Letters (Epistulae)

...and doctrine was growing, and each one crossed over from that faction as he learned and as he was willing and able, even while among those men the most demented crowds of lost people were disturbing the peace of the innocent in various cases. Who was not compelled to fear his own slave if he had fled to their protection? Who dared to threaten an aggressor, or even an author of such violence? Who could demand a payment from a merchant, or any debtor at all, if he sought their aid and protection? Through the fear of clubs, fires, and imminent death from those wicked servants, contracts were broken so that free men would depart. Documents extorted from debtors were returned. Whoever had despised their harsh words was compelled to do what they ordered through even harsher beatings. The houses of innocent people who had offended them were either leveled to the ground or burned with fire. Some heads of households, born in honorable station and raised with generous refinement, were barely carried away alive after their slaughters, or were yoked to the mill and driven to turn it in a circle like contemptible beasts of burden, urged on by the whip. For what help from civil authorities was of any value against them through the laws? Which official dared to breathe in their presence? Who, against their will, exacted a debt? Who attempted to avenge those who were extinguished by their slaughters, except that their own madness demanded penalties from them, when some by provoking the swords of men—whom they terrorized with death so that they might be struck by them—and others by casting themselves into various precipices, others through water, others through fire, were sending themselves everywhere into voluntary deaths and throwing away their feral souls by means of punishments brought upon themselves?