REVISIÓN BIBLIOGRÁFICA
2.1 Materia prima
2.2.3. Formación de escombrotoxina (histamina)
Should I congratulate Myself, or You, or the whole of Spain, for your life, o Most Illustrious Count? Myself: being lucky enough to have been able to select you as the sole Patron for my labours. You: whose life has been made illustrious by examples of the great virtues and is itself an example to other Leading Citizens. Spain: who has the benefit of you for her own adornment, for the preservation of the good, for alleviating the dire circumstances of the poor, for supporting a concern not insignificant to your King, when the whole burden of the kingdom of Portugal (in the accession to which by [5] Philip II we now rejoice), which had been placed on your shoulders, was being run most successfully. I congratulate them all at once. Certainly nothing more fortunate could have happened to me than dedicating this work to You and your name, whether to provide a defence against the attacks of ill-wishers, or to pursue the continuance of your name, which, with You as a promoter, I do not doubt. For the things I could have longed for in my Patron are uppermost in You: the civilised learning to scrutinise those Commentaries; the judgement to weigh up the greatest Poet [10]; the scholarship to grasp whatever is hidden in this Bard. “What are the grounds for those praises?” someone may ask. In the loftiest Prince, in our most Illustrious Count, in the most respected Equestrian, you find nothing other than what is necessary for turning the pages of the monuments of literature. Certainly there are many things in You alone which would on their own adorn many, whether I were to consider the very noble SYLVA family, as the greatest amongst the Princes of Portuguese name; or the blood-relatives and kinsmen [15] together with virtually the entire front-rank of Spain, to whom bound by a connection, you lack the splendour of no family; or the riches, which are inferior to none, though it is with
public support and domestic splendour, rather than with the magnificence of royal palaces that you excel far and wide; or the degrees of honour which Your Excellence joined with your most lofty Nobility has given birth to. It is due to this that now, in the Royal Court of Philip III, you, with the greatest merit and integrity, have charge over the Portuguese Council, than which none are more important or more inviolate in the place of your King [20]. Finally, I am to ponder the splendour of your many Virtues with which you shine forth before all others. I see that You are the Greatest amongst the Very Great. Yet though there are all these great things in You, there are indeed greater things than the sum of these affairs, which for You, on a daily basis, your talents beget. I shall speak clearly: you love literature, you cultivate the literati, you flourish in the praise of the Poets, you rejoice in the company of learned men, you have very successfully begun the glory of your writing [25], joining the subject of literature with equestrian training. This neither calls You away from literature, nor does literature call you away from equestrian study, the most learned amongst the most learned, a Prince amongst Princes. Here I could have complained about the arrogance and superciliousness of many Nobles. Thus, o Noble men, does literature seem so disgraceful to you that you think its study is not connected with the most respected forms of training? Terrible to say, dreadful to hear, to think that the Muses, literature, academic training pertains [30] to humble men, or at least to those who are less conspicuous in the nobility of their birth! Clearly Literature is unseemly and something unworthy to be seen in the hands of the very noble. Another age of the ancients is far away. Books used to accompany Leaders as they were going to war, and those who brandished swords in their right hands, used to carry the books they had set aside in their precious store-chests, so that after the ardour of the day’s fighting they might dedicate the night time to reading them, and thus they might rest from the din of war. What age can be compared [35] with the age of Augustus, or the gravity of the Leading Men he employed, or with the magnitude of the wars by which the nature of the
whole world was changed, with all the resources of the state redirected towards one man, or with the zeal for peace after long wars? And yet Literature was held in such honour that on its own it rendered that age happier: an age in which a most abundant crop of writers, orators, Poets and Philosophers burst forth. This crop was so great that, from that age to our own, almost anything [40] that flourishes greatly now, overflows with the Classics. And, from the riches of that age, though we have countless others, we should hold P. VIRGIL as the prince of all Poets. And just as he has adorned his own age, so do you adorn yours, o Most Illustrious COUNT, You who do not think that the Muses are foreign to others from the inborn nobility of your Ancestors. Truly, You alone and your most noble Brothers, frequently attended these schools of the SOCIETY OF JESUS, as soon as we opened them, with incredible zeal [45]. This was by the order of the very great RUI GOMES de SILVA, your father, PRINCE OF EBOLI, DUKE OF PASTRANA, whose most happy memory Spain still nurtures: a man who was held in very close friendship by PHILIP II, of all the Kings there have been up to this point, the most prudent and he admired your father’s prudence. I very gladly credit You, the son of so great a father, well-deserving in the opinion of our SOCIETY, marked out by a particular affection [50] for me myself (how unworthy!), as the champion of this Work. By this gift, whatever its quality, I wish to testify to my disposition towards You.