Three Books on the Death of Christ and Self-Reflection, and Two Books on the Study of Divine and Human Philosophy

study

of your excellence in letters or your holiness of life; but because it is due to you by just right. For you have often given us that which excited us to work through this; and you have imparted many spiritual benefits. Thus, it happened that almost the same reason that drove me to compose it also bound me to dedicate it to you. Another cause has also been added, one certainly more forceful and powerful: the prayers of your supporters, by which we desire to be helped before God in fully attaining and retaining the fruits of these very cognitions, which I have already begun to taste and, by insinuating them to others, have manifested with my pen. For we have seen many who, while persuading others to live rightly, did not afterwards persuade themselves of the same. This is because practice often dissents from doctrine, and because, as he says, we all give correct advice to the sick when we are healthy. Therefore, since I had to seek help from somewhere, I came to you, most excellent father, as to one whom I have known to be—let flattery cease and envy be absent—more learned, more prudent, and more holy in his ways than anyone else. To which

Theremj

prophecy of M. Hieronymus

if I add the prophetic spirit with which you have been endowed, and by which you have sounded into the ears of Italy—and I wish they were not deaf—the future calamities that already hang over us and are now imminent by divine command, it would be beyond all controversy that if I doubt your prayers, I am greatly mistaken. Therefore, receive this our book with the same spirit with which you are accustomed to receive us. And when you have read it through (if your occupations allow it), I hope you will hand it to your brothers to read. If they find anything during their reading that causes offense, may they pardon it for the sake of the early years of my youth and the rudeness of these studies; may they also forgive not so much the speed of completing the work (for it was completed in about forty days) as the eagerness to publish it. For I did not rely on the Horatian dogma referring to Horace's advice to keep a work for nine years before publication when I weighed the duty of piety and the utility that will be present to those contemplating these thoughts, provided they do not despise Christian simplicity; thus, I have kept this little book with me for as many months as he commanded years. Farewell. Remember me in your prayers to God. Mirandola, the 13th day before the Kalends of November, 1496.

Christian simplicity