Complete Works (Opera Omnia)

...provided with such diligence that foreigners are struck with amazement, while the envious snarl at their own sense of injustice. To the most glorious Emperor Ferdinand I Ferdinand I (1503–1564), Holy Roman Emperor., who asked by what means such a great multitude of people—which Nuremberg then contained within its walls—could be kept in their duty, Johannes Tucher the Consul Johannes Tucher (1492–1546), a prominent magistrate and member of a noble patrician family in Nuremberg. replied: With kind words and harsh punishments.

By these same arts, you also keep your citizens and residents in their duty; at the same time, you not only make Mercury The Roman god of commerce and communication, representing Amsterdam's trade. well-disposed toward them, while you enrich your city (which has long been called the "Epitome of the World") with the riches of the East and West; but you also make Minerva The Roman goddess of wisdom and the arts, representing the city's intellectual life. most favorable; while you provide at royal expense all kinds of literary ornaments and exercises of liberal minds—things which even the most famous Academies lack—as if they were soothing ointments linimenta — soothing balms or medicinal applications for the "Mercurial noise" The bustling, often chaotic sounds of trade and the marketplace..

Permit, therefore, most Merciful Lords, that this "crown" The publisher continues the metaphor from the previous page, referring to this "Complete Works" of Johann Weyer as an intellectual crown.—which late posterity will approve with the final pebble Colophonio calculo — a Latin idiom meaning "the finishing touch" or "the final vote of approval," derived from the ancient city of Colophon whose cavalry was said to always end a battle.—be hung upon your doors and in the Dome Tholo — a circular vaulted building or dome, often used to describe a grand library space of the public library (which you maintain so well-furnished). At the same time, look with favor upon the efforts of this citizen of yours, who prays to God that you may endure for the good of the state and manage affairs successfully; and he remains

Amsterdam
1660 original: "CIƆ IƆC LX"