PRÆFATIO AD LECTOREM.

THE PREFACE OF JOHANN ENGERD

TO THE READER.

Since at the beginning of last spring, Kind Reader, Master Valentin Rotmar, Poet Laureate original: "P. L.", standing for Poeta Laureatus and Professor of Eloquence—an ordinary professor in this most noble emporium of letters A common metaphor for a university city for whose pious soul we offer prayers—was confined to his bed struggling with the weakest health; and since, on account of a disease growing more grievous day by day, he easily foresaw that his final day and death itself were imminent; a few hours before he departed from this human life, he very providently asked me to add the finishing touch original: "extremam adiicerem manum," a Latin idiom for completing or perfecting a work to the first volume of the Annals of the Nourishing Academy of Ingolstadt, which he then had under the press and in his hands.

Indeed, both on account of our singular friendship and familiar intimacy, as well as the shared misfortunes of human misery, I promised with a willing heart to my most friendly and dear Colleague—in the presence of those most distinguished men, the Reverend Master Bartholomew Scholl, Licentiate of Sacred Theology (then Prorector of the Academy, but now Suffragan Bishop of Freising, etc.) and Master Philipp Menzel, Doctor of Medicine and a most learned Professor, both of whom Rotmar loved and honored wonderfully—that I, as soon as more leisure was available (for at that time I was hurrying to set out for Bamberg), would most sacredly observe and most diligently carry out what he so earnestly requested of me. With that journey completed to my satisfaction, and I certainly intending to stand faithfully by my promises, I turned myself at the first opportunity to finishing the work. However, by then almost half of this first volume had already been printed. Therefore, having considered the method of the entire work somewhat more deeply, I would have gladly changed it according to my own judgment—for "each is drawn by his own pleasure" A quote from Virgil's Eclogues (2.65): "trahit sua quemque voluptas"—had I not been obliged to proceed in the order already begun.

But indeed, Rotmar, a man most highly adorned with excellent erudition and learning, undoubtedly had excellent reasons for the established order. For in the first part, he placed the Salutations to the Most Illustrious Princes, Illustrious Counts, and Noble Barons...