To Theodoric, King of the Franks, on His Envoys and the Peace

Gregory to Theodoric, and so on. [a]

We have received with joy your letter telling us of your health and safety, and from it we see that you so surpass your years in good sense as to make it plain that it is for the happiness of the nation of the Franks that the government of the kingdom has been entrusted to your excellency by the favor of heavenly grace. And among other things this in you is enough to call for praise and admiration: that in whatever you know our daughter, your most excellent grandmother, desires for the love of Almighty God, you hurry most earnestly to lend your help, so that by this you may reign both happily here and, in the life to come, with the angels. Since this comes, by God’s gift, from great discernment of judgment, we have fulfilled what your excellency desires so quickly and so gladly as to show by the speed with which we carried it out how much your good deeds have pleased us.

Further, greeting you with a father’s tenderness, we let you know that all the matters you charged the illustrious men, your servants Burgoaldus and Varmaricarius, our sons, to transact with us have been set out to us in a private interview. And we praised you greatly, because you both attend wisely, as befits you, to the present, and also hurry so to provide for security in the future, by a lasting peace between you and the state, that, being made one, you may wholesomely extend the stability of your kingdom to all time. On this we will let you know in time to come what it may please God to order. For our part, whatever proves advantageous and conducive to peace, we desire and strive to bring about. Only this: as our will is in regard to what is fitting, so may the will of God be, without whom we can do nothing. May the Holy Trinity make you advance always in his fear, and so dispose your heart in a moderation pleasing to him, as to grant your subjects joy from you now, and grant you joy from himself without end hereafter. [b]