mine to Your Holiness rather than to any other, because, even in this
remote corner of the world where I live, you are considered to be the
most eminent man in dignity of rank and in love of all learning and
even of mathematics, so that by your authority and judgment you can
easily suppress the bites of slanderers, albeit the proverb hath it
that there is no remedy for the bite of a sycophant. If perchance
there shall be idle talkers, who, though they are ignorant of all
mathematical sciences, nevertheless assume the right to pass judgment
on these things, and if they should dare to criticise and attack this
theory of mine because of some passage of scripture which they have
falsely distorted for their own purpose, I care not at all; I will
even despise their judgment as foolish. For it is not unknown that
Lactantius, otherwise a famous writer but a poor mathematician, speaks
most childishly of the shape of the Earth when he makes fun of those
who said that the Earth has the form of a sphere. It should not seem
strange then to zealous students, if some such people shall ridicule
us also. Mathematics are written for mathematicians, to whom, if
my opinion does not deceive me, our labors will seem to contribute
something to the ecclesiastical state whose chief office Your Holiness
now occupies; for when not so very long ago, under Leo X, in the
Lateran Council the question of revising the ecclesiastical calendar
was discussed, it then remained unsettled, simply because the length
of the years and months, and the motions of the sun and moon were held
to have been not yet sufficiently determined. Since that time, I have
given my attention to observing these more accurately, urged on by a
very distinguished man, Paul, Bishop of Fossombrone, who at that time
had charge of the matter. But what I may have accomplished herein I
leave to the judgment of Your Holiness in particular, and to that of
all other learned mathematicians; and lest I seem to Your Holiness to
promise more regarding the usefulness of the work than I can perform,