Letter 6: Your Holiness has prevailed with Christ through the power of intercession on behalf of our dearest friend -- why...

Sidonius to his lord and bishop Ambrose, greeting. 1. On behalf of our most beloved friend (why should I speak his name and person? you will recognize the whole matter) your holiness's power of intercession prevailed with Christ; about the easy laxity of which man, in his youthfulness, you used often now to complain openly, summoning witnesses, now to groan in silence. And so this man, having lately broken off his cohabitation with a most shameful serving-woman, to whom, bound by an obscene habit, he had given himself over wholly, by a sudden correction of himself has provided for his inheritance, his posterity, and his good name. 2. For, emptied out by the losses to his household estate, as soon as he began to understand and to reconsider how much of his little inheritance from grandfather and father the extravagance of that domestic Charybdis had licked away, although coming to his senses late, nevertheless at last he, as it were, champed the bit and shook free his neck, and fixing in his ears, as they say, the Ulyssean wax, he fled, deaf against vice, the allurements of his harlot-shipwreck, and, as was fitting, this praiseworthy man took to wife a girl untouched, as supreme in character and birth as she was foremost in fortune. 3. This indeed would be a glory, if he had so abandoned his pleasures as not even to be joined to a wife; but, even if it happens by chance to pass from error to good morals, it belongs to few to begin with the greatest matters, and for those who have long indulged themselves in everything to cut off everything at once and all together. 4. Wherefore it is your task, now that they are united, to obtain as soon as possible by diligent prayer the hope of children; the consequence will be that, when one son or another has been received (and I have said too much), he who presumed upon unlawful things may henceforth abstain even from lawful ones. For the spouses themselves, although but lately wed, conduct themselves with such morals, with such modesty, that you may truly recognize, if once you have seen it, that there is a very great difference between that most honorable conjugal love and the fictions and enticements of concubinage. Deign to be mindful of us, lord bishop.

EPISTULA VI Sidonius domino papae Ambrosio salutem. 1. Viguit pro dilectissimo nostro (quid loquar nomen personam? tu recognosces cuncta) apud Christum tua sanctitas intercessionis effectu; de cuius facilitate iuvenali saepe nunc arbitris palam adscitis conquerebare, nunc tacitus ingemiscebas. igitur hic proxime abrupto contubernio ancillae propudiosissimae, cui se totum consuetudine obscena vinctus addixerat, patrimonio posteris famae subita sui correctione consuluit. 2. namque per rei familiaris damna vacuatus ut primum intellegere coepit et retractare, quantum de bonusculis avitis paternisque sumptuositas domesticae Charybdis abligurisset, quamquam sero resipiscens, attamen tandem veluti frenos momordit excussitque cervices atque Ulixeas, ut ferunt, ceras auribus figens fugit adversum vitia surdus meretricii blandimenta naufragii puellamque, prout decuit, intactam vir laudandus in matrimonium adsumpsit, tam moribus natalibusque summatem quam facultatis principalis. 3. haec quidem gloria, si voluptates sic reliquisset, ut nec uxori coniugaretur; sed, etsi forte contingat ad bonos mores ab errore migrare, paucorum est incipere de maxumis, et eos, qui diu totum indulserint sibi, protinus totum et pariter incidere. 4. quocirca vestrum est copulatis obtinere quam primum prece sedula spem liberorum; consequens erit, ut filio uno alterove susceptis (et nimis dixi) abstineat de cetero licitis, qui inlicita praesumpsit. namque et coniuges ipsi, quamquam nupti nuper, his moribus agunt, hac verecundia, vere ut agnoscas, si semel videris, plurimum esse quod differat ille honestissimus uxorius amor figmentis inlecebrisque concubinalibus. memor nostri esse dignare, domine papa.