TO BONIFACE IV. To the holy lord and apostolic Father in Christ, Pope, Columba a sinner in Christ sends greeting. Long now have I desired in spirit to visit and console all who preside over the apostolic see — prelates most sweet to all the faithful, and Fathers most reverend by reason of their apostolic honour; yet until now, by reason of the diverse chills of this age and the tumultuous seditions of the nations lying between, as if shut in by a beam of the sea, I have been unable to satisfy my vows — barred, that is, by the impassable back not so much of the visible as of the intelligible deep, which, as you know full well, has been set against us.
Therefore once and twice Satan hindered the bearers of our letters, written long ago and placed in the appendices below, to Pope Gregory of blessed memory; which letters are now sent on from our lowliness to be offered also to you and examined — not so much, as the words show, through a proud and diabolical presumption, as for the observance of the rite of our region, which trampled upon the necessary proof of the true reckoning, since the books of our province do not mount to the same termini, and that book of the Gauls — which is not received by our men as masters in two passages — as, in the letters of our littleness, we strove with all our might, though presumptuously, to indicate to the aforesaid blessed Pope.
And so, lest by repeating the same things I should breed weariness in writing to you also, rather than reserve for you, as is fitting, the means of testing the reasoning of both authorities — together with the becoming offices of greetings — I direct to you only my prayers, through our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and through the unity of our faith which is mutual, by which we believe in heart and confess with mouth one Father of ours who is in heaven, of whom are all things, and one our Redeemer the Son of God, through whom are all things, and one Holy Spirit in whom are all things (1 Cor. 8:6; Rom.
11:36), and we pour forth our confession that there is one Lord in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, namely that each several Person is the full Lord, and all three Persons together one Lord — that you may grant to us, pilgrims and labourers, the solace of your kindly judgment, whereby — if it be not against the faith — you may strengthen the tradition of our elders, so that we may, by your judgment, be able to keep in our pilgrimage the rite of Easter as we received it from our forefathers. For it is plain that we are in our own homeland so long as we accept none of the rules of these Gauls, but, sitting in the deserts, troublesome to none, abide by the rules of our elders; in defence of which we have written, as I said, both to you the apostolic Fathers,
and to these our neighbours, our brethren and fathers in Christ, these letters which this little sheet commends to you; that, since while we could not satisfy by merits — being rather men of tumult than of reasoning — we ask the point of your mature authority, that by judgment we may be able to live among the just with the ecclesiastical peace of unity, even as the holy Fathers, Polycarp and Pope Anicetus, parting without scandal of faith, nay rather with charity entire, each keeping what he received, and abiding in that wherein he was called, have taught us. Farewell, sweetest Pope in Christ;
mindful of us in your holy prayers beside the ashes of the saints, and in your most pious decrees, in accordance with the hundred and fifty authors of the synod of Constantinople, judging that the churches of God established among the barbarous nations should live by their own laws, even as they were instructed by the Fathers.