Letter 43
Fructuosus, insignificant and always your servant, to my own lord, Bishop Braulio.
We have learned from the story in Sacred Scripture how pleasing to a man is "good news from a far country"; and what other better news could we expect than the love of Christ, than the spotless profession and propagation of the Catholic Church, than the pure lives, successful work, and faithful doctrine of the friends of God and the bishops and priests of Christ? These, most blessed father, we confess that we vehemently yearn for and thirstingly desire to learn. [...]
Fructuosus continues paying plenty of compliments to Braulio.
First of all then, I demand that my lord, filled with the teaching of the early fathers and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, deign to explain, in a brief and clearly stated page or two to me, your leprous friend and to the ulcerous novice, Eleazer, certain problems which Jerome, the father of sanctity and sharer of your glory, a most blessed and most learned man, failed to clarify. And if you do so, may the Lord open to you the entrance to His heavenly kingdom.
Fructuosus asks a question about the age of Melchisedech.
I am especially suppliant, my lord, that you enlighten our monasteries by your generosity with the Conferences of Cassian, which cannot be found in this whole area in which we live, though we have searched. We also request that out of your bounty you make a present to us, unworthy though we are, of the Lives of the holy men Honoratus and Germanus, and your beatitude's own recent Life of Emilian. You regularly fill the wants of others with the honey of your eloquence; do not refuse to do the same for us, so far remote and sunk low in the obscure lands of the west. Do this, most pious lord, that your reward may shine before God.
We already have there, thanks to certain Christians, the seven Conferences of the aforementioned Cassian, which he wrote to Jovinian, Minervius, Leontius, and Theodore, but the next ten Conferences, which he says he published for the bishops Hellaedius and Leontius, and the final seven, which he says he published for Saints Honoratus and Eucherius, we do not have. We ask that we may deserve to receive them from your bounty.
There follow the final salutations.
(trans. by C. Barlowe 1969: 96-99)
