To the holy lords and venerable fathers Laurentius, Marcellinus, and Petrus, and to all the bishops residing in the City, King Theodoric. You indeed have done a thing befitting your purpose, in choosing rather to deliberate upon your second return than to abandon the appointed council in imitation of another's easiness; lest, when all departed under a manifest plan of desertion of judgment, a greater crowd should shake the royal city with seditious tumults. But we did not wish that the matter of the holy congregation's examination should be drawn out under this delay, nor that the minds of the whole community should hang the more heavily in suspense by prejudgment. For neither can delay of decision suit the tranquillity of the City, nor can a sentence of discord befit the priestly purpose.
Therefore, having received with annoyance the confusion which arose, and at the departure of the others — who, on account of the tumult that occurred either by the rashness or the fault of certain men, abandoned the proceedings they had begun a second time (though they, if anyone had said anything, would rather have thought to reside in the City after your example, awaiting a remedy for these matters from the ordering of our providence) — since our thought scattered itself into many ways, the care of counsel turned itself to this path: that we have decreed the same number of priests who had earlier been summoned to convene again on the day of the Kalends of September.
Therefore it becomes Your Holiness, burdened though you are, to await the presence of the rest, so that, the tumult being checked and the dissension removed which arose from all, the cause may be carried through by all. For we did not think that the council should be recalled to Ravenna, as you hope, while we are moved by the labor of some and by the age of others, prepared, that unless a second assembly should set an end to the cause by a synodal judgment according to your desire, by which you ask us to be present, then, our occupations at Rome being set aside out of love of quiet, we ourselves should rather come to Rome, God being its author, so that, with us at least present, this great cause may obtain its conclusion without confusion and discord, according to the fear of God.
So that the royal city may no longer be wearied by the tempest of tumults, but may return to quiet by the equity of your judgment. Lest the delay seem burdensome to you, it is right to weigh the matter according to your providence, whether it be convenient, or whether it must be endured under the tranquillity of our times, to lose the Roman state under uncertain conditions in some decision of the council and under this contention. In another hand: Pray for us, lords and venerable fathers. Given on the sixth day before the Ides of August, in the consulship of Rufus Magnus Faustus Avienus, most distinguished man (in the year of Christ 501).