De laudibus sancte crucis

A large woodcut illustration within a decorative floral and foliate border depicts the monk Rabanus Maurus kneeling and presenting his book to a Pope (Gregory IV) seated on a throne. The Pope wears the triple tiara and holds a scepter topped with a cross. Monks stand behind Rabanus, and advisors stand behind the Pope. The scene is set in an interior with tiled floors and arches.

President of the apostolic seat and moderator of the world,
Immortal light, harbor and breeze for your people,
Look kindly upon the lands. And the gifts which the author
of this unheard-of poem offers to you, may you yourself cherish.
He took up a subject than which none is more worthy
to be celebrated either in prose or in verse.
Say that the poem lives with the image of Apellean painter-like beauty,
As long as golden Rome shall be the head of the lands.
Likely Georgius Symler

Holy prelate of God, living through the ages by your merits,
receive the cause we bring with a pious mind.
Indeed, when I was the guardian and humble minister
of this church, reading the sacred dogmas,
I taught this boy the divine speech of the word,
with the warnings of ethics and the studies of wisdom.
He is a Frank by race, and an inhabitant of the forest
of Buchonia. He was sent here to learn the words of God.
For his Abbot, the ruler of the flock of Fulda,
directed him here to your house, O father,
so that he might read the art of meter with me as a scholar,
and joyfully prepare the holy scripture in the proper way.
But when he had filled six lustra periods of five years; thus, thirty years, now attempting to write,
he produced this book by art for the praise of Christ.
In which he placed the mystical numbers and the tropes and figures properly,
so that he might spread the nourishing gifts of God:
what honor the passion of Christ brought to the world,
how he conquered the ancient chelydrus water-snake/serpent.
How the holy prophets sang that it would be so,
and the writings of the law gave it properly in letters.
And because he remembers that he was nourished in the famous house
of this very place, he brings these gifts to you from here.
Though they be unworthy and cheap, yet do you yourself,
as a mild patron, receive them piously, I pray.
Return to the one enthroned on high the pledge which he himself provided,
instantly asking pardon for the craftsman.
Who did as much as he could, not as much as he was a debtor,
to return thanks with his mouth to God.
For the crime of the miserable one, pour out large and powerful
prayers, O nourishing one, to the Lord, and thus help your student.
Who confesses that he has done many unspeakable things,
as much as a playful age is wont to commit.
But a firm hope remains: the goodness and the great mercy of the Thundering one,
that the omnipotent physician himself may save him.
He who washed the debts of the world with his own blood,
and washed away many crimes in the sacred fountain.
Only do you, by your prayers and sacred merits,
commend him to Christ, and thus he shall be blessed.
May he complete his present life, and safe, may he be preserved
for the future fatherland. O holy one, protect your people.