TO THE READER.

We may, however, speak of these things somewhat incidentally and in a general way. Thus, it seems to Eusebius and to Justus Lipsius, who followed him, that just as sacred matters, empires, and all arts flowed from the East into the rest of the world, so too did these things; and that Moses was the architect of many weapons, as is clearly evident from Ezekiel and other places in Holy Scripture. Nevertheless, there are many who attribute these things to the Romans and Greeks. Yet, it is not at all certain which nation was the first to invent them, whether the Romans drew them from the Greeks or possessed them of their own accord. Indeed, it seems to Athenaeus that the Romans learned from the Greeks, but there are also uncommon documents which prove that the Romans possessed these things from themselves. We shall speak of this matter more fully in another place. Furthermore, following the common opinion of the writers of profane history, one may assert that the Romans and Greeks were once so skilled in military inventions that they firmly believed there was nothing left for posterity to discover or add. Hence, the machines and weapons of his own time are called by Aristotle most exquisite and perfect. Nevertheless, that incomprehensible nature, the source and origin of all sciences and miraculous inventions, kept the horrific and terrible invention of our Art—which we have proposed to treat in this work—hidden until the final days of the aging and now clearly decrepit world. Do not seek the reason for this, for even now many things lie hidden which will be discovered later, and will be discovered only to perish again and be delivered to oblivion. And there is an oracle of Aratus:

Furthermore, this final age possesses (as we are reminded by the sacred writings) that which makes it—rightly and deservedly—more noble and excellent than those that preceded it, indeed, one might boast it is their master. They were iron ages at first, while the Romans led their empire to its highest peak through the ruins of the Greeks and almost the entire world, and were strong in their might; now, indeed, the ages are truly fiery. The iron age had indeed conquered and subdued the other softer times, named for their metals; but even the iron age itself was not only conquered and overcome, but reduced to ash and almost to nothing by the fiery one. Rome, once the head of the world and noble for its iron, brought the fiery age to the people—and having taken so many golden crowns from the heads of nations, which it had stripped with iron, it had ornamented, or rather burdened, its own. And, barely breathing, raising its wretched head from its own ruins and ashes, it worships the Teutonic Mars Roman god of war. All its adornment and the majesty of its empire, first diminished by many rapines and obscured by foul conflagrations, finally conceded to those who excelled with fiery, or rather, divine arms, because they were drawn from heaven. And so, just as in the case of the empire, German virtue has triumphed over the arms whose power the barbarians once felt. Furthermore, one must note this miraculous vicissitude and inconstancy of human affairs. Such terrible and violent machines of the ancients—in the refining of which, and the bringing of them to the highest perfection, the greatest minds labored for so many centuries—vanished at the sight of a single Bombarda early cannon. I remain silent about its inventor: that he was a German, by profession either a monk or a chemical philosopher, is known even to the common people, however much that may still remain undecided among the wise. But whoever he was, he is to be praised for his industry and genius; for he was the first in the world to publish an invention new, never before heard or seen, and most dangerous to human affairs, which immediately struck the world with such great horror that everywhere men exclaimed about human power, and that saying of Archidamus, son of Agesilaus, was recalled when he first saw a catapult brought from Sicily: "The virtue of man has perished." And certainly, that fear did not occupy the minds of all at that time without cause. For what, I ask, could human genius ever have devised more terrible or violent for its own destruction? One might believe it was a work performed not by mortal effort; but that Mars, Pallas, and others—Bellona, Mercury, Vulcan, and the rest of the gods and goddesses—contributed many things to the manufacture of such...