Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/30

18 many sufferings during his exile. Evagrius, as I said above, hands down to us fragments of two letters of Nestorius to the governor of Thebais. From these we learn that Nestorius was captured in Oasis by invading bands of barbarians and then, being released, surrendered himself, by a letter written in Panopolis, into the hands of the governor, in order not to come under the suspicion of having fled. But then, so the second letter teaches us, he was sent by order of the governor first to Elephantine and, before reaching it, back to Panopolis, then into the surrounding district and from there to a fourth place of exile. The hardships of these continual removals and severe bodily pains caused by an injured hand and side had brought him to the brink of death. We cannot help being moved when we see him in his first letter from Panopolis, written directly after his release from capture, asking the governor that he should see to a lawful continuation of his exile, lest in all future generations should be told the tragic history that it was better to be captured by barbarians than to take refuge with the Roman Empire. But these occurrences happened soon after 435, for in the first letter Nestorius mentions the synod of Ephesus as a fact of the recent past. Scholars therefore could suppose and actually