Declaration of Musical Instruments

❧First prologue for the pious reader.

A large historiated woodcut initial 'T' featuring a seated figure in a landscape setting with architectural elements in the background, framed by decorative floral and scrollwork motifs.

ALL men, most beloved in Christ Jesus, desire to know. If some remain ignorant, it is not for lack of natural desire: but because they do not wish to work, or because they lack good teachers, or if they have them: they do not wish to teach what they know. Thus, the disciples work without art meaning technical skill or method, or without the goodwill of the teachers: and the labor being great, the profit is small. I well understand that there have been, and there are in our Spain, most excellent men on the vihuela a plucked string instrument shaped like a guitar but tuned like a lute, organs, and in every kind of instrument, and most learned in the composition of polyphony original: "canto de organo," referring to measured polyphonic music as opposed to plainchant: however, so great is the thirst and greed, and avarice of some: that it grieves them if another knows some excellence, and more so if they see it shared. I speak of things judged and seen from very close by. That which God by His mercy and clemency gave to them, they would rather go to hell with all of it: than share it in part with those who can serve God, the giver of all good things. From whence it proceeds, that there being in our Spain such great wits, such delicate judgments, such inventive understandings: all the arts are almost dead. Certainly, only the unbridled vice of the greed of some teachers, or the little faithfulness (to speak as a Christian) that they have toward God: is the cause. Some teachers think (not without lack of error) that sharing excellences with their disciples: will cause their own knowledge to fail them, and take away their livelihood. Sciences are of such a condition that the more they are shared: the more they increase and flow, in the manner of a fountain. You will never dry up the fountain, no matter how much water you take from the river or the stream. The human understanding is a fountain, and it flows with knowledge: do not fear it drying up by sharing the streams that come from it. Rather, if you do not let them run in the service of God, teaching your neighbor: it may be that they break out elsewhere, being forgotten with the first infirmity. Whatever thing, says the most learned Augustine St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) in the first book of Christian Doctrine, that a man possesses, if by sharing it he does not lose it: by not wishing to share it, he possesses it with an unjust title. Worthy of perpetual memory is what the saint says. He who cannot lie affirms: To him who has, more shall be given. God will give knowledge to those who possess it: when they share it. The loaves with which Christ sated the companies, before He shared them, were once five, and another time seven. After He shared them, the poor were left sated: and there remained twelve baskets one time, and the other time seven hampers. He who multiplied the shared loaves: will increase the knowledge of the teachers. For if the teacher, moved by charity, shall freely teach what he knows: God, who has no need of time to teach, who makes the stammering tongues of infants articulate, who leaves no good without reward, who measures us with the measure with which we measure our neighbor: will teach him more in one moment of time than he can share with his disciples in a whole year. There is experience that, the teacher teaching to serve God, that which the divine goodness gives him unexpectedly is worth more: than all that he had studied. I wish to express a Christian sentiment. I know infallibly,