ye. And then it may not weary me to say what it burdens me now here to write. Now let us return to the matter in hand.
On the eighth day before the Ides of December (Dec. 6) we came to Leucate, where, by the bishop of that place—a eunuch, as by other bishops everywhere, we were most unkindly received and treated. In all Greece—I speak truly and do not lie—I found no hospitable bishops. They are at the same time poor and rich; rich in gold, with which they play from full coffers; poor in servants and implements. Alone they seat themselves at their bare little tables, placing before themselves their ship-biscuit; and then not drinking, but sipping their bath-water from a very small glass. They themselves sell and buy; they themselves close and open their doors; they are their own stewards, their own ass-drivers, their own "capones"—but ha! I was going to write "caupones," but the thing itself is so true that I was compelled to write the truth even when I did not wish to—for really, I say, they are "caupones"—that is, eunuchs—which is against the ecclesiastical law; and they are also "capones," that is, tavern keepers; which is also against the canons. One can say of them:
Lettuce doth end the meal that with lettuce hath had its beginning,
Lettuce, which too was wont to close the meals of their fathers.[1]
I would consider them happy in their poverty if this were an imitation of the poverty of Christ. But nothing impels them to this save sordid gain and the cursed thirst for gold. But may God spare them! I think they do this because their churches are tributary. For the bishop of Leucate swore to me that every year his church had to pay to Nicephorus a hundred pieces of gold; and in like manner the other churches, more or less, according to their means. How wicked this is is demonstrated by the acts of our most holy father Joseph; for when he, in the time of famine, made all Egypt tributary to Pharaoh, he permitted the land of the priests to be free from tribute.
- ↑ V. Martial, Ep. xiii.
