EXHORTATIONS

[...so that it] agrees. In order that this may be demonstrated, four points must be proven by me in this Journey Itinerarium: the author's term for this intellectual and spiritual voyage. If these points are judged—as I hope—correctly, sincerely, and free from all deceit and the disturbance of biased emotion, I certainly trust that I shall obtain full faith in the truth that shines forth in the craftsmanship of the world original: "mundi opificio" and the structure of the heavenly bodies.

First is that in the Celestial World, if you except the bodies of the stars themselves, no other solidity can or should be admitted; and thus the entire heaven, from the highest region of the air all the way to the Empyrean heaven cœlum empyreum: in medieval and Renaissance cosmology, the highest, most refined part of the heavens, often considered the dwelling place of God, is liquid and ethereal.

Second is that there is no body in the nature of things which is not subject to alterations and corruptions in some part; and thus all the globular bodies of the stars are subject to these laws of alteration by a certain necessity of nature—as they could not exist without them—and therefore the heaven, along with all its universal bodies, is corruptible The author is challenging the ancient Aristotelian view that the heavens were "incorruptible" and unchanging, a major shift in 17th-century science.

Third, that all the starry bodies of the World are composed of a mixture of the four elements quatuor elementorum mixtura: the classical elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire in a manner suitable to them, no differently than the Earth, though endowed with different properties and qualities; just as each was equipped with its own specific centers by the Supreme Architect of the World.

Fourth, according to a certain analogy, all the bodies of the World stand in the same relation to one another as the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, and the Earth stand to one another.

Indeed, I could prove these things at length in this place with cited authorities, were it not that distinguished men have already done so in entire volumes—namely, Father Giovanni Battista Riccioli in the New Almagest original: "Almageſto nouo" — an encyclopedic work of astronomy published in 1651 by the Jesuit astronomer Riccioli, and Father Christopher...