On the Movement of Animals, Part One

He restored Euclid in the year 1658, which has seen the light of day three times up to now, and always more polished, especially the most recent one, which Alexander Falconerius, a youth of most elegant nature—who, together with all his noble family, bore a singular benevolence toward their teacher Borelli—provided at his own expense last year. He published the V, VI, and VII books of the Conics of Apollonius of Perga in 1661, the Theorica of the Medicean planets in 1666, On the Force of Percussion in 1667, and the History and Meteorology of the Etnean eruption of the year 1669 in the subsequent year 1670, when he also published the Treatise on Natural Motions depending on gravity. In each, he showed himself equal to himself in both wisdom and clarity. In his final years, subsequently in Rome, he was admitted into the beneficent patronage of QUEEN CHRISTINA and was received into our House of the Pious Schools of Saint Pantaleon, near the Piazza Navona, to imbue our Religious students with Mathematics (at which time he added his elaborations on the Conic elements of Apollonius and the works of Archimedes in 1679). He lived there genially for almost two years, mindful of the old relationship he enjoyed with our Religion in Florence, especially with Father Francesco a S. Josepho, a lecturer of Mathematics in the Pisan chair, who, having returned to the world, was called Famianus Michelinus and published a work on the direction of rivers; and with Father Angelo a S. Domenico, who was a student of the most famous man Galileo there, and who still honors the ranks of the wise among the living with his religious integrity, and with many others. He lived among us with such a rare example of modesty, sobriety, and equanimity that he seemed to breathe the spirit of Socrates, Plato, or any other of those ancient founders of sects, except that he added the ornament of the Catholic faith, in which he always showed himself most pure, such that, when the topic of systems arose while teaching Astronomy, he would say: "Whatever others have said, it must be omitted: thus the Holy Church teaches, thus it must be believed," and he held that to be certain in his obedience.