TO THE

Most Serene and Most Powerful

Prince and Lord

LORD JAMES,

Of Great Britain, France, and Ire-

land King, Defender of the Faith,

etc.

WHY I should send these books of Harmony original: "Harmonices." Kepler uses the Greek genitive form for his title, Harmonices Mundi. to be published among men, sent away across the sea from the court of the most August Emperor Referring to the Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias, whom Kepler served as Imperial Mathematician., my Lord, from his hereditary Austrian Kingdoms and Provinces, and finally from Germany itself, and why I should present them to your most serene sight, O Illustrious King: I had reasons partly present, and partly of old.

First, I did not think this foreign to my duty; so that because I earn the Emperor’s stipends in the Mathematical field Mathematicâ Kepler's official title was Mathematicus Imperialis., I might demonstrate even to foreigners how much providence the Prince of the Christian Commonwealth A reference to the Holy Roman Empire. maintains for the most divine studies: so that it might be understood, from the undisturbed course of the ornaments of Peace through these provinces, that the sinister rumor of internal war This refers to the beginning of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which was just starting to devastate Central Europe as Kepler published this work. will, along with the reality of it, no doubt soon be extinguished: and that this somewhat harsher Dissonance, as in a Pathos-filled Melody, is even now about to [break forth] into its [most sweet harmony...] The sentence continues onto the next page.