Letter 11

11. Without address, on friendship

Having by the grace of God spent the holy day together with our children, and having truly kept a perfect feast to the Lord because of their surpassing love toward God, we have sent them forward in health to your nobility, praying to the God who loves mankind that to them too may be given a peaceful angel as helper and fellow-traveller, and that you may be reached by them in health and in every peaceful condition; so that, wherever you may be, serving the Lord and giving thanks to Him, you may gladden us, while we are in the world, as we hear of your affairs. And if the holy God should grant you to be freed sooner from these cares, we entreat you to prefer nothing to a stay among us. For I think you will not find any who so love you and lay claim to the friendship that is among you. So long, then, as the Holy One ordains this separation, deign on every occasion to console us with letters.