The Ash Wednesday Supper

...anything other than the sun and the earth.

Second, [it shows] that there are not only seven wandering bodies The "seven wandering bodies" or planets known to traditional astronomy were the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn., simply because we have perceived seven of them to be such; but that, for the same reason, there are others beyond number. These were named Aethera original: Æthera; Bruno derives this from the Greek for "runners." by the ancient and true philosophers, and not without cause, because they are those bodies that truly move, and not the imagined spheres Bruno rejects the Aristotelian idea that planets are carried by solid, transparent celestial spheres..

Third, that such motion necessarily proceeds from an internal principle, as if from its own nature and soul. By this truth, many dreams are destroyed: both those concerning the "active motion" of the moon over the waters and other types of humors Referencing the traditional belief that the moon's external influence caused the tides and affected bodily fluids., and those concerning other natural things that appear to take the principle of their motion from an external force.

Fourth, it decides against those doubts that arise from the most foolish reasoning regarding the gravity and levity of bodies; and it demonstrates that every natural motion approaches the circular, either around its own center or around some other middle point.

Fifth, it shows how necessary it is that this earth and other similar bodies move not with one, but with several different kinds of motion; and that these must be no more and no fewer than four simple motions, even though they occur together in one composite motion. He then states what these motions are in the earth.

Lastly, it promises to add through further dialogues whatever seems lacking for the completion of this philosophy; and it concludes with an invocation from Prudentius Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, a 4th-century Christian poet..

You will be marveled at how such great matters are dispatched with such brevity and sufficiency. Now, if here you should sometimes see certain less serious propositions—which seem as though they should fear to present themselves before the supercilious censure of Cato Marcus Porcius Cato, a Roman statesman who became a symbol of rigid, severe moral judgment.—do not doubt, for these "Catos" will be quite blind and foolish if they do not know how to discover what is hidden beneath these Sileni An allusion to the "Sileni of Alcibiades" mentioned in Plato's Symposium: statues that were ugly or grotesque on the outside but contained beautiful images of the gods within..