Letter 16
Maurice, to our most noble and beloved daughter Queen Brunhild, greetings.
We have received your letter with the pleasure that a communication from so remarkable a ruler always brings. The reports that reach us of your governance of Austrasia during your son's minority speak of a woman of exceptional intelligence and political skill, and your letter confirms what those reports have conveyed.
You ask for recognition as a full diplomatic interlocutor; we grant it gladly. The ambassador you send will be received at our court with the same ceremony as any royal representative, and the communications you address to us directly will receive the same attention as those from Childebert himself.
On the alliance: our positions are, I believe, well aligned. The Lombard problem admits of no permanent solution that leaves them in possession of the Italian territories they have seized, and the cooperation of Frankish forces is essential to any campaign that has a reasonable prospect of success. We are committed to this alliance and we will honor its financial obligations as agreed.
I add a personal note: you left the Visigothic kingdom as a young woman to marry into the Frankish world, and you have navigated that world with a skill that would be remarkable in a man who had been formed in it from birth. The Christian faith that sustained your family in Visigothic Spain has evidently sustained you in circumstances considerably more demanding than that comfortable world.
We pray for your safety and that of your son.
Maurice, Emperor
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
That I have not replied to the many letters of your Blessedness attribute not to sluggishness on my part, but to weakness, seeing that, on account of my sins, when Ariulph, coming to the Roman city, killed some and mutilated others, I was affected with such great sadness as to fall into a colic sickness. But I wondered much why it was that that ...
In the first place this makes me sad; that your Fraternity writes to me with a double heart, exhibiting one sort of blandishment in letters, but another sort with the tongue in secular intercourse. In the next place, it grieves me that my brother John even to this day retains on his tongue those gibes which notaries while still boys are wont to ...
Gregory to Adeodatus, Primate bishop of the province of Numidia. After what manner the charity of affection has bound your Fraternity to usward the tenour of your letters has evidently shown; and they have afforded us great matter of rejoicing, in that we have found them to be composed in a spirit of loving-kindness, and to glow with affection w...