In regard to myself, I will set forth more amply in the notice which I
will give to the reader the motive that induced me to put my hand to
the work of the present author, who has no need of trumpet and herald
to exalt and magnify her(1) greatness, inasmuch as there is no human
eloquence that could portray her more forcibly than she has portrayed
herself by the celestial strokes of her own brush; I mean by her other
writings, in which she has so well expressed the sincerity of her
doctrines, the vivacity of her faith, and the uprightness of her morals,
that the most learned men who reigned in her time were not ashamed
to call her a prodigy and miracle of nature. And albeit that Heaven,
jealous of our welfare, has snatched her from this mortal habitation,
yet her virtues rendered her so admirable and so engraved her in the
memory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time cannot efface
her from it; for we shall ceaselessly mourn and lament for her, like
Antimachus the Greek poet wept for Lysidichea, his wife, with sad verses
and delicate elegies which describe and reveal, her virtues and merits.
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