Letter 214: It is a bold claim — but the calamity threatening the Church does not come primarily from external enemies.
To Maron the Presbyter. To priests, concerning the stewardship of the poor. Even if you are thoughtless and ill-mannered, at least from hearsay you know that long ago the disciples of the divine apostles, selling their possessions at home, brought the proceeds to the church for the poor. But you, doing the very opposite, impiously gather the property of the church and of the poor into your own home. Cease therefore from your impiety; for the steward is so called from distributing to the poor what is their own. And what is their own is rightly the ecclesiastical property.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
ΣΕΘ. – ΜΑΡΩΝΙ ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΕΡΩ,
Πρὸς ἱερεῖς, περὶ τῆς τῶν πενήτων οἰκονομίας.
Εἰ καὶ ἀλόγιστος εἶ καὶ ἀνάγωγος· ἀλλ᾽ οὖν κᾶν ἐκ παρακούσματος ἔχεις, ὅτι πάλαι οἱ τῶν θείων ἀποστόλων μαθηταὶ, τὰ οἴκοι πιπράσκοντες, τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ ὑπὲρ πτωχῶν προσεκόμιζον. Σὺ δὲ πᾶν τοὐναντίον ποιῶν, τὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας καὶ τῶν πτωχῶν εἴκοι συνάγεις ἀσεβῶς. Παῦσαι τοίνυν τῆς ἀσεβείας· εἰκονόμος γὰρ εἴρηται παρὰ τὸ οἰκεῖα αὐτῶν νέμειν τοῖς πένησιν. Οἰκεῖα δὲ αὐτῶν, εἰκότως τὰ ἐκκλησιαστικά (45).
Revision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from Patrologia Graeca 78 OCR.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/PatrologiaGraeca (PG vol.78)
Related Letters
On "What God has joined together, let no one separate" [Matthew 19:6].
Why are you surprised that so many heresies arose after the Savior's incarnation in the flesh?
Correct belief and correct life are not the same thing, Antiochos, but neither are they separable in the end.
I have just sent you a present: a horse that is perfect in every quality a horse should have.
Jerome writes to Theophilus to apologize for his delay in sending Latin versions of the latter's letter (CXIII.) and invective against John Chrysostom. Possibly, however, the allusion may be not to these but to some other work of Theophilus (e.g. a paschal letter.) This delay he attributes to the disturbed state of Palestine, the severity of the...