Once the tokens of the crimes committed at Alexandria saddened me, and so wounded my mind by the very monstrousness of the deed, that I know not with what tears, with what lamentation, it is to be bewailed; and I deservedly cry out with that prophetic voice: 'Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears?'
Nevertheless, anticipating the complaints of your Charity, I supplicated the most clement and most Christian prince concerning remedies for such great evils, and through our sons Gerontius and Olympius I earnestly demanded, at various times, that he command the Church of that city — in which so many Catholic doctors flourished — to be purged of the condemned heresy, and that he suffer the parricidal minds (whom neither the veneration of the place nor of the time could deter from the blood of their own ruler) to obtain nothing of his clemency; especially since they desire that the Council of Chalcedon be reconsidered unto the overthrow of the faith.
Accordingly, the same cause which expelled you from your own dwellings ought to console the endurance of your Charity, since it is certain that afflicted minds, and those suffering adversities for His name's sake, are by no means deprived of the Lord's protection. Bear therefore magnanimously, and, thinking upon that country which is yours, rejoice in your present pilgrimage. Far be from you the grief of exile; nor have any sorrow of this weariness, you who know that the Apostle glories even in very many perils for the faith of the Lord. You have, together with the prepared rewards of recompense, the Judge of this contest as its witness. Let no one flee this labour, whose wage is to reign or to live for ever.
Let the feet of all who contend be fixed in the courts of Jerusalem, who, in the hope of that recompense, will be able to dread neither the enemies' camps nor their battles. Over the remnants of a foe cast down and likewise stricken by the whole community, victory is never arduous nor the palm difficult, especially over those whose authors you already see prostrate. With assiduous prayers, therefore (as he himself also has not been silent), seek the favour of the most Christian emperor, which, God being propitious, is ready:
that, according to the writings which I have sent, he may fortify the cause of the common faith with that devotion of mind which we have approved, and that, for his piety's sake, he may arrange the return of your Charity, all prejudices which have been generated by the fury of the heretics being removed, and that he may make each and every province and all the Churches, with their priests, rejoice in the unshaken peace of Christ. Given on the Kalends of December, in the consulship of Constantinus and Rufus.