By us, while ye still
lack the first down upon your cheeks, ye are established in your
early years and bear the tonsure on your heads, while the dread
sentence of the Church is heard: Touch not mine anointed and do
my prophets no harm, and he who has rashly touched them let him
forthwith by his own blow be smitten violently with the wound of
an anathema. At length yielding your lives to wickedness,
reaching the two paths of Pythagoras, ye choose the left branch,
and going backward ye let go the lot of God which ye had first
assumed, becoming companions of thieves. And thus ever going
from bad to worse, dyed with theft and murder and manifold
impurities, your fame and conscience stained by sins, at the
bidding of justice ye are confined in manacles and fetters, and
are kept to be punished by a most shameful death. Then your
friend is put far away, nor is there any to mourn your lot.
Peter swears that he knows not the man: the people cry to the
judge: Crucify, crucify Him! If thou let this man go, thou act
not Caesar's friend. Now all refuge has perished, for ye must
stand before the judgment-seat, and there is no appeal, but only
hanging is in store for you. While the wretched man's heart is
thus filled with woe and only the sorrowing Muses bedew their
cheeks with tears, in his strait is heard on every side the
wailing appeal to us, and to avoid the danger of impending death
he shows the slight sign of the ancient tonsure which we bestowed
upon him, begging that we may be called to his aid and bear
witness to the privilege bestowed upon him.
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