Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum Iacobi Bessoni Delphinatis ...

Decorative rectangular headpiece featuring floral and foliate scrollwork with central urns.

IVRISPRVDENTIA, MVL-
TAQVE ERVDITIONE VIRO ILLVSTRI
FRANCISCO IMPERATORI IN AMPLISSIMO
Allobrogum Senatu Confiliario ac Senatori præftantiffimo Iulius
Pafchalis Siculus Meffanenfis. S.
Iulius Paschalis of Messina, Sicily, sends greetings to the Illustrious man of Jurisprudence and much learning, Franciscus Imperator, Counselor in the most ample Senate of the Allobroges [Savoy] and most excellent Senator.

Decorative drop cap D featuring a floral motif.While I consider bringing forth to the public, dedicated to your name, this Theater of Instruments of Jacques Besson, a most ingenious mathematician of our time, which was explained twelve years ago by Franciscus Beroaldus with a learned demonstrative declaration, and now augmented and improved by me with many very necessary additions; perhaps someone will interrupt me thus: But hey you, I say, Iulius, what kind of monster is this? What agreement is there between mathematics and the laws of statutes? What do judges of great cases have to do with mathematicians? But that man, most excellent sir, will certainly demonstrate enough that both the necessary roles of the best jurists, and you yourself privately, as was fitting, do not know them the least of all. For no one is learned who does not see and acknowledge that among those disciplines which agree with Jurisprudence, and which it is worth the effort for experts in law to possess, Geometry holds not the lowest place: the fruit of which, and consequently the end, is Mathematics itself. And from this, I believe it was said without doubt by Emperor Diocletian, that the art of Geometry ought to be both learned and practiced publicly: namely, so that he who is a minister or defender of Law and Justice might seek out the truth of the matter in all things in its natural splendor, bright and illuminated. Since this truth is often in the dark, either by the nature of the thing itself or by the chicanery of litigants, nothing that pertains to its investigation should be unknown to judges. Furthermore, that a judgment must often be pronounced or a defense made by an advocate of cases concerning geometric matters, besides those things which we experience daily by usage, is clear enough to us from many laws, especially from the forty-first book of the Digest, On the acquiring of ownership of things. To recite these laws to you here, for whom not even a single point of that entire immense volume of august civil law is hidden, would certainly be called foolish. Add that your own Bartolus Bartolus de Saxoferrato, a famous medieval jurist also declares this to us by his own example, who himself sometimes offers his opinion geometrically: even though (to tell the truth) regarding geometric principles themselves, as in the first figuration of those lines which we call parallels and plumb lines (let it be said with the good peace of the Bartolists), he has fallen through great ignorance of the principles, and argues foolishly and much against the custom of the discipline. Moreover, among those who have heard you, either sharpening your tongue in cases, or now answering the laws of the fatherland, or discussing in purer Latin writings those things which cannot be explained except geometrically; how many (I ask) are there who do not truly consider you a geometer and a famous mathematician, and a greatest jurisconsult, and magnificent by such a name? Let him therefore depart, whoever he may be, who, without observing the decorum of the person, would call into question my having dedicated these mathematical works to you, whose arbor and origin (as we have said) is Geometry. But as to what we have accomplished in this work, lest it be prefixed. Because it was very obscure, and Beroaldus, a learned youth to be sure, and possessed of no ordinary skill in mathematics, noticed this; he undertook the demonstration of this Theater, and wrote it both in Latin and French for the private use of his own people. Since this was accepted everywhere with no small favor by men, I was finally persuaded by Claudius Iugens, a man of the Treasury of the Kings of France, and inclined with a liberal spirit toward promoting and helping the studies of good arts and disciplines for the common utility of men; that I should make it Italian from Latin. But when I had first put my hands to the work, I immediately perceived that I would have to proceed further. Thus many things were digested for the better, and many things were added everywhere.

Codex, On Malefactors

Bartolus, On the Tiber