Ennodius, bishop of Ticinum, to Pope Symmachus.
It is the nature of things that even a man capable in speech or thought may be blamed for presumption — because every aptness of words, when it has gone beyond the limits of humility, is trampled on; and just as the things demanded are held in value, so the things forced upon another grow cheap. Importunity, when it strips the eloquent of the nobility of their reputation, clothes the unlearned in disgrace. Yet I sustain myself with this reasoning: it is daring indeed, but agreeable, to have offered a word in advance; and just as it is close to rashness, so it is also close to diligence to open a path that pertains to charity. Among men of the Church, is it any fault if those of unequal dignity contend with equal love? Or do those who long to be matched with the highest by the suffrage of grace exceed the narrow limits of moderate honor? He has not the conscience of the proud who, in the offices of affection, does not reckon only himself. I take the liberty of saying that here the eagerness of subordinates rightly outruns those who normally take the lead in such matters. Behold, with these words I have purged from the cloud my parts, as it were, of voluntary address. But to come to what looks toward the most abundant defense: your son, the lord Rhodanius, compelled me to break out into the use of the present pen. Yet I confess that what he commanded was already in my own zeal: for he who compels a willing man does not labor.
2. Let us render thanks to God in the first place and in the whole composition of this letter, because the Roman members have at last come together in the fellowship of their head. It was just that the blessed Apostle Peter should reform both the churches of his age, and, through the Lord, the offices owed to the freer Senate.
A worthy ruler indeed, in whom with [advanced] age the height of [our] vows has been attained. For although the felicity that goes to posterity may persevere, the highest praise is owed to those from whom it took its beginning. You [Symmachus] effectively prayed to God, that his voice might draw forth the courage of him whose clemency can preserve. You have learned the prosperous outcomes of him whom you see, in whose command victory has followed. It remains for you to hold that gentleness of his mind so deep, as though it knew nothing of the battle order. By God’s gift, neither can his peace be disturbed by doubts, nor his strength broken by any opposition. Nothing is safer with him than a suppliant: he alone has escaped the battle line who has prayed; he has conquered the rush of arms who has offered devout obedience. What ancient princes scarcely obtained by the sweat of their own presence, the brief letter of our king has always procured. Through expeditions, the fortunate army is directed to the triumph. Who would believe that his soldier in toil and accomplishment has the glory of the conqueror, and yet the restraint of one subdued? When the engagements are completed, nothing remains of the heritage of wrath: at one and the same time, those whom adversaries had seen as dangerous, they perceive as friendly, paying tribute. And these things indeed are prepared by heavenly suffrage as the reward of this requital, because our faith with him is in the harbor, although he himself follows another. Wonderful is his patience, when, holding fast to his own purpose, he does not obscure the brightness of another’s; for he laments [if] the patrimonies of our churches should slip back, unless they have been increased. Thus it has come about that the wealthy hold their station as the substance of the poor, and the middling rise to the highest opulence. In priests he both cultivates the inborn virtues, and inspires those not yet found. But why should I anticipate your beatitude with the prejudice of a long-drawn speech? Continually your experience and that spiritual perfection will charge me with having been sparing in the praises of your son; and although deeds are usually amplified in conversation, [your spiritual perfection] will charge me with being a sterile reporter of the harvest of his virtues. Now let secular dignities — curule chairs, robes of office, even patrician honors, and how he confers them either by birth or by character — be made known by the testimony of the household courier. For he both makes the old [families] endure in the ancient light of their lineage, and irradiates the new with the splendor of unexpected brilliance. More easily does the wealth of his commonwealth, by the goodness of his stewardship, pass into private opulence than the wealth of his servants is converted into palace gains.
3. Now for what remains: with the service of my salutation received, see to it that Christ our Redeemer may preserve in long age what he has conferred on those serving him in the aforesaid most clement king. Let him also give a successor to the kingdom from his own seed: lest the goods of so great a man should grow old in a single generation, and become antiquated in time, named only for the memory of a golden age!
Footnotes
- ↩ The opening of the letter as Thiel transmits it reads simply In Christi signo (“In the sign of Christ”), with the manuscript variant noted by Sirmondus reading Symmacho papae (“To Pope Symmachus”) instead. Either functions as the salutation. The letter is undated, but Thiel’s marginal annotation places it after 506 — written at some point after the close of the Laurentian schism, of which it celebrates the end.
- ↩ Rhodanius is otherwise unidentified in the corpus; the title domnus (“lord”) and the description as filius vester (“your son”) suggest a Catholic associate of Symmachus, perhaps a layman in the papal circle, who urged Ennodius to write this congratulatory letter. The same epithet filius will be applied later in the letter, more remarkably, to King Theodoric himself.
- ↩ The Latin is in societatem capitis sui aliquando Romana membra coïerunt. The image of head and body — with the Roman pope as the head and the Roman clergy and faithful as the members — is one of the most direct primacy figures in the Symmachan corpus, and one of the more significant for the Pastor Aeternus framework: schism is described not as a parting of equals but as the separation of members from their head, and the resolution of schism not as a rapprochement of factions but as the restoration of the body to its head. Ennodius does not introduce the image as a novelty; he uses it as already-current ecclesiology. Compare the parallel head-body language used in the letters of Felix III and Gelasius I.
- ↩ The Latin is Justum erat, ut et beatus Petrus apostolus saeculi sui ecclesias et senatui liberiori per dominum partes debitas reformaret. The clause is dense, but the structural claim is clear: it is the blessed Apostle Peter (acting in the person of his successor, the Roman pope) who restores both ecclesiastical and civic order. The “freer Senate” refers to the Roman Senate’s increased deliberative role under Theodoric’s Italian kingdom; the “owed offices” are the dignities and functions proper to senatorial estate. Ennodius reads the schism’s end as an act of Petrine restoration extending beyond the Church’s own discipline — Peter restores the churches directly, and through divine providence the Senate’s proper role is restored as well.
- ↩ Thiel observes that what Ennodius shortly before called “patrimonies of the churches” he now calls “the substance of the poor” (pauperum substantiae) because by the resources of the churches the poor are sustained. He praises Theodoric specifically for ensuring that the wealthy churches suffered no detriment in their resources, and that the middling churches received much increase.
- ↩ The Latin is in filii vestri laudibus — “in the praises of your son.” Thiel’s apparatus draws explicit attention to this usage: “It is worth noting that the king [Theodoric], born in heresy and so excluded from the Church from his origin, is called the son of the Roman pontiff.” Ennodius’s usage is itself worth noting, even without giving it further interpretive weight.
Historical Commentary