DEDICATION
To the Most Blessed Father and Supreme Bishop of the Christian Religion, PIUS V, Pontiff Best and Greatest: Friar Sixtus of Siena, of the Order of Preachers, [wishes] FELICITY.
Many indeed, and well-nigh innumerable, MOST BLESSED FATHER, are the things illustriously done by you before you were raised, by the gift of the divine benignity and with the immense applause of the whole world, to the summit of the supreme Pontificate. But among the other works of [your] pious solicitude, which you accomplished in contending for the defense of the Catholic religion against all the heresies of this pitiable age, far more admirable is that truly divine providence of yours, whereby you delivered the whole Library of the Christian Commonwealth from the peril of the ruin intended [against it] by the heretics. For when, among the ten most eminent Cardinals with whom rested the supreme authority of the sacrosanct Roman Inquisition, you held the first place, there came forth, with you as its author, that most holy decree concerning the repairing of the Library of the whole Christian Church — which the most abandoned heretics of our times had so corrupted with their diseases and plagues, that nothing else was to be expected but its most certain destruction, had you not suddenly brought aid. For first you commanded that the books of nefarious doctrine be sought out through the whole Christian world and publicly burned. Then you took care that all the writings of Catholic writers — and especially the writings of the ancient Fathers, contaminated with the dregs and infected with the poisons of the heretics of our age — be expurgated and cleansed of blemish. Lastly you ordered that a Catalog, or Index, be published of all authors and books of heretical name, which were to be barred from the ecclesiastical Library and cast away by all Christian readers.
I, kindled by this most burning zeal of your piety, have gathered the eight volumes of the HOLY LIBRARY (BIBLIOTHECAE SANCTAE); in which I have embraced all those things which seem most to pertain, both to the reading and elucidating of all the authors and books which, approved by your most wise judgment, you have declared worthy of the Christian Library; and to the confuting of all the authors and books which, condemned by your most just decree, you have pronounced unworthy of the same Christian Library. And since certain pious and learned men have judged that this — whatever there is of my labor — would profit in no small measure the students of the sacred letters, and on that account have also exhorted [me] to send it forth to the public: I have dared to consecrate it to the most pious name of your Beatitude, judging that it befits no one more that a Holy Library be dedicated [to him] than you, THE MOST HOLY REPAIRER OF THE CHRISTIAN LIBRARY — and by me singularly above all [others]: whom you once recalled from the infernal regions [from the very jaws of death], and dug out from the darkness of errors, and illumined with the light of sincere truth; and, having led [me] to the observance of a loftier discipline, clothed [me] with the habit of your own holy profession — you yourself, with your own vestments, with your own hands; and adopted [me] as a son reborn by your spirit; and have so cherished me in this sacred Order of Preachers by your benignity and liberality, ever unto this very day, that I am indebted to no one on earth more than to you. And since it is not permitted [me] to attest in any other manner a mind mindful of so many immortal benefits, I have thought that this labor, such as it is — a witness of my not ungrateful will — should be inscribed [dedicated] to your Beatitude: whom, I pray, may God, Best and Greatest, long preserve unharmed for the dignity of the Apostolic See and for the aiding of the Christian Commonwealth, and flourishing in all affluence of felicity.
At Venice, in the year from the Nativity of Christ 1566, on the Kalends of October [October 1].