Epistola Ad Sanctum Nicetium

Florianus, abbot of the Roman monastery. Letter of Florianus, abbot of the Roman monastery, to Saint Nicetius. To his lord Nicetius the pope, Florianus from the Roman monastery. The one Trinity, our God, is blessed, who has placed you by your pontifical merits on the pontifical summit, so that dignity does not precede blessedness, but blessedness precedes dignity. Nor is this undeserved: since from early boyhood you have served in the Lord’s camp, so that you might more safely and more effectively learn with what darts that intelligible Amalek is laid low, namely when you yourself are also victor in name. For you have been so instructed under God as your leader in the statutes of the coenobitic life that you might pass through the sea of the world without worldly waves, with unoffending step, and, deservedly singing the triumphal hymn with Moses: “Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been gloriously honored; he has cast horse and rider into the sea.” So too you are the inseparable companion of Elijah, never abandoning the higher places, which you had ascended by humility, whence you might behold the Lord Savior on the Mount of Transfiguration with the apostles. Therefore, since you are supported by the prerogative of such great sanctity, I ask that you pray for me, who have obtained this favor. For God, the foreknower of future things, who has made what is to come, knowing that I stand in need of the solace of living saints, has prepared these aids as a good Lord.

See therefore how many helpers you employ, when you begin to beseech for me the lord Ennodius of blessed memory, bishop of the Church of Ticinum, who advanced the nobility of his high-born blood through humility to glory, so that he might become a senator in the senate of the heavenly fatherland, whose incomparable eloquence of doctrine not only the West attests, but the instructed East also admires. The thunderbolt of Nestorius, the extinguisher of Eutyches, he taught my glorious and inviolable lady Mary to be Christotokos and Theotokos, by apostolic authority. He himself is therefore my father from the font, whom I believe intercedes for a son before the eternal Father through the Son. But also a companion of your crown, the lord Caesarius of blessed memory, bishop of Arelate, who lived piously among barbarians, peacefully amid wars, a father of orphans, a shepherd of the needy, who lost nothing by the expenditure of such great wealth, demonstrating the rule of discipline catholically in words and deeds. He himself therefore placed the Latin alphabet upon me, and I trust that he will obtain it for me as his former servant and disciple.

I add a third, unequal indeed in rank, but equal in merits, of holy memory: my abbot and archimandrite Theodatus, an enemy of this world, to whom the world was crucified, a temple most worthy of the Trinity, full of Christian reverence, most gentle in placid goodness, disciplined by fasts, refreshed by prayers, most pure in cleanliness, who expounded the Sacred Scriptures to me, and himself received me when I was of tender youth; who, for his son and disciple and successor, though unworthy, I do not doubt that he will obtain what he prays for. Therefore, Lord Father, so many just men overcome the prayers of sinners. Hence, since your conversation is in heaven, as the Apostle says: "But your conversation is in heaven," pray with these, and beseech my most sacred confessor Ambrose, that he may protect me as a special servant, cherish me as his own citizen, rescue me as a familiar pupil: he who will obtain from the Lord Jesus what he prays for. Therefore, insinuating the homage of salutation as a servant, I beg that you always pray for the most blessed man, my lord Bishop Datius, your brother. For it is fitting that you, the distinguished successor of the blessed confessors, should not cease to pray for him whom the precincts of the monastery consecrated as successor. And if you deem this worthy, we beseech that you make your Beatitude's safety our littleness, as we ask, successor.