The Life of Saint Boniface

To the lords venerable and truly in Christ most dear, Lul and Megingoz colleagues in the episcopacy, Willibald, priest in the Lord, though unworthy.

Paying due complaisance of obedience to your holiness, but with no confident reliance upon my own literary training, I have cheerfully obeyed in will and act your pious fatherly command. With my feeble strength I have begun and carried through unto the end the difficult task which ye imposed upon me. But I beseech that if the result shall be otherwise than as your wish desires, ye weigh justly the weakness of my infirmity and the loftiness of the task laid upon me, since it is the strongest proof of my regard that I do not refuse obedience to your sublime command. If, on the other hand, I shall accomplish anything worthy and that shall profit our times, assuredly it must be ascribed to the divine gift, and to your command and earnest desire; since sometimes the pious wish of one who earnestly desires may be likened unto the hand of an who presses the oilpress, and by the strength of its pressing obtains at least a little of the sweet fruit of the longed for knowledge, and, bestowing it, revives the famishing. For your holiness has determined to make equal, even to prefer, the foolish to the wise, and the less capable to the prudent, and to commit to me in my ignorance that which surely without effort ye could have presented in the language of the wise. But I entreat that the supplication of continual prayer may bedew him whom the oilpress of your command hath pressed. I entreat that his mind, dulled by the fog of sloth, may be awakened by the wish of your spontaneous love: in order that for the task, to which it has been summoned through your compulsion, it may be strengthened by a vigorous literary style.