DEDICATORY EPISTLE

Toward all pious and learned men, he shows great education and a true judgment regarding the highest articles of Christian piety and the most serious controversies in the Church. I have not only heard this praised by others everywhere, but I also saw and understood all these things for myself when he received a young man of good character, Christian Glauburg, the son of the most famous Doctor of Laws, Hieronymus Glauburg, and myself when we came to Frankfurt last year.

Next, I saw in his monastery such a school as our Trithemius indicates many once existed in monasteries. Indeed, it was even more pious and Christian, being bound by none of the laws of the Roman Antichrist A common term used by Protestant reformers to refer to the Pope or the Roman Catholic hierarchy.. In this school, the tender youth are rightly educated and instructed in piety and good morals. I wish that other abbots, who live in luxury from the goods of the Church and the alms of the pious, would imitate his zeal.

Third and lastly, I chose this dedication because Trithemius did not bring this Chronicle of ours to the goal he promised in his Preface. Or certainly, I am forced, against my will, to lack the rest of it along with other good men and the whole Church. Therefore, may your Reverend Paternity Reverenda Paternitas: a formal title for a high-ranking cleric, such as an Abbot, out of your great kindness, be of assistance to me, so that what is missing might be obtained from elsewhere. Likewise, because this author published a Chronicle of the Sponheim monastery Trithemius served as the Abbot of Sponheim before moving to Hirsau; this work is another of his famous historical records., which it would be equally useful to have available. Furthermore, he recites many writings of other good authors not yet printed, many of which I do not doubt have been seen by your Reverend Paternity, and I trust that by your help and counsel they can be published. Moved by these and other reasons, I wished to declare my zeal and duty to your Reverend Paternity. Therefore, I ask again and again that your Reverend Paternity believe I have dedicated these Chronicles to you out of an honest will, and that you look kindly upon my effort. May God the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our deliverer, keep your Reverend Paternity safe for as long as possible for the glory of His name and the health of the Church; may He prosper your plans and business.

From Magdeburg, in the year of our Lord 1559, on the third day of March: on which day the temple of Jerusalem was built anew after the Babylonian exile, and finished in the sixth year of the reign of Darius Darius I, the Persian King mentioned in the Book of Ezra., dedicated with a great celebration of sacrifices and the joy of the people, as recorded in the first book of Ezra, chapter 6 original: "1 Esdr. 6.", 515 years before the birth of Christ. However, the building had been hindered by the neighboring Samaritans from the second year of Cyrus to the second year of Darius, for sixteen whole years. By this example, God declared His great mercy toward His Church and His power toward its enemies, as if by a clear and notable testimony: that He does not wish for her to be destroyed in such great hatred of devils and the fury of adversaries, but