Preliminaries of Cosmography.

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Before anyone approaches the study of Cosmography itself, it is necessary to first examine the foundation, or the principles of Astronomy, which are the knowledge of the circles of the sphere, which all of Cosmography utilizes. This will be manifested most briefly in the following sections.

On the Motion of the Spheres,

And the division of the heavens.

CHAPTER II.

Division of the world.

Elemental region. Aethereal region.

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The world is divided into two parts: the elemental region and the aethereal region. The elemental, indeed, is subject to constant alteration and contains the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. The aethereal region (which philosophers call the fifth essence) surrounds the elemental with its concavity and, remaining always an invariable substance, encompasses ten spheres. Of these, the larger always spherically surrounds the next smaller one in the order that follows. First, therefore, around the sphere of fire, God, the creator of the world, placed the small sphere of the Moon. Then the Mercurial; afterward the Venereal; the Solar; then the Martian, the Jovian, and the Saturnian. Each of these has only one star. These stars, moving through the zodiac, always struggle against the first movable body, or the motion of the tenth sphere; otherwise, they are diaphanous bodies, that is, entirely transparent. Next follows the Firmament, which is the star-bearing sphere, which trembles in two small circles around the beginnings of Aries and Libra of the ninth sphere; and this motion is called by astronomers the motion of accession and recession of the fixed stars. The ninth sphere surrounds that, which, since no stars are seen in it, is called the crystalline or aqueous heaven. Finally, the first movable body, which is also called the tenth heaven, embraces these aethereal spheres with its circumference and rotates continuously over the poles of the world, having made one revolution in an interval of 24 hours, returning from the east through the meridian to the west, and again to the east. And it carries all the lower spheres around with its impetus at the same time, and no star exists in it. The motions of the other spheres, running from the west through the meridian to the east, resist this. Beyond this, whatever exists is immovable, and the Empyrean heaven (which God inhabits with the elect) our professors of the Orthodox faith affirm to be so.

The sphere of fire and what it contains.

Firmament

Crystalline heaven.

Tenth heaven.

Empyrean heaven.