---
title: "Letters · Epistulae"
author: "Augustine"
translator: "James Houston Baxter"
languages: [la, en]
shelf: "Church Fathers"
section: 18 of 62
url: https://scriptura.si/works/augustine-letters/18/
cite: "Augustine, tr. James Houston Baxter, Letters · Epistulae, section 18. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/augustine-letters/18/"
---

# Letters · Epistulae

*Augustine, tr. James Houston Baxter*

Augustine’s letters in Latin beside English.

> Latin: ed. James Houston Baxter, from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit, stoa0040.stoa011, CC BY-SA 4.0).

> English: James Houston Baxter, from the Perseus Digital Library (stoa0040.stoa011.perseus-eng1). Notes are not included.

> Rows follow the references the two texts share (books, chapters and sections), cut where both reach the end of a sentence.

## 18. Letter 18

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/augustine-letters/18/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/augustine-letters/18/#p-N

[¶0] 1. I greet your Honour with the respect due to your merits and earnestly commend myself to your prayers. I have to report to your Wisdom that a man by the name of Abundantius was ordained priest on the manor of Strabonian. c which belongs to my diocese, but, as he did not walk in the paths of God's servants, he began to acquire a bad reputation. This alarmed me, but yet I did not lightly give it any credence; yet, my worry clearly increasing, I made an effort to reach, if it were at all possible, some incontrovertible proofs of his evil conduct. And my first discovery was that he had embezzled money belonging to a certain countryman, entrusted to him for religious purposes, and could give no satisfactory account of it. The next charge proved against him and admitted by himself was that, on the fast-day of Christmas, when the church of Gippi was fasting like all the others, he took leave of his colleague, the priest of Gippi, about 11 o'clock in the day, on the pretext of departing for his own church; and although he had no clergyman with him, he remained in the same manor and dined and supped and stayed in the same house with a woman of ill fame. But one of our clergy of Hippo was already living from home in the local inn, and since Abundantius was very well aware of this, he could not deny the charge, but a what he did deny I left to God, passing sentence upon the facts he was not allowed to conceal. I was afraid to trust him with a church, especially one situated in the very midst of frenzied and snarling heretics. And when he asked me to give him letters explaining his case to the priest of the manor of Armenian in the district of Bulla, b from which he had come to us, so that no worse suspicion might be conceived against him and that there he might live, if possible, a reformed life with no duties as a priest, I was moved by pity to do so. But it was my duty to report these facts particularly to your Wisdom, lest any misrepresentation be practised upon you.

> Latin: 1. Officio debito meritis tuis salutans dignationem tuam tuisque me orationibus valde commendans insinuo prudentiae tuae Abundantium quendam in fundo Strabonianensi pertinente ad curam nostram ordinatum fuisse presbyterum. Qui cum non ambularet vias servorum dei, non bonam famam habere coeperat. Qua ego conterritus non tamen temere aliquid credens sed plane sollicitior factus operam dedi, si quo modo possem ad aliqua malae conversationis eius certa indicia pervenire. Ac primo comperi eum pecuniam cuiusdam rusticani divino apud se commendato intervertisse, ita ut nullam inde posset probabilem reddere rationem. Deinde convictus atque confessus est die ieiunii natalis domini, quo etiam Gippitana ecclesia sicut ceterae ieiunabant, cum tamquam perrecturus ad ecclesiam suam “vale” fecisset collegae suo presbytero Gippitano, hora ferme quinta, et cum secum nullum clericum haberet, in eodem fundo restitisse et apud quandam malae famae mulierem et prandisse et cenasse et in eadem domo mansisse. In huius autem hospitio iam quidam clericus noster Hipponiensis remotus erat; et hoc quia iste optime noverat, negare non potuit, nam quae negavit, deo dimisi, iudicans quae occultare permissus non est. Timui ei committere ecclesiam praesertim inter haereticorum circumlatrantium rabiem constitutam. Et cum me rogaret, ut ad presbyterum fundi Armenianensis in campo Bullensi, unde ad nos devenerat, causa eius insinuata litteras darem, ne quid de illo atrocius suspicaretur, ut illic vivat, si fieri potest, sine officio presbyterii correctior, misericordia commotus feci. Haec autem me praecipue prudentiae tuae intimare oportebat, ne aliqua tibi fallacia subreperet.

[¶1] 2. I heard his case one hundred days before Easter Sunday, which will fall on the 6th April. This fact I have been careful to mention to your Reverence because of the Council, and I have not concealed it from him either, but have revealed to him exactly what was decided. And if he thinks fit to take some action and fails to present his case within a year, let no one thereafter hearken to his plea. But for my part, my saintly lord and reverently cherished father, if I thought that these evidences of evil conduct on the part of the clergy, especially when a bad reputation has begun to attend them, deserved no punishment except in the manner prescribed by the Council, I should now be compelled to agree to the discussion of things that cannot be ascertained, and either to condemn things that are unproved or to pass over things that are really unknown. For my own part, at any rate, I have decided that a priest who, on a fast-day which was actually being observed by the local church, took leave of his colleague, the local priest, dared to stay, unaccompanied by a clergyman, with a woman of ill fame, to dine and sup and sleep in the same house, ought to be deposed from the office of priest, since I was afraid thereafter to entrust to his care a church of God. If the ecclesiastical judges happen to take a different view, because the Council decreed that six bishops should pronounce the final verdict in a case affecting a priest, let who will entrust him with a church situated within his own jurisdiction; personally, I confess my own fear of entrusting any congregation to people of that kind, especially when they have no good reputation to urge in defence as a reason for condoning this delinquency; otherwise, if any more heinous disorder broke out, I should with pain feel responsible for it myself.

> Latin: 2. Audivi autem causam eius, cum centum dies essent ad dominicum paschae, qui futurus est VIII Id. Aprilis. Hoc propter concilium insinuare curavi venerabilitati tuae, quod etiam ipsi non celavi, sed ei fideliter, quid institutum esset, aperui. Et si intra annum causam suam, si forte sibi aliquid agendum putat, agere neglexerit, deinceps eius vocem nemo audiat. Nos autem, domine beatissime et venerabiliter suscipiende pater, si haec indicia malae conversationis clericorum, maxime cum fama non bona eos coeperit comitari, non putaverimus nisi eo modo vindicanda quo in concilio constitutum est, incipimus cogi ea quae sciri non possunt, velle discutere et aut incerta damnare aut vere incognita praeterire. Ego certe presbyterum, ut qui die ieiunii, quo eiusdem loci etiam ecclesia ieiunabat, “vale” faciens collegae suo eiusdem loci presbytero apud famosam mulierem nullum secum clericum habens remanere et prandere et cenare ausus est et in una domo dormire, removendum ab officio presbyteri arbitratus sum timens ei deinceps ecclesiam dei committere. Quod si forte iudicibus ecclesiasticis aliud videtur, quia sex episcopis causam presbyteri terminare concilio statutum est, committat illi, qui vult, ecclesiam suae curae commissam; ego talibus, fateor, quamlibet plebem committere timeo, praesertim quos nulla bona fama defendit, ut hoc eis possit ignosci, ne, si quid perniciosius eruperit, languens inputem mihi.