V I T A.

...would confirm under oath that the books defined by the laws of the Academy had been lectured upon by him. This was confirmed by his oath. However, shortly afterward, contrary to the Julian decree, through new machinations in that same domestic and familiar council of the accuser and condemner, it was not the students, as before, but their masters who were attacked. For the accuser, through fraud and a false report, added a third point to the two of public deliberation regarding the method of lecturing. Ramus, on account of this supposititious report—as if he had violated the legitimate form of lecturing—was condemned to a sad sort of punishment of retraction, namely that he should himself denounce and renounce his discipline in the public schools and confirm by oath that he would do nothing of the sort in the future. He fled to the refuge of his students and appealed along with them. Therefore, the case was transferred to the higher orders of the Academy through a second appeal. Here, when they had pleaded their case in writing because they were absent in order to avoid a tumult, both the accuser and the ministers of the accuser, driven by that genius, although excluded by two appeals, nevertheless judged and condemned them a third time. The physicians responded that it was not clear. The jurists ordered the schools to be opened and believed that nothing should be changed while so many appeals were still pending. At first, the theologians indeed agreed with the accuser, but then they referred the matter to a council of chosen judges to examine it further. The accuser, therefore, puffed up by such turbulent and complicated opinions of men, seized the occasion of a third condemnation. When they had come to the chosen judges, both the students and masters followed the previous appeals, and for a fourth time petitioned that the accuser, who had accused them so often and condemned them so irascibly, and who, rejected by so many of their appeals, had left no room for himself as a judge in their case, should not judge them in the future. When both he and his emissaries denied this to Ramus, they fled to that common refuge of the oppressed: finally, the masters and students appealed against such violence. Therefore, on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of March February 15th, since the accuser had anticipated the day of the appeal (in which Ramus thought he could hide) and had given notice for the thirteenth, he was forced to come suddenly into the Senate, as if Hannibal were at the gates, or as if he were dealing with the peace of Pyrrhus. He gathered, therefore, for so short a time, what occurred to him, and he later published these things publicly.