St. Augustine
meritis officio dilectione domini salutamus. Velationis apophoretum gratissime accepimus.
1Frater iste nomine Barbarus servus dei est iam diu apud Hipponem constitutus et verbi dei fervidus ac studiosus auditor. Desideravit ad tuam sanctitatem litteras nostras, in quibus tibi eum in domino commendamus tibique per eum salutem debitam dicimus. Litteris autem sanctitatis tuae quibus ingentes texuisti quaestiones, respondere operosissimum est etiam otiosis et multo maiore, quam nos sumus, praeditis facultate disserendi et acrimonia intellegendi. Duarum sane epistularum tuarum, quibus multa et magna conquiris, una nescio quo
Letters of St. Augustine
outstanding in holiness. We have been very glad to receive the gifta commemorating her taking the veil.
The brother who brings this, Barbarus by name,1 is a servant of God who has been settled for a long time now at Hippo and is an eager and diligent hearer of the word of God. He besought this letter from me to your Holiness, in which I commend him to you in the Lord and through him offer you my due greetings. To reply to your Holiness’s letter, into which you have woven big questions, is a very considerable undertaking even for men of leisure, possessing much more skill in argument and greater acuteness of understanding than I do. Of the two letters from you, containing many extensive queries,
- aApophoreta (ἀποφόρητα) were presents given to guests to take home with them after an entertainment (Suet. Cal. 55, Vesp. 19; Lamprid. Heliog. 21. 7; Ambr. Ep. 3. 5 “qui ad convivium magnum invitantur, apophoreta secum referre consueverunt”); in Symmachus it is used of gifts sent to friends by those who had just given games (Ep. 2. 81, 5. 56, 9. 59). With the present passage compare Paul. Nol. Ep. 5. 21 “misimus testimonialem divitiarum nostrarum scutellam buxeam; ut apophoretum voti spiritalis accipies.” The word is occasionally employed by the Fathers in a transferred sense, as Ambrosiaster, Rom. 1. 1, 49a “ad quod omnes invitati apophoreta duplicia cortsequuntur: remissam enim peccatorum accipiunt, et filii Dei fiunt.”
- bEvodius was bishop of Uzalis and a prominent figure among the clergy of Numidia. Born, like Augustine, at Tagaste, he had been converted shortly before him, and the two were in close fellowship at Milan and Cassiciacum, where he appears as interlocutor with Augustine in the De Quantitate Animae and the De Libero Arbitrio. After being present at Ostia when Monnica died, Evodius returned to Africa with Augustine and shared the monastic life of Tagaste. Four letters from him to Augustine are extant, full of abstruse questions. The present letter is a reply to one of his, Ep. clxxxviii., which had raised the problem of the reality and meaning of visions. Of Barbarus, the bearer of the letter, there is no other mention.