Letter 50090: Nectarius to Augustine, my noble and esteemed brother, greetings.
Nectarius to Augustine, my noble and esteemed brother, greetings.
I write to you, revered bishop, on behalf of the citizens of Calama, who have recently committed acts that I know are indefensible — but for whom I plead mercy nonetheless.
You have heard what happened. During a pagan festival, a mob attacked the Christian church, assaulted clergy, and caused damage to church property. The ringleaders have been identified, and the law calls for severe punishment. I do not dispute the law. But I beg you to consider tempering justice with mercy.
These people are not evil at their core. They are ignorant, superstitious, attached to old customs, and easily led by hot-headed agitators. Destroying them will not advance the cause of Christ — it will only create martyrs for paganism and deepen the resentment that already smolders in many hearts.
I am a pagan myself, as you know. I tell you this not as a provocation but as a qualification: I understand these people because I am one of them. And I believe that the God you serve — if he is the God of mercy you say he is — would rather see them converted than crushed.
Spare them, bishop. For the sake of a city that needs peace more than punishment.
Your friend and servant, Nectarius.
[Context: This remarkable letter comes from a pagan city elder writing to a Christian bishop, pleading for leniency after anti-Christian riots in Calama (modern Guelma, Algeria). It captures a moment when paganism was still a living force in North Africa — not yet driven underground, still capable of organized violence against Christians. Nectarius's frank admission of his own paganism, combined with his respectful appeal to Christian mercy, reveals the complex religious landscape of Augustine's world.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
Believe me when I say that I embrace Pylaemenes — soul to soul.
1. That honourable man, my brother, and your Excellency's son, the presbyter Orosius, I have, both on his own account and in obedience to your request, made welcome. But a most trying time has come upon us, in which I have found it better for me to hold my peace than to speak, so that our studies have ceased, lest what Appius calls the eloquenc...
A treatise on the Forty-two Mansions or Halting-places of the Israelites, originally intended for Fabiola but not completed until after her death. Sent to Oceanus along with the preceding letter. These Mansions are made an emblem of the Christian's pilgrimage, the true Hebrew hastening to pass from earth to heaven.
That flattering companion, that dry and lifeless inflation, that empty and earthly glory — let it be banished from us.
Abigaus the recipient of this letter was a blind presbyter of Bætica in Spain. He had asked the help of Jerome's prayers in his struggles with evil and Jerome now writes to cheer and to console him. He concludes his remarks by commending to his special care the widow Theodora.