TO THE MOST EXCELLENT AND MOST CHRISTIAN KING LOUIS, GREATEST OF KINGS, TRIUMPHANT, BLESSED, AUGUST, FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY, FAITHFUL ASSERTOR AND VINDICATOR, PATRON AND GUARDIAN OF LETTERS
A In times of old, it was the custom to commit the study of the liberal arts to writing and, once gathered into books, to offer them to princes; for nothing is begun unless the emperor has favored it after God. Might I now, Most Christian King, address Your Sacred Majesty with the same words with which Flavius Vegetius Renatus once addressed the Emperor Valentinian when he offered him his commentaries *On Military Affairs*. Although the subject matter treated in this work has nothing that pertains specifically to a most powerful king, and nothing that, in the elegance of its writing and the dignity of its subject, does not fall far short of Vegetius, yet I deemed it not foreign to my duty that, after having dedicated to Your Majesty certain previous studies of mine, I should dedicate this one as well—the last, like a slight garland following those that came before—to you, the parent of the arts. Nor has my own insignificance or that of my little gift deterred me, when I consider what that rhetorician Varius Geminus used to say about the supreme emperor: "Just as those who dare to speak before you are ignorant of your greatness, so too are those who do not dare ignorant of your humanity."
B But at this point, most invincible Prince, it is not my purpose to discourse at length upon the praises of Your Sacred Majesty, or to commemorate those outstanding and truly royal virtues of soul with which God, the Best and Greatest, has blessed you for the happiness of your Gauls, let alone the many things gloriously done by you in war and in peace, which are on everyone’s lips and adequately declare to foreign and even distant nations what a man you are and how great. "For fame, heavily laden with your virtues, runs with weight, and, long accustomed to true opinions, has learned not to lie about you"—that which Aurelianus, bishop of Arles, once boasted of King Theodebert and your predecessors, yet far inferior to you. Indeed, what of the fact that all titles of praise, with which kings of the Franks were once adorned after illustrious deeds, or which have already been bestowed upon Your Royal Majesty by many others—virtues of such a kind that at their mere mention the world, as far as it extends, stands astonished—seem to be gathered up by the single title prefixed to this epistle? For what more illustrious name than that of "Most Excellent" Prince can be conceived, by which the kings of the Franks, distinguished above others, have often been called both by supreme pontiffs and by Gallican bishops in the public assemblies of the numerous clergy? Does not that word, most aptly, fall upon you, who "excel" the other princes of the world by much—not so much in the amplitude and dignity of the kingdom you hold as in the praise and fame of your deeds?
C Now, that singular zeal which you employ every single day in eradicating the remnants of heretical depravity—which had long ago almost shaken your Gaul (where, among the other kingdoms of the world, the Christian religion is known to shine)—and in guarding the integrity of the ancestral religion, proclaims you—much more truly than your most noble ancestors—the Defender, Vindicator, and Assertor of the Church and of the Christian faith, and proclaims you pious, and most Christian. That saying is indeed celebrated concerning the two emperors who were most famous defenders and assertors of the Christian cause: Constantius the Great closed the temples of the pagans, and Theodosius tore them down. You, after recovering the cities which the rebel sectaries had encroached upon against all law and justice—seized by your invincible father—not only did you remove from them the temples they had taken from us by force, and the basilicas they had erected in violation of the most holy laws, but, incited by a righteous hatred for rebellion and an impious sect, you ordered that the shrines they had raised be razed and leveled to the ground everywhere.
D Why so? Believing, clearly, that things defiled by such impious superstition and inexpiable rebellion could neither be expiated nor turned to holy uses, and that it would finally come to pass that, after the memory of this stain had been wiped away, Christian piety, illustrious through you, might flourish and thrive in Gaul, and not be obscured by any spots thereafter. Who, then, would not see that this is enough, if one were to call LOUIS THE GREAT, so that he might be immediately recognized as the Greatest of Kings, Triumphant, Blessed, and Augustus?