Maximus of Madaura
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All letters (29)
Yes, you are quite right; my time is fully taken up by cases in the centumviral court, * but they give me more worry...
I think I am justified in asking you to grant to one of my friends a favour which I should certainly have offered to...
What a joyful day this has been !
You did quite right in promising a gladiatorial display to my clients at Verona, for they have long loved you,...
I have just been reminded by the illness of a friend of mine that we mortals are most virtuous when we are in bad...
I find in study both delight and consolation.
My affection for you is such that I feel compelled not to direct you - for you have no need of a director - but to...
I have often advised you to publish at the earliest possible opportunity the speeches which you composed either in...
When I have been pleading, it has often happened that the centumviri, after strictly preserving for a long time...
Everything crowds into my mind at once and chokes my speech — one thought refuses to let another go first.
1. Speech is really an image of mind: so I have learned to know you from your letters, just as the proverb tells us we may know the lion from his claws. I am delighted to find that your strong inclinations lie in the direction of the first and greatest of good things — love both to God and to your neighbour.
It suits you to be a friend of Himerius [a famous Athenian sophist], and your sons, by doing well, are imitating the...
1. Desiring to be frequently made glad by communications from you, and by the stimulus of your reasoning with which in a most pleasant way, and without violation of good feeling, you recently attacked me, I have not forborne from replying to you in the same spirit, lest you should call my silence an acknowledgment of being in the wrong. But I be...
1. Are we engaged in serious debate with each other, or is it your desire that we merely amuse ourselves? For, from the language of your letter, I am at a loss to know whether it is due to the weakness of your cause, or through the courteousness of your manners, that you have preferred to show yourself more witty than weighty in argument.
How much, beloved, you have at heart the most sacred unity of our common Faith and the tranquil harmony of the Church's peace, the substance of your letter shows, which was brought me by our sons, Marian the presbyter and Olympius the deacon, and which was the more welcome to us because thereby we can join as it were in conversation, and thus th...
Though I have not earned any letter from Your Apostleship to prompt this initiative, your reputation compels me to...
I would be swollen with pride at the flattery of your letters if I were not kept in check by my own awareness of my...
The delicacies you sent are indeed magnificent and wonderfully generous — in their quantity, their timing, and their...
As far as it concerns this poor little body of mine, I am getting by with some small reserves of strength — though...
While the servants of the wine-press were completing the bounty of autumn — and the whole countryside was occupied...
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Your Eminence's voice carries more weight in a single line than lesser men achieve in pages.
Your Greatness extends the festivities of the wedding, and the joy that attends them spreads like ripples in water.
Though the merits of any one's life were in other respects such as to offer no impediment to his ordination to priestly offices, yet the crime of canvassing in itself is condemned by the severest strictness of the canons. Now we have been informed that thou, having either obtained surreptitiously, or pretended, an order from the most pious princ...
Gregory to Maximus, pretender to the Church of Salona. As often as anything is said to have been done contrary to ecclesiastical discipline, we dare not leave it unexamined, lest we should be guilty before God for connivance. Now it has come to our ears that you were ordained by means of simoniacal heresy.
Gregory to Maximus, intruder in the Church of Salona. While, seeking this or that excuse, you defer obedience to our letters, while you put off coming to us for ascertainment of the truth after being so often admonished, you lend credibility all the more to what is alleged against you; and, even though there had been nothing else to go against y...
Although to what was faulty in your ordination at the first you have added serious evil through the fault of disobedience, yet we, tempering with becoming moderation the authority of the Apostolic See, have never been incensed against you to the extent that the case demanded. But our displeasure which you had excited against yourself continued t...
Having received the letters of our brother and fellow bishop Marinianus, and Castorius, our chartularius, having also returned, we learn that your Fraternity have made most full satisfaction with regard to the matters about which there had been uncertainty; and we return great thanks to Almighty God that from our inmost heart all rancour of sini...
When our common son the presbyter Veteranus came to the Roman city, he found me so weak from the pains of gout as to be quite unable to answer your Fraternity's letters myself. And indeed with regard to the nation of the Sclaves , from which you are in great danger, I am exceedingly afflicted and disturbed. I am afflicted as suffering already in...