Your Excellency may kindly remember having been troubled, some three months since, with a most humble communication of mine accompanying the score of an opera, Rienzi, which was the subject of my letter and the object of my petition. As since then I have not been honoured with any direct information as to how Your Excellency received this my humble petition, nor as to what Your Excellency has resolved thereupon, I could not entirely curb a feeling of suspense which at length drove me to take steps to obtain news. Herr Hofrat Winkler, whom I approached with that object, had the extraordinary kindness to inform me of the state of my affairs. I learned through him that they were held up chiefly on account of the misfortune of Your Excellency's having as yet received no libretto of my opera and being consequently under the necessity of obtaining one as a preliminary.
I cannot quite understand through what oversight this lapse in the conduct of my affairs could have arisen and must very keenly regret that to it I have to attribute the fact that my affairs have as yet reached no conclusion. I therefore make all the greater haste to repair this misfortune and may be permitted to send Your Excellency forthwith a copy of the libretto in question. [...] On this occasion I also take the liberty of commenting to Your Excellency upon a certain portion of the text. It concerns the open participation of the Ecclesiastical Power in the decisive catastrophe of the dramatic action. Although not the slightest suggestion of dispute [...] upon dogma or opinion arises [...] yet I am given to reflect whether my opera is suitable for presentation at the Catholic Court of my Fatherland without some modification.—[...] However that may be, I have not neglected to prepare certain modifications beforehand which are calculated to allay every scruple. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 55