adicitur huic inpossibilitati pondus pudoris, quod mihi peculiariter paginae decretalis oblatu pontificis eligendi mandastis arbitrium coram sacrosancto et pontificatu maximo dignissimo papa; qui cum sit suae provinciae caput, sit etiam mihi usu institutione, facundia privilegio, tempore aetate praestantior, ego deque coramque metropolitano verba facturus, et provincialis et iunior, pariter fero imperiti verecundiam, procacis invidiam.
Besides the impossibility of such a task, a feeling of shame oppresses me, because to me, to me of all men, you have entrusted, by the presentation of your official mandate, the right of choosing your bishop, and that, too, in the presence of a hallowed prelate who is well worthy of the chief pontificate. Not only is he head of his province but he is superior to me in experience and training, in eloquence and endowments, in length of office and of years; and so, proposing as I do to speak about a metropolitan in the presence of a metropolitan, I, a provincial bishop and a younger man, feel at once the diffidence of ignorance and the stigma of presumption.
final_alignments\Sidonius_Letters_Book7.json