A horizontal ornamental headpiece featuring scrolling acanthus leaves and floral motifs.

A COMPENDIOUS AND LUCID

EXPLANATION OF THE

ENTIRE COSMOGRAPHY.

Small printer's ornament consisting of a stylized floral or leaf motif.

A large decorative drop-cap letter M featuring intricate foliate and scrollwork patterns.THE WORLD is a sphere or globe composed of four elements and the heaven, holding all things within its embrace.
Just as in an egg, we see that both the white and the yolk are enclosed by the external body of the shell in a continuous joining.
The elements, indeed, are gathered together by their own pressure and are situated within the ambit of the heaven, in accordance with their nature.
For the Earth, the most solid part of all, as if unfolded from the others and contracted into itself, fixed in the middle place of the entire world, is the center of the remaining elements; and it holds the place of a mere point in relation to the complex of the entire heaven.
Water, being less solid and indeed flowing and liquid, surrounds the surface of the Earth, not indeed on all sides (by the counsel of God, the best and greatest) but yielding in certain places, from which the Earth is [made available] for the convenience of both humans and other animals.