Letter 1214: The indispositions of the body originate from excess.

The indispositions of the body originate from excess. Indeed, when its elements exceed their own limits and are suddenly put out of order, then there is illness, and a painful death. But the same goes for the soul. If we precipitately pass from a balanced life into a disordered one, we end up swollen with pride and reduced to slavery: the first hateful and the other risible. By mixing these opposite evils, arrogance with adulation, we earn hatred and we make others laugh. But if we prune whatever excess there is in things we try, we will be as humble when necessary, we will ascend without risk of falling. Such is indeed our philosophy, which links modesty and grandeur in a single choice: modesty in not rising by stepping on others; greatness, while allowing no-one to flatter us. Antiochus is a scholasticus, evidently a man on the rise in society. Rotten bishops and their side-kicks are a perennial problem, as is getting other bishops in the same area to do anything about them. The three bishops that follow held sees in the area of Pelusium. Zosimus and co were clergmen in the diocese of Pelusium, whose bishop Eusebius was a rotter. Isidore, like any honest man, could be impatient.