Letter 48
To all those who serve the Frankish kingdom and its king,
As we review the correspondence of recent years, we are struck by how much has been accomplished through patient diplomacy and how much remains to be done.
The alliance with the Empire, which was the central diplomatic project of the past decade, produced results that were significant even if they fell short of what we had hoped. The Lombard position in Italy has been weakened; the Roman position there has been strengthened; Frankish interests in the region have been recognized and to some extent protected. The financial cost was substantial and the military commitment was serious, but the investment was not without return.
The relationships with the church — with our own bishops, with the monasteries of our kingdom, and increasingly with Rome under the new pope — are in a better state than they have been for some years. The period of internal strife that preceded the current administration did damage to these relationships that has not yet been fully repaired, but the direction is good.
The challenges that remain are familiar ones: the need for consistent justice in the application of law, the maintenance of the borders against pressure from the east, the completion of the pastoral work of converting and forming the peoples who have come under Frankish rule through war rather than persuasion.
We commend these challenges to those who will carry them forward after us, and we pray that God's wisdom will guide them better than it has sometimes guided us.
From the court of Austrasia
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.