Letter 139: To your excellency's many good deeds must be added this: that you informed our pious and most Christian emperor --...

To Aspar, Consular and Patrician, To your excellency's many good deeds must be added this: that you informed our pious and most Christian emperor -- whom God's grace has appointed for the blessing of his subjects -- of the enormous wrong done to me, and by a righteous decree annulled an edict that was anything but righteous. With divine Providence's support, I turned what they meant as punishment into a benefit and welcomed my rest with delight. But I was nonetheless treated unjustly and illegally, guilty in no single point of the errors my enemies slanderously charged me with, yet made to suffer the penalty of the worst criminals. In fact, my fate was harder than theirs. I was judged without a trial. I was condemned in my absence. Forbidden by imperial orders from going to Ephesus, I received the "most righteous" sentence of my holy judges. All of this has now been undone by his most serene majesty, through your excellency's active intervention. I would be wrong to keep silent and not offer my thanks. Through this letter I beg your excellency to speak warmly on my behalf to the victorious and Christian emperor and to the most pious and godly Augusta. On their behalf I pray to our good Lord as earnestly as I can: that He may guard their empire in security, make it a source of protection for their subjects and of dread for their enemies, and establish honorable peace for all. May your excellency also petition them to put an end to the agitation in the Church and order the assembling of a council -- not, like the last, composed of unruly men who throw proceedings into chaos, but rather a peaceful assembly of members learned in divine things, who are accustomed to confirming apostolic decrees and rejecting whatever is counterfeit and contrary to the truth. I express this hope so that your excellency may reap the good that such a course is likely to produce.

Letter 139