To his most beloved companions their most beloved servant, greetings.

1. It is sufficient proof of the glory of the martyr Vincent that when his deeds were written down the Enemy envied his claim to fame. Something of the kind has now happened to me as well, so that a comparison of things similar may be carried through from the greatest to the smallest. For that enemy, long since hidden, who has hitherto pretended to be a friend, in fact my dearest friend, has now burst out into such a blaze of envy that he could not bear the fame won by my writings, for he believed his own glory was diminished by them as much as he thought I was exalted. 2. I had some time ago heard that he had been seriously distressed that I had given the name of Theology to that work of mine on the Holy Trinity, which I composed as the Lord granted. In the end he could by no means tolerate this, and decreed that it should be called Stultilogy rather than Theology. Thanks be to God that the labour I put into this work of mine could have been so highly valued as to be worthy to move first the masters of France, then monks and those judged higher in religious worth, to feel such impudent and patent envy. 3. The Lord will provide for His own work, so as not to allow what I wrote with His inspiration to be destroyed by the malice of the wicked. The more often he raved against it, the more confident I became, with the Lord's consent, that it brought about not the lowering of that work but its exaltation:

4. But you must know that, before I saw the message from your affectionate selves, I had already heard, because people told me of it, what poisonous insults that Datianus of mine vomited up at me: what he belched forth from the depths of his depravity, first at Sens, in the presence of the lord archbishop and many of my friends, and then at Paris, in your hearing and that of others.