(3 selected excerpts)
“English translation from the Italian original”

1.

He has three Princes beside him: Pon, Sin and Mor, which means Power, Wisdom and Love.

Power is concerned with wars and peace and with the art of war; he is supreme in war, though not above the Sun, and he takes care of the officers, warriors, soldiers, munitions, fortifications and assaults.

Wisdom is concerned with all the sciences, and with the scholars and magistrates of the liberal and mechanical arts. Under him are as many officers as there are sciences: the Astrologer, the Cosmographer, the Geometer, the Logician, the Rhetorician, the Grammarian, the Physician, the Physicist, the Politician and the Moralist.

He keeps a single book containing all the sciences, which he has the whole people read, according to the custom of the Pythagoreans. And for this reason he has had all the sciences painted on all the walls, on the ramparts, inside and outside.

On the outer walls of the temple and on the curtains, which are lowered when sermons are preached so that the voice is not lost, every star is represented in its proper order, with three verses for each one.

2.

They are all brought up learning every art. After the age of three, the children learn language and the alphabet from the walls, walking in four groups; four old men guide and teach them, and then make them play and run to strengthen them. They remain barefoot and with their hair uncut until the age of seven, and they are taken to the workshops of the arts—tailors, painters, goldsmiths, and so forth—and their inclinations are observed.

After the age of seven they attend lessons in the natural sciences, all of them; for there are four teachers of the same lesson, and within four hours all four groups have completed their turn, while some exercise their bodies or perform public services and the others attend the lesson.

Then they all take up mathematics, medicine and other sciences, and there is continual discussion and competition among them. Afterwards they become officials in the science in which they make the greatest progress, or in the mechanical art, since each has its own master.

They also go into the countryside to learn through work and the tending of animals. And the one is considered the noblest who learns the greatest number of arts and performs them best. Therefore they laugh at us, because we call craftsmen ignoble and call noble those who have learned no art, remain idle, and keep so many servants in idleness and indulgence, to the ruin of the republic.

3.

No one considers it degrading to serve at the table, in the kitchen or elsewhere; rather, they call it learning. They say that it is as honorable for the foot to walk as for the eye to see. Thus whoever is assigned any task performs it as something most honorable, and they have no slaves, because they are sufficient unto themselves, indeed more than sufficient.

But we are not so: in Naples there are about three hundred thousand people, and fewer than fifty thousand work. These suffer great hardship and wear themselves out, while those who are idle are corrupted by idleness, greed, lust and usury. They corrupt many others by keeping them in servitude and poverty, or making them participants in their vices, so that public service is neglected and agriculture, military service and the arts can be carried out only badly and with great difficulty.

But among them, because offices, arts and labors are distributed among everyone, no one has to work more than four hours a day. All the rest of the time is spent learning through play, discussion and reading; they teach while walking, always without effort and with joy.

Nor do they make use of games that are played sitting down, such as chess, cards or similar games, but rather ball games, wrestling, throwing the javelin, the dart and the arquebus.