23. But I will not call the words of devils as a testimony to the martyrs: let the sacred sufferings of the martyrs be established by their own supernatural acts; judges indeed they have, namely, those that have been cleansed, witnesses, namely those that have been dispossessed. Better than that of devils is their voice who came diseased and are now healed, better is that voice which the martyrs blood sends forth, for blood has a loud voice which reaches from earth to heaven. Ye have read those words of God, _Thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me!_ This blood cries by its purple stains, it cries by its signal efficacy, it cries by its triumphant suffering. We have granted your request and have put off till to-day the burial of the relics which should have taken place yesterday. LETTER XXIII. A.D. 386. THIS letter is addressed to the Bishops of the province of Æmilia, which, as forming part of the political diocese of Italy, was under the ecclesiastical superintendence of the Bishop of Milan, who exercised the powers, if he had not the title, of Exarch. (See Bingham Antiq. ix. 1, § 6, 8.) The Bishops apply to him for his decision as to the proper day for observing Easter in the following year, A.D. 387, in which the first day of the week fell on the fourteenth day of the moon, or, as it is called here, the ‘fourteenth moon.’ This was a question which for long troubled the Church, and divided the East and West, and much importance was attached to it. The whole question is fully discussed in Dict. of Christ. Antiq. under ‘Easter,’ in a learned article by the Rev. L. Hensley. Some interesting remarks on it, in connection with disputes in England, may be seen in Prof. Bright’s Early English Ch. Hist. pp. 76–79, and 193–200. Mr. Hensley has kindly drawn up the following table, which exhibits at a glance the points on which S. Ambrose enters in this letter. TABLE OF EASTER FROM A.D. 373 TO A.D. 387.