Propositiones de lithiasi tōn nephrōn

TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS AND MAGNIFICENT
LORD RODOLPHO A SCHOVENSTEIN,
Lord of Rhaetia and Hohentruns, best Patron.

A decorative drop cap letter P begins the text.
Instructed by the teachings of most learned masters and confirmed by the example of divine Aristotle, I have always judged that nothing is more useful to those inquiring into the nature of things and grasping the sciences and arts than to be often and much engaged in discussions and learned public and private debates. Therefore, since I desired to reap the most abundant fruit of this endeavor, I proposed these theses to be disputed under the most Clariss. Lord Felix Plater, Physician of the Basileans and most distinguished Dean of the Medical Faculty, a teacher to be honored for all eternity. Meanwhile, when they were to be sent to the press, the most welcome news was brought to me regarding your dignity, with which God, the Arbiter and Moderator of all things, has long since rendered you more illustrious, heaped with many honors. I cannot express in sufficiently worthy words how filled with delight I was, and how truly and from the heart I congratulated you while absent. One thing I cannot hide from you: I am doubtful of the spirit in which I ought to congratulate you most. Is it to YOU, who, with the illustrious nobility of your birth and the natural gifts of your character, have combined the knowledge of languages, arts, and sciences, and the experience of history with the highest zeal, and have so cultivated your mind that you have acquired for yourself the praise of prudence and wisdom even in this early youth? Or is it to our celebrated Rhaetia, which has gained its confederate, most excellent in spirit, birth, and natural nobility, as a most prudent and worthy colleague in the supreme governance of the Republic? Or finally, is it to the illustrious Schovenstein family, which several hundred years ago (as the most celebrated annals testify) joined with Princes by kinship and affinity, administered the supreme government of the Republic in our Ancient Rhaetia with the highest fruit for the Republic, and continued to administer it until these times, and, with God disposing it for the benefit of our Rhaetia, will continue? For what degree of dignity your father, Lord Rodolphus, obtained (I defer writing about your other illustrious ancestors to another more convenient time) and before the King