TO THE MOST SERENE

CHRISTINA

ALEXANDRA

Queen of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals

Christina (1626–1689) was a formidable intellectual and patron of the arts. She abdicated the Swedish throne in 1654, converted to Catholicism, and moved to Rome, where she became a central figure in the city's scientific and cultural life.

Prays for an abundance of heavenly happiness

ATHANASIVS KIRCHERVS

of the Society of JESUS.

The Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, was the Catholic religious order to which Kircher belonged. They were renowned for their rigorous scientific education and missionary work.

HEAVEN I unfold to you, wise Queen; Heaven, I say, like a book folded into various arrangements of the stars, distributed into just as many chapters, as if by a division of multifaceted reasoning; whose characters Kircher is using the metaphor of the "Book of Nature," a common 17th-century idea that God's creation could be "read" like a second Bible through science and observation.