On the Movement of Animals, Part One

His piety also shone forth in many things; for he attended Mass daily, and frequently received the most holy Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, having Father Master Iacopo Riccio of the Dominican family, the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, as his confessor, whom, together with his own brother, Michael Angelo, likewise Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences and Relics, he looked up to as the two lights of this century—not to mention the City—both in regard to sciences and morals. Before he went to bed, he was often seen by our brothers, with his knees bent before his bed, to devote himself to prayer and supplications. He never allowed a small image of the Blessed Virgin to be moved from his bed, testifying that he held the greatest veneration and faith in it; these few things in this regard I have decided to mention, so that it might be known with what happy connection he joined the sciences with Catholic piety. Moved by these arguments, I often used to say to his listeners that they had been fortunate to have a teacher who could be a model of religious morals no less by his example than by his doctrine in word.

Finally, seized by pleurisy, and knowing that death was now imminent, he requested all the Sacraments piously and humbly, and, fortified by them and having provided other proofs of Catholic piety, on the eighteenth day of his illness, between the last hour of the setting year 1679 and the first of the reborn year, while our Religious were present as usual and reading the final prayers—which he brought forward as being of the greatest comfort to him—he finished his life. His body was buried in our Church, where he chose his tomb, and which is more precious to us than any inheritance (which, though very small, we consider the greatest as a proof of his love).

These things I had, Reader, to briefly impart concerning the Author; perhaps more will be said by us or others in the second part of this book, which, while it matures in the press, taste this first part, and Farewell. Rome, the Ides of August, 1680.