no heresy which would have rendered a synod necessary for the correction of an error which did not exist. Since thou declarest the faith of the Saxons to be young, I am willing also to affirm the same; for always the faith of Christ is young and not old with those whose works second their faith. Faith is there not young but old where works do not accompany it; but faith is scorned, as it were, for its age, like a worn-out garment. But I know for certain of one synod that was held in Saxony in which it was decreed and confirmed that it was more fitting to fight with the sword than with the pen, and better to submit to death than to turn one's back to the enemy. Thy own army has experienced the truth of this." In my heart I said: " And may they (the Saxons) soon have occasion to show how warlike they are! "
On this same day, after midday, he ordered me to meet him on his return from the palace, although I was so weak and changed that the women who, before when they met me, called out in astonishment "Mana,[1] mana," now, pitying my misery, beat their breasts with their hands and said: " Poor sick man." What then, raising my hands to Heaven, I wished him,—Nicephorus, namely, as he approached—and ye who were absent: oh that it might be fulfilled! But ye may well believe me, he made me laugh not a little, for he sat on an impatient and unbridled horse—a very little man on a very big beast. My mind pictured to itself one of those dolls which your Slavonians tie on to a foal, allowing it then to follow its mother without a rein.
After this I was led back to my fellow citizens and fellow inmates five lions, into the aforesaid hated abode; where, during a space of three weeks I was treated to the conversation of no one save my companions. On account of which my mind pictured to itself that Nicephorus wished never to let me go, and my unbounded sadness brought on one illness after another, so that I should have died had not the Mother of God, by her prayers, obtained my life from the Creator and His Son; as was shown to me not through a fancied but through a true vision.
- ↑ Untranslatable.
