Letter 3027: Bound and burdened alike by the graciousness of your concern, the magnificence of your gift, and the constancy of...
Bound and burdened alike by the graciousness of your concern, by the magnitude of your gift, and by the customary force of your devotion, with what worthy expression of thanks, to say nothing of any diligence of dutiful service, am I to respond? Unless perhaps, manifold and weak as I am, I may be sustained in this very matter by that same grace of yours by which I am weighed down. May almighty God grant you to be an ornament to the Church and a consolation and restoration to us, so that, since you truly do not live for yourself alone, you may heap up your own merits through the comforts you bring to others. My sins, indeed, brought about a necessity by no means slight, by which on the day of the celebration of your little feast we were cheated of our joy in the bodily presence of your loving care. Yet you gave back and made present to us a recompense for the sight of you: your light in our seeing, your speech in our hearing, your deeds in our doing. I trust, in the mercy of our God, that not only in my own time but also in the time to come our little church will venerate the gift of your offering. And just as I, while I live, desire to keep it as a testimony of your unfailing generosity, so may God grant me that your authority may especially commend it as well to the one whom, after me, when God shall have so ordained, your choice shall have decreed.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
Avitus episcopus Apollinari episcopo.
Innexus pariter adgravatusque dignatione sollicitudinis, magnitudine muneris, con-
suetudine pietatis, qua digna vel gratiarum actione, non dicam obsequii sedulitate re-
spondeam? nisi forte multipliciter atque invalidus eadem in hoc sustenter gratia vestra,
qua oneror. Concedat vos ornatui ecclesiae, consolationi ac refectioni nostrae omni-
potens deus: ut, quia revera non solum vobis vivitis, per aliorum solacia vestra merita
cumuletis. Fecerunt quidem peccata mea non qualemcumque necessitatem, qua in
die susceptae vestrae festivitatulae laetitiae nostrae, corporalis vestrae pietatis prae-
sentia fraudaremur. Sed reddidistis ac repraesentastis nobis vicissitudinem vestri ad-
spectus in lumine, oris in sermone, actus in opere. Credo in dei nostri misericordia,
quod non meo tantum tempore, sed etiam secuturo donum vestrae oblationis ecclesiola
nostra venerabitur. Quod sicut ego, dum vivo, in testimonium inexhaustae largitatis
servare desidero, ita mihi deus praestet, ut etiam ei, quem post me, cum deus iusserit,
electio vestra decreverit, peculiariter auctoritas vestra commendet.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern avitus vienne reverified v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://data.mgh.de/openmgh/bsb00000795.zip
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