Letter 4001: A good commander knows to encourage the proven valor of a soldier who has been tested in battle, so that courage,...
Ennodius to Pope Symmachus.
A good commander knows to encourage the proven valor of a soldier who has been tested in battle, so that courage, nourished by praise, may learn to forget its love of life in the next engagement. Whose strength is not fed by a general's commendation? What limbs, even those of a raw recruit, would refuse any fight, when he sees — on the testimony of his commander — that his service has not gone unnoticed? The only path by which the will to fight grows stronger is one where good deeds are not erased by forgetfulness.
Would that the Almighty, moved by your prayers, might bring an end to our war against the Devil! Would that he might display my devotion in a time of peace — so that the loyalty which adversity has exposed might be commended instead by concord. A delegation with full instructions has been sent from your brother [in the episcopate] to Bishop Marcellianus, and he himself has written back with the results.
For the rest, I extend my greetings and beg you to heal with the medicine of your prayers whatever is sick among us, and to cut out with the spiritual sword — from among the hidden infections that threaten general destruction — the error that festers in secret. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
Petition is never ineffective when it reaches a man of justice and compassion.
Avitus, bishop, to Faustus and Symmachus, senators of the city of Rome.
A necessary matter of practical importance has prompted this letter.
While the apostolic see is graced by the care of Your Holiness's crown, and the heavenly governance of the Church...
My son Boniface the deacon has told me that your Experience had written to say that a monastery built by Labina, a religious lady, is now ready for monks to be settled in it. And indeed I praised your solicitude; but we wish that some other place than that which has been assigned for the purpose should be provided; but with the condition, in vie...