Epistola Sebast. Curionis ad amplissimum Collegium Iurisconsult. Patavinae civitatis

that he broke his faith, that he stirred up rumors and disturbances, that he declared his own wickedness, audacity, and fury to all—I do not think he drew this from the sources of civil prudence which he professes with his voice and mouth. That he behaved himself incautiously, that he cast things at Augustino which he could not prove, which could be refuted in multiple ways, and which, once denied by a word, he could not advance further—this he certainly did not receive from the precepts of the oratorical faculty. But I am not surprised at these things at all, as I know he does not even possess the definition of the art he professes, and can do nothing else but explain Cicero’s Topica Topics/Commonplaces in all the gymnasia. How well he does so, we would see if he were to publish commentaries on it. For to omit the innumerable errors which exist in the books he has published and are also brought forth by him in his daily lectures (which, if I wished to pursue by enumerating, I would exceed the limits of this letter, and I would have to compose a large volume, which I might perhaps do someday), at this time it will be enough for me, in passing and as if through a lattice, to show you what I said a little earlier: that he does not even hold the definition of the art he most professes. For as I have heard from everyone's speech, when he began his interpretation of Aristotle's Rhetorica Rhetoric this year—I omit that he gave no oration, for in that I think he acted wisely, as we knew well enough that he is an inept orator—I come to the very definition of the art, as I promised. In it, he translated antistrophos counterpart/opposite as "opposite." Observe, I beg you, this most inept interpretation, because since Rhetoric and Dialectic are among the seven liberal arts, which are all joined together by a common bond,