The Starry Messenger

may speak of and celebrate your most outstanding virtues for all time. Behold, therefore, four stars reserved for your illustrious name—and not those from the common and less significant multitude of fixed stars, but from the bright order of wandering stars original: "vagantium," referring to the planets. These stars, indeed, perform their courses and orbits with marvelous speed around the star of Jupiter, the noblest of them all, like his own true offspring; meanwhile, in unanimous concord around the center of the world—namely, around the Sun itself—they all together complete their great revolutions every twelve years.

Moreover, the Maker of the Stars himself seemed to admonish me with clear arguments to destine these new planets for your Highness's original: "Celsitudinis," a formal title for the Medici princes renowned name above all others. For just as these stars, like progeny worthy of Jupiter, never depart from his side except by a small distance, so who is ignorant of the clemency, the gentleness of soul, the sweetness of manners, the splendor of royal blood, the majesty in actions, and the breadth of authority and command over others—all of which have established their home and seat in your Highness? Who, I say, is ignorant that all these things emanate from the most benign star of Jupiter, after God, the source of all good things? Jupiter—Jupiter, I say—having already crossed the turbid vapors of the horizon at the very first moment of your Highness's birth, and occupying the mid-heaven The "medium caeli" or Midheaven is a significant point in an astrological chart relating to career and public life, illuminating the Eastern angle from his royal palace, looked forth from that sublime throne upon your most happy birth. He poured out all his splendor and grandeur into the purest air, so that the entire