will neither pacify his threats by flattery nor fear the weariness of journeys, I who am wearied more by the crimes of citizens in my own homeland; nor will I deny that I have many sons, I who already grieve that one of them has perished. And indeed grief has wrung these few words from me. But as for you, to whom, by the privilege of the highest authority and power, a greater capacity for chastising is available, rebuke the man forcefully; for the sake of my reconciliation, since you so command, avenge my injury; declare beforehand that you will take care that this evil shall not be renewed either by commands or by messengers: so that, if not by correcting him through his own will, then at least by restraining him through custody, the means of his guilt may be wrested from him, if the wholesomeness of repentance could not be urged upon him.

Avitus episcopus viro illustrissimo Ansemundo. Plurimum miror, quod persona, pro qua intercedere dignamini, ut mihi Lugduni posito sola negarit crimen, quod universitas conclamabat, ad hoc resipiscendo per- venit, ut vobis pro venia supplicaret. Quod si simpliciter petit, constet hominem etiam reatus ordinem confiteri. Quo circa licet in omnibus causis pro dignatione, quam mihi impenditis, liberum non habeam aliud facere quam iubetis: non possum tamen, quia sic vobis visum est, remissurus non prius exaggerare, quod doleo. Scit enim pietas vestra et in ecclesia legi frequenter audivit, in ipso adulterii malo quantos scriptura divina gradus exprimat: Primo fornicandi lapsu peccavit, qui feminam coniugio caren- tem libidine inflammatus appetiit; secundo, qui furto super cuncta damnabili simpli- cis tori pudicitiam violavit. Cumque nihil gravius hac iniuria humanus animus putet, vos conicite, qualiter caelestis iustitiae castitas moveatur, si sponsam Christo devotam et in sancti altaris thalamo benedictione dotatam, ut nihil amplius dicam, vel petu- lanter adspexerit. Audio tamen dicere iuvenem ipsum non se virginem temerasse, cuius turpibus votis prior multorum carnalitas sit abusa. Qua propter cum reum faci- noris manifesti nisi satisfactio sua et intercessio vestra non liberet, dici non potest, quantum mirer hunc pro reconciliatione sui aliorum crimina confiteri. Accuso in hac parte nostri temporis neglegentiam sacerdotalem. Non nos ista perquirimus, offert se nobis inexplorata criminum magnitudo. Quid in malis socium quaerit? quid alios maculosos adserit? Atque utinam et ipsius vel sic se temperasset obscenitas, ut la- teret. Deinde ex duobus eligat, utrum velit. Si primus in puellam carne peccavit, expectet, quod praedicit apostolus: Si quis templum dei violaverit, disperdet illum deus. Si autem corruptionem, quam non inchoaverat, gravavit augmento, quid excogitari turpius, quid horribilius potest, quam ut illum nec hoc prohiberet a meretrice, propter quod solum deus separari virum permittit a coniuge? Nec solus, si respicitis, ex hac parte commoveor. Gemunt religiosi parentes scelus admissum et quasi perditam prolem lugentes orbitatem planctibus profitentur. Quid de matris maestitia loquar, quam perditi iam dudum mariti omni morte deterius turpis vita viduavit? Et quamquam cito moveri solitus tamen patienter haec tulerat filius sine pietate, maritus sine subole, pater sine herede. Et nutritur insuper eius studio quam- libet ortum ex generosis adulteris nobile malum: sic tamen, quod in desperati nativi- tate portenti non est augmentum prosapiae, sed infamiae documentum. Et quidem salva, quam mihi deus in vobis praestitit, defensione plus culpam praefati quam in- potentiam pertimesco. Sed, rogo, ne irascatur ista dicenti. Speculator sum, tur- bam teneo, tacere mihi non licet. Atque utinam peccans humanos animos sumat, cui solitum est labi per facilitatem et ad satisfactionem reverti: ceterum ira- cundia culpae, tumere superbi, lascivia fetere taurinum est. Quo circa licet diversas in me terrorum flammas evomuerit, ad Romanae forsitan ecclesiae audientiam vocet et, si adhuc placet, etiam filios habere me dicat: nec minas suas adsentatione placabo nec fatigationem itinerum verebor, qui civicis criminibus in patria plus fatigor, nec multos me habere negabo, qui imum ex eis perisse iam doleo. Et quidem mihi haec paucula maeror extorsit. Sed vos, cui iuris summa potestatisque privilegio maior facultas suppetit castigandi, hominem violenter arguite; conciliationi meae meam in- iuriam, quia ita praecipitis, vindicate; ne malum hoc vel mandatis aut nuntiis reno- vetur, curaturum esse praedicite: ut ei, si non corrigendo per voluntatem, certe vel per custodiam reprimendo facultas culpae possit eripi, si paenitentiae salubritas non potuit persuaderi.