I.

TO INNOCENTIUS THE PRESBYTER, CONCERNING THE WOMAN STRUCK SEVEN TIMES.

1. You have often asked of me, most dear Innocentius, that I not remain silent regarding the miracle of the event that occurred in our own time. Although I refused this modestly, and truly, as I now experience, and doubted that I could succeed—either because all human speech would be inferior to heavenly praise, or because leisure, like a certain rust of the intellect, had dried up even a small capacity for my former eloquence—you, on the contrary, insisted that in the things of God one must not look at possibility, but at the spirit, and that words could not fail him who believed in the Word original: "in uerbo" — an allusion to the Gospel of John 1:1.

2. What, therefore, shall I do? I do not dare refuse what I cannot fulfill. I, an inexperienced passenger, am placed upon a cargo ship and

12 cf. Ioh. 1, 1

The following codices were used to review this letter:


K	= St. Gallen 68, 8th century.
L	= Cologne 35, 9th century.
$Σ$	= Zurich, Reichenau 41, 9th century.
D	= Vatican lat. 355 + 356, 9th–10th century.
s	= Monte Cassino 91, 10th–11th century.
Q	= Douai 247, 11th century.
B	= Berlin lat. 18, 12th century.