Epistola Sebast. Curionis ad amplissimum Collegium Iurisconsult. Patavinae civitatis

also undertake the defense of Augustinus. For you have great power, and you ought to wish it most of all, so that you do not appear defeated or as if you have undertaken an unworthy defense. For it is not lawful to believe that this most ample college, which is placed in the sight of the whole world and has always flourished through the wisdom of the most famous lawyers of both laws original: "iuris utriusque" referring to Canon and Civil law, is like some divine light in which you, sitting as if as the image of God, judge the most difficult and grave cases of all of Europe. Indeed, so that the greatest and most powerful princes of the Christian world, admiring in you a great temperance of spirit and an excellent discipline of the greatest sciences, come together at this place in their most difficult affairs as if to Delphi, to the Pythian Apollo, to seek responses. It is not, I say, to be believed that you, famous for so many and such great virtues, cannot protect the innocence of one wretched man against the audacity of a few, and snatch him from the jaws of the impious. Nor is it likely that you would not want to preserve by your own virtue, in the doubtful dangers of life, one whom you of your own accord have honored with so many benefits. Therefore, Conscript Fathers, Augustinus commends himself and his cause—indeed, the cause of many of your own citizens—and the dignity vested in him, to you. He asks that you attribute the blame for his departure to the fury of his adversaries. For we will always, as is fitting and as we have always done, honor and venerate you, this most ample order, and this most noble city. No oblivion will ever erase from us the memory of this kindness of yours, and in returning gratitude, we will never fail, when we are able, to increase your interests with grateful benevolence. Farewell.