The Second Charge: Letters to Magnentius

As for the second slander, that I have written letters to the usurper (I do not wish to speak his name), I beg you to investigate and test the matter in any way you please and through anyone you approve. The outrageousness of the charge so confounds me that I am completely at a loss how to act. Believe me, most religious emperor, many times I turned the matter over in my mind, but I could not believe that anyone could be so mad as to tell such a lie. But when this charge, like the former one, was spread abroad by the Arians, and they boasted that they had handed you a copy of the letter, I was all the more amazed. I used to spend sleepless nights arguing against the charge as if my accusers were present. Then, suddenly breaking out into a loud cry, I would at once fall to my prayers, asking with groans and tears that I might obtain a favorable hearing from you. And now that by the grace of the Lord I have obtained such a hearing, I am again at a loss how to begin my defense; for as often as I try to speak, I am held back by my horror at the deed. In the case of your departed brother, the slanderers did at least have a plausible excuse for what they alleged. I had been admitted to see him, and he had been kind enough to write to your brotherly affection about me, and he had often sent for me to come to him and had honored me when I came. But as for the traitor Magnentius, “the Lord is witness, and his anointed is witness,” I do not know him and was never acquainted with him. [a]

What correspondence, then, could there be between people so entirely unknown to each other? What reason could have led me to write to such a man? How could I have begun my letter, if I had written to him? Could I have said, “You have done well to murder the man who honored me, whose kindness I will never forget”? Or, “I approve of your conduct in destroying our Christian friends and most faithful brothers”? Or, “I approve of your butchering those who welcomed me so kindly at Rome: for example, your departed aunt Eutropia, whose character matched her name, that worthy man Abuterius, the most faithful Spirantius, and many other excellent people”?