Letter 5004: I'm delighted that your first letter came to me, and I earnestly ask that you not abandon this gracious habit.
I'm delighted that your first letter came to me, and I earnestly ask that you not abandon this gracious habit. It's by nourishment like this that the cultivation of friendship grows. When I wrote this, my health was good — and I thought it only right to pass that information along to a man of your exceptional character, so that mutual affection might repay the favor with news of your own well-being. Farewell.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
Gaudeo mihi sermonis tui primitias contigisse et inpendio postulo, ut humanissi-
mum inceptum religiosa cura non deserat. his enim maxime nutrimentis amicitiarum to
cultus adolescit. cum haec scriberem, recte mihi sanitas suppetebat. cuius rei indi-
dum propterea singulari generositati tuae credidi deferendum, ut cognitionem mihi
sospitatis tuae mutuus rependat adfectus.
Vmi a. 396—397.
Revision history
- 2026-03-20v2.1.0-import
Initial corpus import from Seeck edition OCR from Internet Archive.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/qaureliisymmach00seecgoog
Related Letters
Æmona was a Roman colony not far from Stridon, Jerome's birthplace. The virgins to whom the note is addressed had omitted to answer his letters, and he now writes to upbraid them for their remissness. The date of the letter is 374 A.D.
[First letter] It pleased the public interest that greater responsibilities were entrusted to you.
After the letter conveyed to me by the officiales I have received one other dispatched to me later. I have not sent many myself, for I have not found any one travelling in your direction. But I have sent more than the four, among which also were those conveyed to me from Samosata after the first epistle of your holiness.
I received a letter from you the day before yesterday. It is shown to be yours not so much by the handwriting as by the peculiar style. Much meaning is expressed in few words.
Source. Translated by Blomfield Jackson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol.