Letter 2002: My silence was demanded by hurt — hurt that grew deeper while it plotted its revenge at the expense of affection.

Ennodius to Speciosa. My grief demands my silence, a grief that has allowed the losses of affection to grow while it pondered revenge. For what could be done, except that by keeping silent I should pay back in kind one who denied me letters, so that the contempt shown toward me, which became known through the withholding of your venerable conversation, might, while I withdraw our exchanges, be struck with an equal blade? Perhaps you will say that revenge is hostile to my resolve. But I reckon all my faults as obedience to the law in those matters in which it happens that you are the authors. Would anyone think it a fault to do what you have done, and judge to be punishable by divine judgment what he recognizes to have proceeded from you? Bear, then, with even temper what I have done amiss: since you go before me in this matter, light of the Church, you yourself willed it. I keep the disposition I promised, so that, if I am worthy, I may show myself an emulator in all things; and I demonstrate my fidelity to this by keeping silent while you keep silent, and by speaking what I speak while you speak. To the duty of writing, therefore, I have brought myself back, now that I have been bidden, I who until now have held within a modest inner chamber the words that were not loved, ready to obey with like compliance upon these pages. Farewell, my lady, splendor of a good conscience without cloud, and deign to be prolonged in length after the example of a holy way of life, and, if I am worthy, to remember me, granting pardon to the brevity of this letter, which the haste of the carrier has confined into a narrow space.

II. ENNODIVS SPECIOSAE. Silentium meum dolor exigit, qui passus est crescere, dum de uindicta cogitat, dispendia caritatis. quid enim fieri potuit, nisi ut tacendo uicem restituerem litteras deneganti, ut contemptus circa me, qui per abstinentiam uenerandi sermonis innotuit, dum subduco conloquia, pari mucrone feriretur ? dicas forsitan uindictam inimicam esse proposito. sed omnia errata ita conputo quasi legis obsequium, in quibus uos esse contingit auctores. quisquamne culpam putet facere quod fecisti et plectendum iudicio diuino censeat quod a te processisse cognoscat? aequo ergo animo sustine quod deliqui: dum in ea re praecedis, lux ecclesiae, ipsa uoluisti. ego seruo animum, quem promisi, ut in uniuersis, si mereor, aemulator existam, cuius rei fidem, dum tacentibus uobis taceo et quod loquentibus loquor, ostendit. ad scriptionis ergo officium, postquam iussus sum, me reduxi, qui hactenus intra uerecundum penetrale quae non amabantur uerba continui, simili in paginis pariturus obsequio. salue, mi domina, bonae splendor sine nube conscientiae et ad exemplum sanctae conuersationis in longum producere et mei, si mereor, meminisse dignare, epistulari dans ueniam breuitati, quam in angustum artauit festinatio portitoris.