Letters

² About two years ago the aforesaid Pope Epiphanius sent a letter to Bishop John, first finding fault with him as regarded some of his opinions and then mildly calling him to penitence. Such was the repute of the writer or else the elegance of the letter that all Palestine fought for copies of it. Now there was in our monastery a man of no small estimation in his country, Eusebius of Cremona, who, when he found that this letter was in everybody's mouth and that the ignorant and the educated alike admired it for its teaching and for the purity of its style, set to work to beg me to translate it for him into Latin and at the same time to simplify the argument so that he might more readily understand it; for he was himself altogether unacquainted with the Greek language.

I consented to his request and calling to my aid a secretary speedily dictated my version, briefly marking on the side of the page the contents of the several chapters. The fact is that he asked me to do this merely for himself, and I requested of him in return to keep his copy private and not too readily to circulate it. A year and six months went by, and then the aforesaid translation found its way by a novel stratagem from his desk to Jerusalem. For a pretended monk— either bribed as there is much reason to believe or actuated by malice of his own as his tempter vainly tries to convince us— showed himself a second Judas by robbing Eusebius of his literary property and gave to the adversary an occasion of railing against me.

They tell the unlearned that I have falsified the original, that I have not rendered word for word, that I have put 'dear friend' in place of 'honourable sir,' and more shameful still! That I have cut down my translation by omitting the words αἰδεσιμῶτατε Πάππα. These and similar trifles form the substance of the charges brought against me.