[3.]

PREFACE.

T. Petronius Arbiter, gravely, right near the beginning of his most elegant Satire, inveighs against the declaimers of his own time, saying: That by both the tumidity of their material and the most empty clamor of their sentences, they achieve only this: that when they come into the forum, they think they have been carried off to another world. This, I think, is a statement that applies not only to those who intend to pursue eloquence, but also to the rest of the followers of the Muses, especially those who take it upon themselves to penetrate the most sacred, as well as the most profound, mysteries of Law.

Indeed, however much charm and grace literature may possess, the whole of its dignity must be measured primarily by its utility. And Aristippus, when asked what things were most essential for young men to learn, wisely replied: Those things which will be useful to them as men. For since in all institutions whatsoever, it is the custom of mortals that nothing is expected from anyone unless he has foreseen its fruit beforehand, who would be so impatient of labor, or so careless a steward of his time, that, omitting other things more conducive to the use of civil life, he would endure to weary his genius with mere trifles? For my part, since from my tenderest years in my sweetest fatherland, and later also in these Most Illustrious Würtemberg Athenae [Tübingen], it has always been my good fortune that from my Most Excellent and most faithful mentors, according to the Emperor’s [instructions] in § 3 of the proem of the Institutes, I have received nothing useless, nothing placed incorrectly, and nothing that does not hold its place in the very arguments of things—I truly have reason both to publicly commend the faith of these Best of Preceptors and to congratulate myself profusely on their perpetual favor. Nor was it necessary to ponder long—by the will of those whom I judged it impious to resist—as I meditated upon a specimen of my studies, from where I might draw an argument worthy of the public light. All our Jurisprudence looks to practice and has as its goal the promotion of civil happiness through a decent order of trials. Since the malice of litigants themselves often tends to impede this order and the ready administration of Law and Justice, especially when they do not make themselves available to the Judge and, by their contumacious absence, halt the course of Justice, I have selected the present theme of Contumacy (so that I might make a trial of my meager progress in Civil Jurisprudence). Had I wished to weigh more accurately the difficulty of so vast a material, or to attend to the frequent complaints of the Doctors who concern themselves with it, I would have immediately thrown down my pen, or certainly turned myself to easier subjects more suited to a youthful age, had not the most certain hope that my efforts, though unequal to the task, would easily find forgiveness among fair and sensible arbiters, confirmed me in my purpose and held me to my Contumacy.

But You, O Best and Greatest GOD, assist my beginnings and direct them to the glory of Your most holy name.