Secret of Secrets

are found, so that nothing may be lacking to this edition of ours, which the preceding ones provide, and although we have decided to append it here—however corrupt it may be—it is this:

May God Almighty guard our King for the glory of the believers and confirm his kingdom for the protection of His divine law, and cause him to endure for the exaltation of honor and the praise of good men. I, his servant, have executed the mandate enjoined upon me, and have labored to seek out the book of morals on the governance of a lord, which is named the Secretum Secretorum, which the prince of philosophers, Aristotle, son of Nicomachus of Macedonia, edited for his disciple, the great emperor Alexander, son of Philip, King of the Greeks. This Alexander is said to have possessed two horns. He composed this book indeed in his old age and in the feebleness of his bodily strength, after he was no longer able to tolerate daily labors and the dangers of the roads, nor to exercise royal business. For Alexander had appointed him administrator, viceroy, and master, whom he had chosen and loved greatly, for the reason that he was a man of sound counsel and great learning: of a penetrable intellect, vigilant in legal studies, in magnanimous and gracious morals, and in spiritual sciences contemplative, charitable, discreet, humble, a lover of justice, a reporter of truth; and on account of this, many of the philosophers considered him to be among the number of the prophets who were not sent to a nation, nor was the law given to them. It is also found in ancient codices of the Greeks that the most high God sent His angel to him, saying, "I shall name you an angel rather than a man." Truly, he possessed many wonders, great miracles, and strange works, which it would be too long to narrate all in order; whence at his death there were diverse opinions, one sect saying that he perished as is the custom of the earth, and his monument is in that place, but a certain sect which is called