Conclusiones ex tit. D. de rei vindicatione

TO THE YOUNG MEN MOST ORNATE IN LINEAGE, VIRTUE, AND ERUDITION: Sebald Welser, Karl Imhoff, and Wolfgang Harstorffer, patricians of Nuremberg, their masters and dearest friends, greetings.

A decorative drop cap V features a bird in a landscape setting.

THEREFORE, most refined young men, it is the custom in the illustrious Academy of Basel that those who are about to dispute publicly in it to obtain a degree in any faculty, inscribe and dedicate the conclusions which they propose for disputation to some eminent patron and friend who is well deserving of them. Thus, when a public disputation was assigned to me in this renowned Academy by the consent and decree of the most illustrious order of Jurisconsults for the attainment of the supreme degree in both Laws, I thought that you were the ones I should by all means choose to whom I might dedicate and, as it were, entrust these my propositions. For this was required of me by such common legal studies—which we pursued together these past years both in Belgium and in Italy, in the most flourishing universities of Leuven and Bologna, and also of Padua—by our common and truly domestic life, which we have lived together thus far, and by the common dangers and inconveniences of travel which we have sustained and endured together by land and sea. Your readiness and your benevolent minds toward me also demanded this by a certain right of their own. Therefore, with a joyful face...