Letter 8009: Radegund, mind fertile for God, life of the sisters —

To Radegund — When She Enclosed Herself Radegund, mind fertile for God, life of the sisters — you who burn your limbs in subduing them, to nourish your soul: observing your yearly vows, today you return to be enclosed; my mind will wander, seeking you again. How quickly you hide your light from our little eyes! Without you I am weighed down too much by a pressing cloud. With all others shut out, you will be kept in a single cave: but you enclose us more — we whom you make to be outside. And although you hide here, a fugitive for these brief days, a month here will be longer than a swift year. You steal away the time as if to be unseen by a lover, though even when I gaze on you I count it too little. Yet in my prayer I will come together with you as one, and I follow here in spirit where the place forbids me to go. This I pray: may the joys of Easter bring you back unharmed, and may a doubled light return to us alike.

IX Ad eandem cum se reclauderet Mens fecunda deo, Radegundis, vita sororum, quae ut foveas animam membra domando cremas: annua vota colens hodie claudenda recurris: errabunt animi te repetendo mei. lumina quam citius nostris abscondis ocellis! nam sine te nimium nube premente gravor. omnibus exclusis uno retineberis antro: nos magis includis, quos facis esse foris. et licet huc lateas brevibus fugitiva diebus, longior hic mensis quam celer annus erit. tempora subducis, ceu non videaris amanti, cum vos dum cerno hoc mihi credo parum. sed tamen ex voto tecum veniemus in unum et sequor huc animo quo vetat ire locus. hoc precor, incolumem referant te gaudia paschae, et nobis pariter lux geminata redit.