It is a shame to have degenerated from one's forebears, especially at that time when you know yourselves to have such a prince, who bestows rewards on the well-deserving, vengeance on the restless. Those things are not to be scorned which are sought by neighbouring kings for the sake of presumption, since for the most part small things prevail to grant more than great riches can obtain. For frequently what arms cannot accomplish, the allurements of charm bring about. Let it therefore be for the commonwealth, even when we seem to play. For we seek pleasurable things to this end, that through them we may accomplish serious matters.
The lord of the Burgundians has therefore earnestly requested of us that we should send to him, with masters of the craft, a clock which is regulated by water flowing under measure, and another which is distinguished by the captured illumination of the boundless sun: so that, enjoying the delights he has obtained, what is daily to us may seem a miracle to them. Deservedly indeed they long to behold what they are astonished at in the reports of their envoys. We have learned that you are so saturated with much erudition, and know this so well, that the arts which the unlearned practise in common fashion, you have drunk in at the very fountain of the disciplines.
For thus, though placed far off, you entered the schools of the Athenians; thus you mingled the toga with the choirs of the cloaked philosophers, so that you made the doctrines of the Greeks to be a Roman teaching. For you learned with what profundity the speculative is pondered together with its parts, by what method the active is learned together with its division: bringing down to the senators of Romulus whatever the children of Cecrops had wrought singular for the world. For by your translations Pythagoras the musician and Ptolemy the astronomer are read as Italians; Nicomachus the arithmetician and Euclid the geometer are heard as Ausonians; Plato the theologian and Aristotle the logician dispute in the voice of Quirinus; you have even rendered the mechanician Archimedes a Latin to the Sicilians.
And whatever disciplines or arts eloquent Greece brought forth through individual men, Rome has received from you, a single author, in her ancestral tongue. These men you have rendered so famous by such brilliance of words, so conspicuous by such propriety of language, that even those very men could have preferred your work, had they learned both tongues. You have entered the aforesaid art, known among the noble disciplines, through the fourfold gates of mathesis. You have known, with the light of the heart, that art seated in the recesses of nature, with the books of its authors inviting you—an art whose use is to know hard things, whose purpose is to display marvels. It strives to show what men are astonished to have happened, and in a wondrous manner, with natures reversed, the thing done withdraws belief, even while it displays the sight to the very eyes.
It makes waters rising from the depths fall headlong, fire run by weights, organs sound with strange voices, and fills pipes with foreign blasts, so that they can sing by minute art. We see through it the defences of already tottering cities suddenly rise up with such firmness that he is rendered superior by the aids of engines who is found desperate in strength. Structures wet in sea-water are dried; when they have become hard, they are loosed by ingenious arrangement. Metals bellow, Diomedes trumpets the more deeply in bronze, the bronze serpent hisses, simulated birds twitter, and things which know not how to have a voice of their own are proved to send forth the sweetness of song. Small things we report of that art, to which it is permitted to imitate heaven.
This caused the second sun to run its course in the sphere of Archimedes; this fashioned by human counsel another zodiac circle; this displayed, by the illumination of art, the moon repairable in its waning, and rolled a small machine pregnant with the world, a portable heaven, an epitome of things, a mirror of nature, into the likeness of the aether with an undetectable mobility. Thus the stars, whose course though we know, with deceiving eyes we do not perceive to go forth: there is in them a certain standing passage, and what by true reckoning you know to run swiftly, you do not observe to move itself. What a thing is this even for a man to do, which even to have understood can be marvellous!
Wherefore, since the laudable knowledge of such things adorns you, send us clocks at the public expense without any cost to yourselves. Let the first be one where the stylus, index of the day, is wont to show the hours by a slender shadow. The ray, then, motionless and small, accomplishing what the so marvellous magnitude of the sun traverses, even equals the sun's flight, since it is ever ignorant of motion. The stars, if they could feel, would envy such things, and perhaps would deflect their own course, lest they should lie subject to such mockery. Where is that singular miracle of the hours coming from light, if a shadow too displays them? Where the praiseworthy unfailing rotation, if metals too accomplish this, which are held in perpetual position?
O the inestimable power of art, which, while it says it is but playing, prevails to divulge the secrets of nature! Let the second be one where, apart from the rays of the sun, the hour is discerned, dividing the nights into parts: which, that it might owe nothing to the stars, turned the reckoning of heaven rather to the streams of waters, by whose motions it shows what is revolved in heaven, and by bold presumption conceived, art confers upon the elements what the condition of their origin had denied. All the disciplines, the whole labour of the wise, seek to know the power of nature, that they may only know it: mechanics alone is that which seeks to imitate it from contraries, and, if it be lawful to say so, in certain matters even strives to be willing to surpass it. For this art is known to have made Daedalus fly;
this caused the iron Cupid to hang in the temple of Diana without any binding; this today makes the mute sing, the senseless live, the immovable move. The mechanician, if it be lawful to say so, is almost a partner of nature, unlocking hidden things, transforming manifest ones, sporting with marvels, so beautifully simulating that what is not doubted to be composed is reckoned to be truth. Since we have learned that you have read these things rather diligently, you will hasten to transmit to us the aforesaid clocks as quickly as possible, so that you may make yourself known in that part of the world to which you could not otherwise come. Let foreign nations recognize through you that we have such nobles as are read of as authors. How often will they not believe what they have seen? How often will they think this truth to be illusory dreams?
And when they have been turned from astonishment, they will not dare to call themselves our equals, among whom they know that wise men have devised such things. Gifts are to be embraced which are proved to be sought after by every means; for that is not despised which can fulfil desire. For through any precious things soever, one aims only at this, that the mind of the desirer be satisfied. Wherefore, greeting you with the accustomed favour through the bearers of these letters, we have entrusted to be sent—this man and that man, delights of your prudence—the clocks with their managers: one in which human skill is seen to be gathered, which is known to wander through the spaces of the whole heaven; the other where the sun's course is known without the sun, and the spaces of the hours are bounded by dripping waters.
Have in your own homeland what once you saw in the city of Rome. It is fitting that your favour should enjoy our good things, which is also joined to us by kinship. Let Burgundy learn under you to examine the subtlest things and to praise the inventions of the ancients: through you let it lay aside its tribal purpose, and while it regards the prudence of its king, let it rightly covet the deeds of the wise. Let it distinguish the spaces of the day by its own actions, let it most aptly establish the moments of the hours. The order of life is conducted in confusion if such a distinction is not known under truth. For it is the manner of beasts to perceive the hours from the hunger of the belly, and not to have as certain what is established to have been granted to human uses.