Letter 9
Braulio to my lord Iactatus, the priest.
I am informed, dearest brother, that you wish to demand from me some refreshment from the divine word, which I know to be beyond my power. I admire your devotion all the more in the you do not cease to demand the means of increasing your practice in divine studies, even when you have the knowledge that your questions cannot be answered. For since you meditate daily on the law of the Lord and unfold the pages of the most blessed fathers and of most learned men, what can you find in us and how little can it be that you either wish to add to your own knowledge or concerning which you happen to foster a holy desire? It is enough and more than enough to read your friend, st. Augustine, also Jerome and Hilary and other most learned men, whom it would take me too long to mention by name and with whom you are certainly well acquainted. Let their words feed you, their thoughts instruct you; in fact, they can teach you completely all that you ask, and if you are satisfied with them, you need not bring out into the open our humble poverty, nor expose us naked and visible to the eyes of the envious.
Then Braulio writes that he hopes to meet with Iactatus during the visit of the latter in Tarazona (Tirassona; Iberian Peninsula), which is close to Saragossa.
As for the relics of the most revered apostles, which you have asked me to send, I truthfully reply that I have not a single martyr's relic so preserved that I can know whose they are. My lords and predecessors were of the opinion that the labels should be removed from all of them to make them indistinguishable, and that they should all be put in a single room, since, in many ways, either by theft or against their wills or by the coercion of the piety of many, they were being forced either to give away or to lose what they had. Some seventy were set apart, however, and are in common use, but among them are to be found none of those which you requested.
(Barlowe 1969: 27-28)