CHAPTER I. — Although I have now received no letters from your Piety, yet, since the most glorious prince has written, I have rejoiced in his esteem no less than if the addresses of your Serenity too had been rendered to me. Hence I ought to keep to the accustomed practice of a debt of duty, whereby I might signify that I rejoice in the well-being of your Clemency, and might beg God with unceasing prayers that He preserve you, and the Roman commonwealth, and the Catholic Church in all prosperity. But of the fervour of your faith, by which you unceasingly offer to the Lord the sacrifice of praise, I cannot recount how great thanks I give to God: for we know that the princes of our time possess not only royal power, but also priestly teaching.
For as my brother Julian the bishop has made known, there have reached us in copies of your ordinances those most salutary decrees, by which you have deigned to chastise the insane ignorance of the monks by sparing them, and to punish it by instructing: so that, if the divine mercy shall have turned them to repentance, they may be washed clean, with many tears, both from their abominable murders and from the blasphemies of the heretics. CHAPTER II.
— But as to the fact that the most pious emperor wished me to send letters to all the bishops who took part in the Synod of Chalcedon, whereby I might confirm those things which were there defined concerning the rule of faith, I have willingly fulfilled it, lest anyone's deceitful pretence should wish my sentence to be held uncertain; since through the bishop of Constantinople — to whom I abundantly signified my joy — it could have come to the knowledge of all what I had written, had he not preferred to keep silent my joy rather than to publish the repulse of his own ambition. To my brother and fellow-bishop Julian, to whom I have entrusted my solicitude in the cause of the faith, I ask that you deign to grant that confidence whereby he may be able to suggest to your Piety those things which shall be profitable to the universal Church. Given on the twelfth day before the Kalends of April, in the consulship of the most illustrious Opilio.