A large rectangular woodcut headpiece featuring intricate floral scrollwork, two Greek crosses containing faces, and a central grotesque mask.

To the Illustrious & Excellent Lord, The Lord

DON FEDERICO

LANDI

PRINCE OF THE SACRED ROMAN

Empire, and Fourth of Val di Taro, Marquess of

Bardi, Count of Compiano, Lord

of Turbigo, etc.

A smaller horizontal woodcut ornament with symmetrical floral and scroll motifs.

If the great Province of Spain had not been for thousands of years continuously troubled by wars with Romans, Goths, Moors, and other civil conflicts, there is no doubt that, due to the happiness of the sharp intellects it produces, it would have given us men no less excellent in all the professions of letters than valiant in that of arms. As proof of this, barely being able to breathe in these last hundred years under the glorious memories of the Emperor CHARLES V and of King PHILIP his son, we have seen excellent personages emerge there in the principal science of sciences, Theology, in the Laws,