PREFACE

Thus, agitated by so many objections, we were resolved only in our irresolution. But making stronger reflections on the purpose of our labor, we considered that God has authorized war; and so cruelly has He caused it to be waged here below, that He commanded Saul Saul was the first king of the Kingdom of Israel, who according to the Bible (1 Samuel 15) was commanded by God to destroy the Amalekites. to put to death all the Amalekites, without sparing women, children, horses, oxen, camels, sheep, or any living soul. And not content with their death, He ordered that all these bodies be reduced to ash and thrown to the wind.

All the Books of Kings breathe nothing but war; Genesis is full of it; and even Jesus Christ himself used the whip to drive the sellers and buyers from the Temple. In imitation of Him, seeing His Church devastated by an infinity of enemies and sects who strive absolutely to ruin its foundations—especially as that great Mohammedan Pirate A common 17th-century pejorative reference to the Ottoman Sultan or the general threat of the Ottoman Empire's expansion into Europe. sought only to plant his crescent within Christianity, to make us study his Quran original: "Alcoran." by force and to make us captives under the yoke of his most unbearable laws, hateful to all good people—we then took the perfect resolution to bring our inventions original: "artifices." In this period, the term referred to military engines, pyrotechnics, and incendiary devices used in warfare. to light: expressly to use them against the enemies of God and of His Holy Church. Moved then by this holy...