Letter 7023: We grant our benefits to your grace especially if we find you administering your duties with good judgment.

XXIII. Formula for the Deputy of a Port [vicarius portus, the official deputized to administer a harbor]. [1] We grant the benefits of our favor especially to your grace, provided we may approve that you discharge what has been entrusted to you in a reasonable manner. For indeed you do not lie unrewarded, if you both prudently receive foreign peoples and regulate the commerce of our own people with a measured fairness. For although prudence is everywhere necessary, in this office it seems all the more fitting, since between two peoples disputes always arise unless justice has been preserved. For this reason those must be appeased with skill who bring with them characters most like the winds, whose tempers, unless they are first calmed, by their native readiness leap forth into the greatest contempt. On this account, drawn by the report of your moderation, we have determined that you are to hold the charge of that port through the said indiction, so that you may conduct all things pertaining to your office in such a way that you may attain to better things. For in small matters it is learned to whom greater ones are to be entrusted.

XXIII. FORMULA VICARII PORTUS. [1] Beneficia nostra gratiae tuae specialiter damus, si te agere commissa rationabiliter approbemus. nec enim inremuneratus iaces, si et populos peregrinos prudenter excipias et nostrorum commercia moderata aequalitate componas. nam licet ubique sit necessaria prudentia, in hac potius actione videtur accommoda, quando inter duos populos nascuntur semper certamina, nisi fuerit iustitia custodita. quapropter arte placandi sunt qui mores afferunt simillimos ventis, quorum nisi prius animi temperentur, in contemptum maximum nativa facilitate prosiliunt. qua de re modestiae tuae fama provocati curas illius portus per illam indictionem te habere censemus, ut omnia ad tuum titulum pertinentia sic agas, quemadmodum ad meliora pervenias. in parvis enim discitur, cui potiora praestentur.