Letter 11020: The bearer of this letter is Candidus the abbot, a man of God whom I commend to your care and hospitality.

When Candidus the abbot, the bearer of this present letter, came here to request relics, which have indeed been granted, the more I rejoiced at the nourishment of your brotherliness, because in him the zeal of your brotherliness appeared, the more I was grieved that I could not, as I wished, enjoy his presence, for the reason that he both found me sick and, when departing, left me still laid up in infirmity. For it has now been a long time that I am unable to rise from my bed. For at one moment the pain of gout torments me, at another I know not what fire spreads itself with pain throughout my whole body; and it usually happens that at one and the same time the burning together with the pain wage war within me, and both my body and my spirit fail within me. But with how many other necessities of infirmity, beyond these which I have recounted, I am afflicted, I am unable to enumerate. But I say briefly that the infection of a noxious humor so soaks me through that to live is a torment to me, but that I long for and await death, which alone I believe can be a remedy for my groanings. Therefore, most holy brother, beseech for me the mercy of the divine compassion, that it may graciously soften the scourges of its chastisement toward me and grant me the patience to endure, lest, which God forbid, my heart break out into impatience through excessive weariness, and lest that fault, which could have been healed by the blow, increase through murmuring.