De bello Sudowitarum, et de bello finali terre Prussie.
Trust in God Against the Sudowites
With all other Prussian peoples conquered, the brothers manfully advanced against the powerful Sudowites, relying not on human strength but on divine protection and the sacrificial obedience commanded by God's precept, and so began the war against the land of Sudowia.
With all the peoples of the land of Prussia having been conquered, the Lord Jesus Christ favoring the enterprise, there still remained one last nation—namely the Sudowites, the most powerful of all. Against them the brothers, trusting not in human strength nor in a multitude of fighters but in the aid of divine protection, manfully took the attack, mindful that in sacrifice it is commanded by the Lord's precept that not only the head and another part of the victim's body be offered, but also the tail.✦123 So in order that the brothers might bring their campaign to its final consummation, they began the war against the land of Sudowia in this way.45
Read the original Latin
Expugnatis favente domino Jesu Cristo cunctis gentibus terre Prussie, restabat adhuc una et ultima, scilicet Sudowitarum, et potencior interk omnes, quam fratres non in Humana virtute, nec in pugnatorum multitudine, sed in divine protectionis auxilio confisi, viriliter sunt aggressi, attendentes, quod non solura caput et alia pars corporis, sed eciam cauda hostie secundum preceptum domini in sacrificio jubetur offerri. Ut ergo fratres hostie sue finem consuma— cionis apponerent, inceperunt bellum contra terram Sudowie in hunc modum.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Lev.3.9 — And he shall offer from the sacrifice of the peace offering a food offering to the LORD: the fat, the entire tail fat, which he shall remove close to the backbone, and the fat that covers the entrails, and all the fat that is on the entrails.
Notes
- 1 ↩The form interk is uncertain—possibly inter with an enclitic -k or a scribal variant; translated as 'of all' (inter omnes).
- 2 ↩solura is likely a scribal error for solum or sola; translated contextually as 'only.'
- 3 ↩The sacrificial imagery (caput, pars corporis, cauda hostie) applies the language of Levitical offering to the military campaign, framing the war as a religious act of obedience to divine command.
- 4 ↩consuma—cionis is a word split across a line break; reconstructed as consummationis (gen. sg. of consummatio).
- 5 ↩hostia ('campaign/victim') carries a double sense here—military campaign and sacrificial victim—continuing the sacrificial metaphor from the previous sentence.
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