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THE TRANSLATOR

TO QUEEN CA-

THERINE DE ME-

dici, Queen of

France.

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Since it has pleased the graciousness of your Royal Majesty to show such favor to your Gello Giovanni Battista Gelli (1498–1563), a Florentine author and academician. as to have received his Circe A famous work by Gelli (La Circe, 1549) consisting of dialogues between Ulysses and animals; the translator here notes he previously translated this work into French for the Queen., in such language as I was able to teach him, the Lord Leone Ebreo Judah Leon Abravanel (c. 1460–1530), a Jewish philosopher and physician whose Dialogues on Love was a massive Renaissance bestseller. has emboldened himself to also present his Philosophy to you, instructed by the same means: being assured, after the advice of several people of very good judgment, that it will be no less welcome than the other to you: by reason of the great and lofty points of which it treats, as much regarding moral and natural matters as for those divine and supernatural: in the sciences of which (to the great fortune of this Kingdom) you take such pleasure, and so well support those who devote themselves to them, that by this (without me speaking of your other singular virtues) one notices in you the excellent nature of the Great Cosimo de' Medici Cosimo "the Elder" de' Medici (1389–1464), the Queen's great-great-grandfather and the legendary patron of the arts and Neoplatonism in Florence.,