ORATION ON THE DISCIPLINE OF HERBS

Delivered on the Kalends of August in the year 1577, at the beginning of the lecture course on the books of Dioscorides, titled περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς On Medical Matter.

A decorative drop cap 'P' introduces the text.
The method of philosophizing is tripartite: the first part composes and cultivates the soul toward blessedness, established both in knowledge and in actions; the second part cares for the state and condition of the body; the third part manages the state of one's fortunes. In this distribution of the parts of philosophy, the authors seem to me to have had regard for the three kinds of goods, of which those that are proper to the soul are each one's own, while those of the body and of fortune are, as it were, external. Even if the Greeks called those things that are fortuitous τὰ ἔξω καὶ τυχαῖα the external and accidental, they said they were properly external because they exist on the outside, that is, they are placed neither in the soul nor in the body, but outside of us. The goods of the soul are the greatest among the rest; those of the body are second, and external things are third, as the Peripatetics hold, and the ancient Academics do not think much differently. Indeed, natural reason knows this order, and Christ confirms it with His own testimony, valuing the soul more than the body, and the latter, in turn, more than clothing. Finally—