Letter 15: I write to report and to commend myself to your pastoral care, as I try to do regularly when the press of other...

Of King Sigismund to Pope Symmachus; or: Dictated by Bishop Avitus [of Vienne] under the name of the lord King Sigismund, to Symmachus, pope of the City [of Rome]. Through the deacon Julian, King Sigismund asks holy relics of Pope Symmachus, from whom on another occasion he had already, some time before, received them. 1. Since I do not presume to deny to those who ask the sacred pledges of relics, with which you have enriched your Gaul through me by a spiritual recompense, it is necessary that I too should request the patronage of the saints from the well-watered spring of your apostolate. And although there is still among us, from your gift, what ought to be celebrated by the zeal of the catholic religion, yet it is also fitting that this be understood as a matter of just devotion: that by the dispatched services of a written discourse we may catch at those conversations by which your pontificate either taught me when present by its admonitions, or won me when absent by its intercessions. Nor does the present page's homage embrace an opportunity newly found; but with the deacon sent to you as bearer, the venerable man Julian, we come together in spirit to the prelate of the universal Church. For by the remembrance of benefits, desire grows; and the things which either your pontifical kindness or your royal courtesy bestowed upon us in your Italy can never be washed from my senses, since, after a familiarity to be preferred to the advantages of all munificence, because there it more freely loosed my return, it has the more tenaciously bound my affection. 2. Let more attentive prayer, as for what remains, devote itself on your behalf. For with the increase of the sheep the pastoral guardianship grows. Presenting us at the sacred thresholds of the apostles by assiduous commemoration, obtain advancement, while I live, for your special preacher, where you obtained the beginning. Frequent us with letters, in so far as possibility allows the freedom of the mind, by which your teaching and well-being may flourish for us. And as we hoped above, confer upon us the protections of the venerable relics to be sought: by the worship of which we may deserve to have both the most blessed Peter always in power, and you in your office. [The following lines belong to an editorial apparatus and survive only in garbled fragments: "...although reason requires that to your fraternity the first-fruits of our priesthood... yet to keep silent the benefits of God. Then there follows the letter of Felix to Caesarius (chapter...)." A footnote remarks that in various tracts on the third session of the Council of Chalcedon, Leo is uncertainly styled "universal archbishop"; but although that honorific name was given to the prelate of the apostolic see, Gregory nevertheless protests, in Book... Indiction 1, letter 30, that it should not be ascribed to himself, and in Book... Indiction 13, letter 20, testifies that his predecessors were of such modesty that none of them ever consented to be called by this name of singularity.]

Sigismundi regis ad Symmachum papam seu ^ Ab Avito episcopo dietata sub nomine domni Sigismundi regiB ad Symmaohiun papam UrbiB« Per Julianiim diaconum gacras reliquias Sigismundus rex a Symmacko papa p. If peiit , a quo alias Jam pridem acceperat. 1. Dum sacra reliquiarum pignora, quibus per me Galliam vestram spiritali remuueratione ditastis, negare petentibus non prae- sumo, me quoque sanctorum patrocinia postulare al> irriguo vestri apostolatus foute necesse est. Quamquam etsi est adhuc apud nos de dono vestro, quod catholicae religionis debeat studio celebrari, etiam illud tamen convenit justae devotionis intelligi^ ut directis litterarii sermonis officiis alloquia illa captemus, quibus me ponti- ficatus vester vel praesentem monitLs docuit vel absentem interce^ sionibus acquisivit. Nec nunc paginae praesentis obsequium reperta opportunitas complectitur; sed destinato ad vos diacono portitore, viro venerabili Juliano, ad universalis *) Ecclesiae praesulem spiritn repraesentante concurrimus. Crescit quippe benefieiorum recorda- tione desiderium: nec unquam meis elui sensibus possunt, quae nobis apud Italiam vestram vel pontificalis benignitas vel civilitas^) re- galis impendit, quum post familiaritatem totius munificentiae commo- dis praeferendam, quia istic liberius laxavit reditum^ illiuc tenacius vinxit aiFectum. 2. Attentior pro vestris^), quod superest, incumbat oratio. In augmento namque oviuni crescit custodia pastoralis. Sacris nos apostolorum liminibus commemoratione assidua praesentantes , spe- ciali dum vixero praedicatori *) vestro, ubi obtinuistis initium, im- petrate profectum. Litteris nos, in quantum possibilitas patitur ani misda. Quamvis ratio exigai ut fratemitati tuae nastri sacerdotii primitias musy tamen Dei beneficia tacere. Deindc sequitur epistola Felicis ad Caeea- rium (c^'). ') Variis in libellis actioni 3 concilii Calchedoncnsis ineertiB Leo um^ersaHi archiepiscopus nuncupatur. Scd licct illi apostolicae sedis praesuli datam nt houorificum illud nomen, obtestatur tamen Gregorius lib. al. 8 Ind. 1 episl 30; ne sibi tribuatur, ac lib. al. 5. Ind. 13 epist. 20, decessores sqos ea modestiA fuisse testatur, ut nulius eorum unquam hoc singtdaritatis nomine mii eotuenserit. V \ \ EPISTOLAE 17 — 19. 73U— libertas^ quibus nobis doctrina et incolumitas vestra floreat, fre- quentate. Et ut supra speravimus, ambieuda nobis venerabilium reliquiarum conferte praesidia : quorum cultu et beatissimum Petrum in virtute, et vos semper habere mereamur in munere.