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[s.n.] · 1559

touch to it. Indeed, moved by these your virtues and studies, conjoined with a certain singular faith and observance toward us and the Holy Roman Empire, we could not fail to decorate you—whom we not long ago for these same causes mercifully enrolled into the company and number of our Imperial court, as one of our familiars and domestics—now with some more abundant sign of our liberality and munificence, so that your virtue might henceforth lift itself up more sharply, and your descendants might have an example which they might emulate. Wherefore, by our own motion, with deliberate mind, from our certain knowledge, and from the fullness of our Imperial power, with sound counsel approaching, we assume and lift you, the aforementioned BASILIUS JOHANNES HEROLDUS, and your children, descendants, and all heirs, legitimately born and to be born of you, of either sex, and their children descending infinitely, to the name, order, rank, status, assembly, and dignity of the Nobles of us and of the Holy Empire, and we declare and name you all noble according to the quality of human condition, and as if begotten from a noble genus, house, and family of nobles, and we wish you to be called, named, held, and reputed as true nobles by all and singular of whatever dignity, order, and condition they may be. Establishing