Opera nuper in lucem prodeuntia

Antonius de Fantis of Treviso, Doctor of the Liberal Arts, to the illustrious and most religious Deodata de Ruere of Montefeltro, a most observant nun, greetings.

A woodcut depicts an ornate initial letter "D".

Deodata, illustrious and venerable lady, as I frequently turn over the pages of countless volumes of books, I find—beyond the human theories of the pagans, in which (to tell the truth) there is nothing but exercises of talent and the empty wisdom and glory of the world, as Paul says—nothing that seems to pertain to that supercelestial Jerusalem and the happy vision of God, for which alone and for whose sake we were born. Since it is agreed by the common consent of both philosophers and theologians that man is capable of happiness, and cannot be blessed by anything better than the knowledge of the orthodox faith, there has recently appeared the Book of Visions and divine revelations of the blessed virgin Mechthild, a nun, so filled with every divine mystery and every devotion that it has not unjustly been called the "Book of Spiritual Grace," dictated by Christ Himself. In it, indeed, there is such instruction for the failing, such satisfaction for the laboring, and such devotion for the faithful, that it provides most delightful and exquisite food for the soul. It is, by the consensus of all, a book to be read, cherished, and sought after with the greatest effort. Especially since mortals, brought into this iron age, are blinded by a dark labyrinth, teeming on all sides with sins and errors, needing the medicine of the soul rather than the body. And even if they labor in literary offices, they are ensnared by the light allurements of poets or orators, or by the delusions of Sophists, or by the entanglements of pagan philosophers regarding the eternity of the world, or the destruction of souls, or, in the Averroist fashion, the unity of the intellect.