A Letter to the Rulers of the nations

To all the authorities and consuls, judges and rulers of whatever lands and to all others, to whom these letters may come, Friar Francis, your tiny and despised servant in the Lord God, chooses to send greetings and peace to you all.

Consider and see, that the day of death approaches (cf Gen 47:29). I beg you therefore with reverence, as I am able, on account of the cares and solicitudes of this age not to surrender the Lord to forgetfulness nor to turn away from His mandates, because all those, "who" surrender Him to forgetfulness and "turn away from" His "mandates" have been "cursed" (cf Ps 118:21) and by Him "they will be surrendered to forgetfulness" (Ez 33:13). And since the day of death will come, everything, which they think they have, will be borne away from them (cf Lk 8:18). And, in as much as they were wiser and more powerful in this world, so much greater will be the torments they will endure in Hell (cf Ws 6:7).

Whence I firmly counsel you, my lords, to consider of less account all care and solicitude and to kindly receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ during His holy commemoration [i.e. the Sacrifice of the Mass]. And to confer upon the people committed to you by the Lord such an honour, that on whatever evening there be announced by a messenger or by another sign, by which praises and thanks are to be given to the omnipotent Lord God by all the people. And, if you will not do this, know that you must render "an account on the day of judgement"in the presence of your Lord Jesus Christ (cf Mt 12:36).

This has been written so that they who will have kept it with them and observed it, may know themselves blessed by the Lord God.