Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/472

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
452
SELECT HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.

sending to me from among bis most delicate dishes a fat goat, of which he himself had partaken, deliciously (?) stuffed with garlic, onions and leeks; steeped in fish sauce: a dish which I could have wished just then to be upon your table, so that ye who do not believe the delicacies of the sacred emperor to be desirable, should at length become believers at this sight!

When eight days had passed and the Bulgarians had already departed, thinking that I thought very highly of his table he compelled me, ill as I was, to dine with him in the same place. There was present also, with many bishops, the patriarch; in whose presence he asked me many questions concerning the Holy Scriptures; which, the divine Spirit inspiring me, I expounded with elegance. And at last, in order to make merry over ye, he asked me what synods we recognized. When I had mentioned to him Nicea, Chalcedon, Ephesus, Carthage, Ancyra, Constantinople,—"Ha, Ha, Ha," said he, "you have forgotten to mention Saxony, and, if you ask us why our books do not contain it, I answer that your beliefs are too young and have not yet been able to reach us."

I answered: " That member of the body where the infirmity has its seat must be burned with the burning iron. All heresies have emanated from you, have flourished among you; by us, that is by the western nations they have been here strangled, here put an end to.—A Roman or a Pavian synod, although they often took place, I do not count here. A Roman clerk, indeed, afterwards the universal pope Gregory who is called by you Dialogus, freed Eutychius the heretical patriarch of Constantinople from his heresy. This same Eutychius said, nor did he only say but taught, proclaimed and kept writing, that we would assume at the Resurrection not the true flesh which we have here, but a certain fantastic flesh. The book containing this error was, in an orthodox manner, burned by G-regory. Ennodius, moreover, bishop of Pavia, was, on account of a certain other heresy, sent here, that is to Constantinople, by the Roman patriarch. He repressed it, and restored the orthodox catholic teaching.—The race of the Saxons, from the time when it received the holy baptism and the knowledge of God, has been spotted by