CARLO EMANUELE

VIZZANI’S

PROLEGOMENA

TO OCELLUS.

A large decorative initial 'G' featuring leafy scrollwork and floral patterns within a square frame.

Origen, Book 1 against Celsus.

Clem. Alex. Book 5, Stromata.

A cenotaph among the Pythagoreans for those abandoning philosophy.

By a noble decree of the Pythagoreans, those who, having abandoned philosophical contemplations, had embraced another kind of life, were said to be most miserably dead, and deplorable cenotaphs were erected for them. I feared lest the Peripatetic school—that mistress of human wisdom—should renew the horrid memory of this bitter death in me by a most wretched example: for I had chosen for myself a most secure seat in its sacred recesses once fifteen years had been completed, having interrupted the studies of Jurisprudence, in whose camps I had served for three years; and having resided there assiduously, intending to bring what I had learned in secret leisure to public benefit, and having offered the firstfruits of my labors to my fatherland, I publicly taught the Peripatetic doctrines in the most celebrated Academy of Padua in the twenty-second year of my age, pursuing this most pleasant duty there for several years with most fruitful labor.

The occasion for writing.

From that tranquil seat, however, which a mind ignorant of the future had destined for itself as if a most safe harbor, new events expelled me, and—with the fates overcoming any care of mine—dragged me with a most powerful force toward a very different kind of life, agitated on all sides by surrounding storms; for the ancestral resources, which the skillful love of my forefathers had destined for posterity in written deeds, seemed to demand not only the honor of my family, for