De prodigiosa specie, naturaq[ue] cometae, qui nobis effulsit altior lunae sedibus, insolita prorsus figura, ac magnitudine, anno 1577 plus septimanis 10. apodeixis tum physica tum mathematica

the method, and the indicative goals agree in both types everywhere even to the smallest detail.

If, therefore, the harmonious constitution of any kingdom, or of a city and Republic, is most aptly compared both to the norm of the human frame and to the economy of the universe itself: and while it is in harmony with itself, it represents the best idea of health:

Disease and famine of the Republic, in what it consists.

But disease, that is to say either some lack of measure ametria lack of proportion or bad constitution dyscrasia imbalance of bodily humors, where the society of the elements is torn apart, or the context of forms is changed into manifest divorce; I think it is clear to anyone that this is now what the Christian Republic is suffering from, in an equally acute and highly dangerous disease. After the insatiable greed for ruling, dragging with it countless plagues, like a general epidemic, has wandered not otherwise from the heart and the other principal places of the same, to its nerves, arteries, even to the individual muscles and bones, so that with the rapid speed of contagion it infects, burns, and depopulates everything. And now for a long time in most parts of the world, nothing is left that is safe or healthy: until finally, with the principles of life corrupted, the humors exhausted, and the native heat perspired away, they seem to be looking entirely toward a hectic fever a persistent, wasting fever.

The present disease of the Christian Republic.