Prooemium of Petrus Nicolaus ex Castellanis of Faenza, Philosopher and Physician, on the Theology of Aristotle, to the Reader.

Franciscus Roseus of Ravenna recently brought to Italy from the famous library of Damascus a codex of faithful antiquity, entitled Theology of Aristotle, translated long ago from the Greek language into Arabic by a Saracen named Abenama. When this work was presented to me for judgment—the discourse having been rendered indigestible according to the Arabic style by the interpreter Mose Rouas, and unlettered due to an ignorance of Latinity—since it pleased me greatly on account of its sublime theorems, and especially because of its many maxims unanimous with the Christian religion and highly conducive against those [heretics] themselves, the desire overcame me to clothe it in the toga of a Roman paraphrase, lest such a precious book should flee from the public in shame, as if stripped of its Greek cloak by pirates and dressed in a barbarian robe—mindful of his Theophrastus, who said that one should not trust an uncomposed diction any more than an unbridled horse. Therefore, in this [version], I have used a dialectic more Latinate than the slightly older philosophers, and for this reason also, that it might speak more elegantly (as much as the subject matter permitted) before him to whom it was to be dedicated: Leo X, the most eloquent Roman Pontiff, and especially in this century in which eloquence has reflourished not a little even among the wise, [a man of] the most Illustrious Medici lineage, aided by great suffrage, lest an injury be done (as Boethius laments) if eloquence were separated from wisdom. Nor indeed, as much as I could, did I apply a splendor of speech, which was not permitted, lest Musonius cry out that it is not a philosopher speaking, but a lash.