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That our holy empire is a force for the Lord Jesus Christ can never be in doubt when one visits the recently conquered pagan settlement of Stettin. A friend of Reynald, Fulk of Rubreck, a Flemish priest, visited Stettin recently on Saint Mark’s Day, on the year 1140, and has written to us how so many priests, with the aid of the most pious and fervent cardinal Peter Scherer, are doing their best to show these lowly pagans the light of Christ throughout the province. This fills my heart with joy, for we have not betrayed the word of the Lord among the glory of victories that he hath provided us with, and surely such pious activities will bring forth more blessings and miracles from our Lord in Heaven.

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Praise be to Saint Anselm, on whose feast I write this, that in these ensuing two years our armies have struck again to defeat significant forces of those vile Venetians. Reynald informs me that when a small but significant army of Venice dared to siege Zagreb, the numerous pious locals, who intend naught but to stay within our religious empire, attacked most boldly and crushed this army through sheer pious zeal. Another, much larger army moved with a massive siege chain to attack the great port of Venice, but was intercepted on its way by Duke Heinricus von Frankfurt and utterly destroyed, mostly by our ranged troops, and some bold merchants who, rather piously, decided to mount on horses, don their armor, and surround and chase these enemies of Christ from their lands. After this bloodbath, the rest of this army fled with their lives and we heard that they paid and promised to act like slaves to stay within the households and hide amongst the Italians in the countryside.

In all this time, however, the traitor Pope in Rome has become increasingly hostile at our supreme power. All concerned knows what a quarrel he has had with our most holy and righteous Emperor whose divine rights he doesn’t recognize and whom he has excommunicated, such sheer folly! This Pope supposedly can now even no longer suffer the name of our most Holy Roman Empire, what daring! Upon learning this I paid pious tributes to our Lord in Heaven so that he allows good sense to prevail on this pretender so that he can do us no more damage with his devious Tuscan merchant mind and usurped authority.

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My brother in faith, Reynald, he of Montferrat, has just completed drawing forth a rather detailed map of our most Holy Roman Empire and its surroundings, commissioned by a certain Count of the Upper Palatinate. He has seen it fit to send me a small drawing in his letter, may God bless him for his efforts. It is amply clear how much the Lord has blessed us with land in these last six decades, as I, now infirm with age and ailment, remember, whence as a young student I did visit Munich for certain business to be conducted for my abbey, how much smaller this holy Germanic Empire was.

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All praise to God, and all glory only to Him, as in these last few years He has blessed us with three rather competent Generals who can be trusted on to carry forth his glory throughout. All three fought most marvelously and defeated the various traitorous rebels which have cropped up in our empire, or have migrated here after their paymasters stopped compensating them, as in the case of the Italian rebel army.



The first general, an able captain from Nuremberg, is Nikolaus der Bar, who destroyed some Franconian rebels without even injuring one of his men.



The second men, Wenzel von Jungingen, defeated those many Milanese traitors who were pillaging our Genoese lands most mercilessly as their perfidious master ceased compensating them.



The final man defeated a rather large armed Bavarian uprising which was fomenting for a very long time now and by now had gained much strength, but with his intelligent tactics of battle, this Gottfied von Felben defeated them with ease. May the Lord bless them and bring glory and honor to our people through them.