Epistola Ad Recaredum Regem

Letter of the Monk Tarra to King Reccared. To be suggested to my most glorious, triumphant, and invincibly faithful lord, the most pious King Reccared, from your servant, the unworthy Tarra. Most clement lord and illustrious prince, you have commanded your servant, who was well buried, to be unearthed from the tomb and exposed to the world. And although this clemency is royal, yet the servant, obeying the king, feels mournful as he goes where he does not wish, by command of the order. For that beloved John cries out: Jesus was unwilling to go into Judea, because the Jews were unwilling to kill him. But although these things are known to have been accomplished by mysteries, because his hour had not yet come, nevertheless, if life avoids death, I would indeed call myself death-bearing, I who am pierced by tongues, who am always suspect, who think I am not unmindful of the illustrious memory of your highness, especially because, long oppressed by the pontiff of the temple, I was heading, unwilling, driven from my homeland, cast out by unspeakable deeds. But my pious protector, my lord, hid me in his tabernacle; in the day of evils he protected me, saying: In silence and hope will be your strength. And behold, O Lord, by your command I am moved, unwilling, from silence to clamors, indeed from rest to labors. Yet I faithfully warn, by commands once heard in obscene proverbs: that the unwary one yielded, lest the one to be punished exceed; for, as the prophet rightly says: I will not hide your mercy, many synagogues.

Therefore, by that same pious guardian by whom and at whose true command I submit myself unwillingly, we disclose the Lord's ten commandments, hitherto sealed, in a composed style. And so, my lord, neither weighed down by infamy nor puffed up by praise—nor I who speak, but the Spirit of the Father who speaks in us—I have been defamed by the foul stain of intercourse, by which I was polluted in the Caulianian community of monks, and fraudulently accused of the worst crime, as if they cast out an unborn child unjustly condemned, and the whole earth mourned over me: no one was found who would recognize me and do me good. But let your most ample tranquility know that their voice is false: for at all times, under no heaven, by any rank of men, lay or monk, has anyone ever sustained me as committing any such deed; I myself never carried such a thing in the city of Mérida or in all of Lusitania; I never learned that whole harlotry; but in Lusitania, from first to last, one wife remained with me, taken by fateful death; nor is it fitting for any monk to yearn again for a woman, nor have my lips touched any in a kiss.

And so that what is heard may be believed more firmly when spoken, I bring forth a faithful witness, ever present, by whom I always labor, standing through the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by His right hand with which He crowns the saints, and the hinges of heaven and the fabric of the world, which He Himself founded by virtue and word, that the present page, and every assessed thing, is not defrauded by deceit, witnessed through Christ Jesus our Lord: but I raise praises, though undeserving, to God who bestows good things, who reproaches no one, and He Himself is struck so that He may release the bound, and may lead those whom He has so far kept unharmed to that new homeland: these things, O most glorious prince, rejoice that they have emerged in your times, oppressed by deceits, and raised by deceit, let the repressed be bridled, so that, aided by the laws of Christ, both sides may meet the abbot at the wedding of the lamb, which may spare your golden trophy, far from your kingdom. Let us serve our Lord with effect in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.