Agatha, to Quintian, consul to Decius Trajanus, Emperor, from prison, February anno Domini 251

Theology Today, Oct 2000 by Fendt, Gene

There is, my love, no garden save our God;

why, then, do you complain the world does not content you? or think to take your pleasure and your ease

upon my breasts? It is not love if I should let you rest there, or pillow where my stomach rises from the cleft where you have lost yourself

or wish to-our God does not allow it:

Imperial marriage makes me a part of all your wealth though lady of it; to your joy I shall

refuse it. No sacrament of love attempts

such transubstantiations. Your hands must offer otherwise, else, to you, these breasts are prisons, deaths, contempts. Seek not the plausible unions of your mortal will,

but love impossibly, or kill.

Gene Fendt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. His most recent books are Platonic Errors: Plato, a Kind of Poet (1998) and Is Hamlet a Religious Drama? An Essay on a Question in Kierkegaard (1999).