On Phoenician Letters

has persevered, taking care that the salaries established by his father be paid to others, but especially to the readers of the Hebrew language itself, the holy language, and that the number of those whom he judged worthy of that function be increased and performed? Who would not be stunned at such a divine duty in a supreme prince, especially from the very beginnings of his reign, that what you could scarcely ask for or hope for from an old man, already finished with the arts of war in his kingdom and exercised for a very long time in all the arts of prudence, you have received immediately from Henry as soon as he took up the reins of his empire? O happy French Republic with such a great prince! But O far happier King with such a great counselor! What will the old men do when the young ones are so great? But whence is this mind of the King so inclined toward letters and especially the holy ones? Whence this gift of such illustrious judgment, when otherwise the king has no knowledge of those letters (truly Phoenician, and in which the first source of truth hanging upon authority is divinely deposited), yet he transfers the highest liberality to their professors? This is indeed to be ascribed to the consensus of the king himself. But whoever has known a man of the highest nobility, authority, customs, wealth, and learning, and one who has been powerful with the King through the highest friendship, familiarity, and the same authority, will judge that it is to be owed to the sacrosanct counsels of Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, as to the primary origin. For although there are many other upright and learned men—perhaps with all or at least some of the desirable gifts of happiness—in the court or in France, there is nonetheless no one (may I say with the peace of all) to whom divine providence has granted this gift of life, which is to be so highly desired, that he is so great and is held to be such at the court of the Most Christian King in this kind of counsel as is the one Henry Achates a reference to Achates, the faithful companion of Aeneas in the Aeneid, often used to denote a trusted friend/counselor, if it is permissible to compare such great men to those small ones. Therefore, let posterity refer this to Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine,