Letter 4
IV. Ad Felicem episcopum Namneticum
To Felix, Bishop of Nantes
To my holy lord and most worthy of the apostolic see, my dear lord and father Bishop Felix [bishop of Nantes, a prominent figure in western Gaul] — Fortunatus sends greetings.
I was dozing near the seaside, lulled by the comfortable laziness of nature, lying too long on the shoreline, when your letter suddenly washed over me like waves of eloquence breaking on rocks and scattering spray. At first I could only be moistened, not yet woken — still drowsing in my usual heavy sleep, I barely managed to stand up at last amid the rolling thunder of your words.
When I had read your letter carefully, each sentence ringing out like a trumpet, suffused with something like starlight, I felt as though the brilliant light of your coruscating words had dazzled my eyes — like the flash of lightning that opens sleepy eyes and then closes them again with its glare. Such was the brightness that shone from the clarity of your practiced conversation, such was the vibrating light of your gleaming eloquence, that it seemed to me the sun was rising from the west — from your speech, in the form of radiant words.
I thought, as I read, that it was some piece of Pindaric construction [Pindar — the great Greek lyric poet], compacted in four-line stanzas with a pedestrian glue — as if a fertile oration had flowed in spirals of intertwined thought, a chain of linked enthymemes with foreign sophistication. As for the depth of your expression, you had made me wander like a man lost at a crossroads, steering between rocks and reefs [the Echinades — a rocky island group in the Ionian Sea], had you not lit the lamp yourself to guide my way.
When you added in your letter that my voice had been heard even in the farthest corner of the world, rising above all the clamor of acclamations — reading that back, I began to wonder at myself for having grown so suddenly in the conversation of one so great: I, who would not deserve praise on my own merits, was glad to be elevated by the warmth of so generous a patron, while acknowledging my own intellectual poverty.
Oh, how much love prevails — when the tongue of one who praises adds what the vein of the one praised does not contain! One should hope, of course, that for a man as humble as me, such a witness is more to be believed than the subject himself. For Polydeuces [Castor and Pollux — here used as an example of celebrated excellence] would never have been commended by the flowing richness of his gifts had he not been touched by the prophetic spring of the Smyrnaean source [Homer's spring at Smyrna].
As for what you said about seeming to inhabit the ends of the world — that is entirely just: you should believe what I say of you, since you so pleasantly persuade me to be believed about myself. For though the place is remote by geography, it is first-rank with you as its citizen. If cities claim precedence by the merit of their people, then no place is inferior where Bishop Felix, in his actions, upholds whatever is required of praise.
The frozen north and the regions locked in arctic cold do not hold you — through you, the region blooms in constant breezes as if the seasons had changed.
And what you complain of — that my brief stay in Tours gave you only a little conversation — I, for my part, am embarrassed to have revealed my ignorance in so short a time, and glad to have hidden the privilege of so great a bishop's acquaintance. But if you consider the state of my heart, even if I had spent longer in your presence, I would have been stimulated but never satisfied. For who, once struck by the fragrance of sweet roses, ever thinks himself sated, or consents to turn away? The longer I had remained close to you, the more love would have been kindled in me as I came to know you better.
As for what you suggested — "if you had come with me up the Loire, the current would have brought us to Nantes together" — I know indeed that with you as my guide through the Cheruscan [a Germanic reference — here probably just meaning barbaric sea-peoples] escort, I would have steered safely through the clashing Symplegades [the mythical rocks that snapped shut at the entrance to the Black Sea], and if need be, I would have struck the mountain of Oeta [Mount Oeta — where Heracles died] with the resonance of Pindar [the great victory ode poet].
And with what eagerness I read the lines that pure love compelled you to write — where you said that not even the Volscians [a barbarian people] coming to drag me away could have torn me from you! I believe truly, as my mind inspects it, that even Rome herself could scarcely have given me as much support as you have given me in words; and for me, nothing exceeds in value what the will offers as a gift: for when the sweetness of conversation flows back, there is no need for anything more.
And to your witty addition — "without the spur of praise, the rustic pen wouldn't have turned" — though such a tiller of Christ's field has often plowed the most fertile acres, I confess that you, in these recent pages, have made that field resound with the Amphionean lute [Amphion — the legendary musician who built the walls of Thebes by playing his lyre] in very ithyphallic [triumphant, processional] tones.
And what you added so delightfully — about me being enclosed in my lady Radegund's [Queen Radegund, Fortunatus's closest patron, abbess of the Holy Cross monastery at Poitiers] wall of love — I know well that this is not from my merits, but gathered from her habit of extending warmth to everyone. And to whatever extent you touch my person in poetic panegyric, that much have you written of her deserved praise in history. Still, in your words I have merited to read what I have already experienced in her grace. But since you paint great things about me when I am small — please, I beg you, proclaim the greatest things about the great.
And so, commending myself humbly to your lordship and holiness, I beseech you through our Lord the redeemer of souls — who will make you, predestined, his companion in light — to deign to remember me in your holy prayers with an eye of kindness. It will be great help to my hope, obtaining from you what I ask.
If the tongues of both Greeks and Latins were to join together,
they could not repay all your merits.
You are revered for your praise, worshipped for your prayers —
Felix, who will live in the light of eternal understanding.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.