Epistola Sebast. Curionis ad amplissimum Collegium Iurisconsult. Patavinae civitatis

think that you, that most distinguished order, and that most noble city, were despised by him for this reason. But rather, attribute the blame for this matter to our adversaries, and to Francesco Robortello, a most furious and shameless man, who forced him to leave through his own wickedness and invented crimes. This was not because of any fear of the crimes—for if we were not conscious of our own upright and constant piety and religion, and of a life observed since early youth, I would not only not dare to undertake his defense in writing, but I would not even dare to walk in the light of day among men. Nor would he himself have stayed among you for so long, and indeed with the most holy men, had it not been for a mixture of grief and shame because of those rumors which were about him—not the kind his innocence and observed life deserved, but the kind our enemies, stripped of all humanity, wished them to be, who are more hostile to us than the Jews were to Christ. He also left partly from fear of the traps he understood were being prepared for him by these same adversaries of ours. For to omit Ulpianus, Ioannes Michael, and Francesco Buttanius, who could not harm him with their own strength or their own talent (even if they wished it most dearly), Francesco Robortello, who incited them and provided the weapons for attacking Augustino, openly declared by his own wickedness that he possesses not even a shadow of Christian piety or religion, nor of natural or political prudence, or of oratorical faculty. For that he burdened him with so many false crimes, that he cast them into the voice of the rabble, and that he spoke against him in your presence, unprovoked by any injury from him, I do not think he learned from Christ. That he violated the most sacred law of friendship, that he served hatred and envy, that he acted with evil intent,