Primary source · Latin

The Libellus Precum (Petition to the Emperors)

Faustinus & Marcellinus · c. AD 384

What this text is

The petition of two rigorist priests against persecution by the establishment church — incidentally the earliest witness to Gregory of Elvira's confessorship and to Potamius of Lisbon's defection 'for an imperial estate.'

Public-domain translations

Working translation (from the Latin)

Gregory, bishop of Elvira in Spain, could never be driven to the communion of the prevaricators: when Osius himself lapsed, Gregory withstood him... Potamius, bishop of Lisbon, passed over to the Arian falsehood — won, it was said, by the promise of an imperial estate.

Manuscript witnesses

Collectio Avellana manuscripts

11th c. onward

The petition preserved as document 2 of the great Roman documentary collection.

SURVIVING WITNESSES

Günther, Collectio Avellana (CSEL 35)

1895

The critical edition of the collection.

PRINTED PROXY

Provenance

Rome; a Luciferian petition to Valentinian II and Theodosius

Editions & scholarship

Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.

Figures named in this text (3)