8. Anonymous student
Letter 8. A Student to King Vratislav
God the eternal king, you who establish the end and beginning
Of all things ordered well through you,
May you grant to King Vratislav, reknowned above everything,
That he may live happily, and vanquish every transgression against himself.
Lord, no one, no one at all, more faithfully than me can avert divine judgment through prayer so as to prolong your condition of health and honor by God’s disposition [and] at his pleasure.
What I say, saving your grace, lord, I still hardly send forth, I who have now composed for you these [lines], although unworthy of your renown. For often I offered you my letters, both in your praise and on account of my need—I do not say however never to have born fruit, but not to have from them a very worthy reponse. But nevertheless I know as true that your magnificence is not so much to be blamed as much as—as I will say openly—the envy of readers to be censured, who constantly contend that, by submitting my boyishness to you, I disparage myself in addressing your mercy. I might be a boy, as I hear them whisper falsely, but I give thanks all the more to God, who makes the tongues of infants fluent, for the fact that I, learned by his gift, a boy in the presence of those old men, do not blush to serve God and you. But lest I detain you, lord, with many words, if you are anxious about my service, I serve no one more willingly. To this the love of my kinsman especially impels me; from him I will not willingly separate myself unless compelled by greatest necessity. What more?
May you attain the joys of eternal life.