Epistola Ad Sergium Papam

The Letter of Saint Justus of Urgell. To Pope Sergius. To my lord, truly most pious, and abundantly filled with the grace of God, and always blessed in Christ, Lord Pope Sergius, Justus, bishop. Knowing that you have labored with such diligent zeal for the relief of the poor, so as to gain for them temporal consolation and for yourself eternal reward, and now judging that you have sufficiently turned yourself entirely, for the cultivation of the soul, to the words of God, from which you were never empty, I have taken care to send you a certain spiritual gift in a physical form; which, if Christ, not by our merit but by His own gift, should make most pleasing to you, it may perhaps come about that, in the days of fasting, you will come to table in some way refreshed, and before you take food you will perceive that you have tasted something beforehand. In saying this, I do not strive arrogantly to insinuate the merit of this sending before you approve it; but, with charity intervening, in which I possess you entirely, presuming upon your mind as upon my own, I trust without any doubt that it will be acceptable to you. Therefore, not being unaware that you are the brother of my heart in Christ Jesus, I have thought that a little book on the treatment of the canonical book which is entitled the Song of Songs, which I recently published with Christ enlightening me, should first be offered to you.

In which you may recognize that you have received not so much our own work, but rather that which is yours, because you love it so. I beg you to review it often with that same care with which you are vigilant in Christ, so that if you perceive anything there needing correction, you may advise me with complete freedom. And thus you may offer it to the other brothers in Christ to be read, or, if it should please you, to be copied. And so, since it has happened that, because the membranes were giving out, they received the same text in smaller letters, in equal quires, and it was not carefully surrounded by crafted margins; if you judge the aforementioned work to be of some merit, because this very thing, as I have said, is yours by the Lord’s gift, you will take care as soon as possible that it be more usefully arranged by a more diligent copy. If this work should turn out worthy of praise, I will acknowledge you as its author before Christ; if, however, it should be open to reproach, because it belongs to both of us, I will immediately take you as my partner, because it befits you so well to be joined to this which God has bestowed, that you may receive not reproach for negligence, but the fruit of charity for your industry: so that our brothers, who feast on the treatises of the Fathers who came before, may also delight in some way to feed upon these newer works which we offer them out of charity, not on account of our own merit, but because of God’s gift and their own good will. Now, most holy one, fare well in Christ, and cherish our lowliness with your holy prayers in the Lord.