De pignoribus et hypothecis theses

CLARISSIMO VIRO, To the most distinguished man,
DN. GEORGIO TRADELIO, Lord Georg Tradel,
PRIMARY COUNSELOR OF THE RENOWNED REPUBLIC OF AUGSBURG, AND A JURISCONSULT MOST ABSOLUTE IN OUR AGE, HIS MOST HIGHLY REVERED LORD AND PATRON,

Decorative initial VVanta original: "Vanta" meaning: How great is the recollection of benefits bestowed upon me, most observant patron, that I can scarcely place before my eyes anyone in whose footsteps I might follow, as is proper, according to the greatness of your services and the dignity of your person, and be able to express them in a living portrait with this crude brush of my own genius. For such a darkness has been cast over my mind that, wherever I turn, I seem to stumble. Why so? The saying of the Philosopher Aristotle handed down in Book 2 of the Metaphysics still sticks in my recent memory, bursting forth beautifully in these words: "As the eyes of bats are to the light of day, so also is the intellect of our soul to those things which are by nature the most manifest of all." If I had fixated too diligently on all these things in my mind, they would have almost driven me away from my intended purpose for the present, had not your innate humanity kept me in my duty. Indeed, your excessive familiarity occurred to my mind, which I have enjoyed with you most intimately for two years, not otherwise than if I had been perpetually raised and nurtured in your own home, to such an extent that many regarded me not as a guest, but as one of the household. It is truly a great thing to provide free access to your own home to a stranger known to you only by face; but it is greater to allow him to insinuate himself into your familiarity as if he were one of your own kinsmen; and the greatest of all, to inform such a person with an explanation of the most abstruse civil laws, to lend books in abundance for the sake of obtaining an understanding of them, and, what is more…