Letter 8019: Ad eundem pro villa praestita

Venantius FortunatusGregory|c. 593 AD|Venantius Fortunatus
friendship

To Gregory, for a Farm Given

A page celebrated its generous path — the one your love composed in sweet-flowing verse — in which by chance the gift of a place was made, where the lively Vienne [a river in western Gaul near Poitiers] breaks its waters on the shore, and when the sailor is carried in his swelling keel past the slides, he sees the cultivated acres when the chant rings out.

I give thanks, dear one, filled with the fruit of piety — you who make a fitting excellence multiply. And without these, whatever is held from you is still mine: every flock has in the fields what the good shepherd holds.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.

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