Serpentum et Draconum Historiae

to your sanctuary, now bringing you sacred fillets, rods of office, and royal purple in a full embrace. There are, I confess, elders in your family who, having been invested on earth with the celestial tiara, held sway over nations and over souls; and just as we celebrate their names, so do we venerate their spirits. But their ancient glory, which the Christian world recalls with grateful memory, receives splendor from the present radiance of your own heroic virtues, which cannot be darkened by any shadow of a stepmotherly fortune. It is glorious for descendants to have their cradles illuminated by the most ample titles of honor from the blood of their ancestors; but it is far more glorious to graft one’s own deeds onto those of others, and by one’s own merits to shine in the light of the age as an example for posterity. Your fortune (most wise Prince) is in a prominent place because your virtue is in plain sight; because both shine without ambition and scatter the seeds of a great soul, destined to take root in the soil of eternity as the trunk of solid glory. And as we have determined to hang this volume of print, which the rich museum of exotic things of Aldrovandi has suggested to us, upon the altars of your dignity, what else have we seemed to do with you than to pay off a debt contracted from a previous obligation? I am mistaken (most humane Patron), we have made a renewal of the name by trading the fame of this work for your name. Receive it, therefore, with your accustomed serene countenance; protect it with the solid shield of your authority; cherish it with the open bosom of your humanity. Thus, we shall more readily applaud your virtue as it grows toward the highest pinnacles of glory. Farewell.