Letter 3016: The matter you reported in your letter had already reached me through faint rumor before your account.

Bishop Avitus to Bishop Victorius. The matter you reported in your letter had reached me by a slight rumor before your account of it. When its bitterness was learned through the holy archdeacon, I groaned with grief at your distress—if you will deign to believe me—no less than you did yourself. For it is a precedent grave enough that priestly ordination should now be said to be governed by the people, since the election is preserved for the people in the consecration of bishops only for this reason: that, with respect to subsequent appointments, those who have been elected may be permitted, as if by a kind of mandate, to choose what seems fitting. You ought not, however, to take it as something new that the insolence of the secular power, propped up by the support of clerical wickedness, is able to contrive things for our affliction. I think indeed that the consent of your spiritual children ought to be sought for the ecclesiastical discipline, on account of those by whose habitual abuse it has been decreed to care little about excommunications. I have also examined the letter that you directed to the presbyter who was presuming illicit things—a letter no less devout than canonical [in keeping with church rule]. In it you have truly held back more patience than the person deserved. For this reason, although the devil has been permitted much in so horrible a rebellion, do you nevertheless, without any disturbance of mind, punish both the injury done to God and your own, and with strict diligence applied, take care that no similar audacity seizes its chance hereafter.

Avitus episcopus Victorio episcopo. Factum, quod litteris indicastis, levi ad me ante affatum vestrum rumore per- venit. Cuius per sanctum archidiaconum acerbitate comperta, si credere dignamini, non minus quam vos dolorem vestrae commotionis ingemui. Siquidem satis gravis exempli est, ut nunc sacerdotalis ordinatio a populis regenda dicatur: cum idcirco tan- tum in consecrandis episcopis plebibus servetur electio, ut ad succiduas constitutiones velut per quoddam mandatum electis liceat legere, quod videtur. Non autem vos pro novo debetis accipere, quod tribulandis nobis valeat comminisci clericalis nequitiae fulta subsidio insolentia saecularis. Puto sane districtioni ecclesiasticae filiorum vestro- rum expeti debere consensum propter illos, quorum abusione consuetudinaria parum de excommunicationibus curare decretum est. Litteras quoque, quas ad presbyterum illicita praesumentem non minus pie quam regulariter direxistis, inspexi. In quibus vere plus, quam persona meruit, patientiae reservastis. Qua propter, licet satis diabolo in tam horribili rebellione licuerit, vos tamen sine aliqua animi perturbatione dei ac vestram iniuriam castigate et ne quid in posterum similis ausus arripiat, impensa districtione perspicite.