TO FRANCIS VALOIS

Most Christian King of the French, Mar-

tin Akakia, physician, sends

greetings.

A decorative woodcut initial 'C' features floral and foliate motifs within a square frame.

When I recently came to your court, Francis, King, most powerful of all kings, to perform the duty of greeting you and to offer all my diligence, labor, and study, as was right: I heard you during dinner discussing not only other matters, but especially the science of medicine, with the greatest pleasure and admiration. For I understood then, as I had often heard from everyone before, that there is in you the greatest experience of matters, the highest force and excellence of wit, fit and accommodated for the discussion of all things: and an incredible ease in conversation. For you are accustomed during banquets to argue about serious and difficult matters, so learnedly and abundantly, that you seem to have spent all your life not in arms, nor in the administration of the republic, but in these disciplines about whose matters you argue. By your commendation of letters, O excellent King, not only in the court, but in all the academies of your Kingdom, you foster many who cultivate and adorn the disciplines and arts, even by establishing the most ample stipends: than which you can do nothing more excellent for amplifying your kingdom and empire, and for propagating your memory and leaving it to posterity. We all perceive how widely this benefit of yours, most great King, extends. For there is no one in this most ample kingdom of yours, whether he be learned in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew disciplines, who does not acknowledge and ingenuously confess that you are the author and leader of all his studies and disciplines.