Letter 1015: Your devotion has done what it always does — both extending concern about us and entrusting yours to us.

From: Avitus, bishop of Vienne To: Apollinaris, vir illustris (son of Sidonius Apollinaris) Date: ~506 AD Context: Avitus expresses relief at Apollinaris's safe return from a summoning by the Burgundian kings, revealing the anxiety of Roman aristocrats navigating barbarian court politics. Bishop Avitus to the illustrious Apollinaris. Your devotion has done what it always does — both extending concern about us and entrusting yours to us. For indeed, when we received the news of your departure, we hung in the greatest fear and trembling. Various reports told us that all of you who attend upon the lords you serve had been summoned together at once. The awareness of my own sins made me all the more afraid: the fewer friends I had left, the more I understood that those remaining had all the more to fear. But thanks be to God, who by your safe return has restored your people to joy and you to your homeland. May Christ preserve this peace for the time that remains, and may he protect you — as he has done until now — by rewarding you with every good thing.

Avitus episcopus viro illustri Apollinari. Fecit pietas vestra rem solitam sollicitudinem tam porrigendo de nobis quam de vobis nostram credendo. Nam revera nuntio vestri discessus accepto in summo metu et trepidatione pependimus; quia nobis diversis nuntiis dicebatur vos dominorum, quibus observatis, accitu cunctos pariter evocatos. Vnde faciebat hoc meorum con- scientia peccatorum, ut quantum mihi pauciores remanserant, tanto intellegerem re- manentibus plus timendum. Sed deo gratias, quia prospero reditu in laetitiam vestros vosque revocavit in patriam. Servet Christus hanc, quod superest, desideriis communi- bus libertatem, ut nobis et consolari absentiam vestram sit possibile et ad praesentiam pervenire.