[I.] There is no doubt that the heaven of the Planets is solid, taking “solidity” broadly for the threefold dimension of a body having length, breadth, and depth; in which way Philo (bk. 1 On the Making of the World), Origen (homily 1 on Genesis), and St. Basil (homily 3 of the Hexaemeron)—whose words I gave in ch. 2, q. 2—said that every body is solid. But neither is it disputed among others whether the heaven of the Fixed [stars] has some depth or height; for I found only Philo (in the book On Dreams) calling this into doubt, in these words: “What of that outermost sphere of the Fixed stars—has it solidity, or only a surface without depth, like figures painted on a plane?” For commonly the Physicists and Astronomers attribute to the Fixed stars some corpulence and mass, after the manner of globes or as it were globes; and so also to the heaven in which they are fixed, some thickness or depth—which Philo, as I said, calls “solidity.” The controversy, therefore, is about solidity strictly taken, which, besides the threefold dimension, has joined [to it] a hardness opposed to softness—in the way we say that marbles are solid, and metals so long as they do not melt, and ice itself before it is dissolved. These things being noted beforehand:
[Margin: 1. Opinion, on the solidity of all the heavens.]
[II.] The first opinion was, and endures to this very day, that all the starry heavens are Solid: which Aristotle upheld (On the Heavens bk. 2, from text 43 to 52), where he contends that the stars are not moved in the heaven as fishes in the sea—that is, are not moved by themselves, but by the motion of the orbs; of which [orbs] he imagined and named some as “carrying” [rolling], with Eudoxus and Callippus, and some as “counter-rolling,” out of his own ingenuity (Metaphysics 12). Plato, in the Timaeus—but on the interpretation of Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel bk. 1, ch. 16); Anaximander, as Plutarch reports (On the Opinions of the Philosophers bk. 2, ch. 16); Dionysius the Carthusian (on [Sentences] 2, dist. 14, q. 3), saying: “By the inviolable authority of the canonical Scripture, the heavens are most solid, as if cast of bronze.” The same the Master [of the Sentences] indicates (on 2, dist. 14), and St. Thomas teaches (on 2, dist. 14, q. 1; and Prima Pars, q. 68, art. 2), and many Scholastics, except St. Bonaventure; likewise William of Paris (part 1, On the Universe, tract 3), Lippomanus (in the Catena, on ch. 1 of Genesis), Fracastorius (in the Homocentrica), Alfraganus (dist. 14 and 17), Sacrobosco and Clavius (on the Sphere, ch. 4), Peurbach (in the Theorics) and his followers, Fernelius (in the Cosmotheoria), Vielmius (on Genesis, lecture 14), Pererius (bk. 2 On Genesis, q. 9), Martín del Río (on ch. 1 of Genesis, num. 36), the Conimbricenses (on bk. 2 On the Heavens, ch. 8, q. 1), Martinengus (in the great Gloss, p. 1018 in my [copy]), Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 5), Salianus (in the Annals of the Church of the Old Testament, at day 2 of the World), Adam Tanner (in the dissertation On the Heavens, q. 6, assertions 1 and 2; and vol. 1 of the Theology, disp. 6, q. 3, dub. 2, likewise assertions 1 and 2)—although Téllez does not hesitate, wrongly and inconsiderately, to adduce him for the opposite opinion; Amicus (tract 5, On the Heavens, q. 5, art. 3), John Punch (disp. 22, Physics, q. 5), [and] Aversa (q. 33, sect. 6). And although we think otherwise about the Copernican [system] (from what is to be said in sect. 3, ch. 1, num. 14), yet this very reality and distinctness of the orbs Tycho attributes—though with dread—to the Copernican [view] (vol. 1, Progymnasmata, p. 439), and to Alhazen and Witelo (in the Letters, p. 61). The foundations of this opinion will be dissolved a little below.
[…continues on p. 239 (PDF 274): the Second opinion — on the Fluidity of the Heavens, universally or indefinitely — which affirms all the heavens fluid (freely permeable by the stars), beginning with the ancients in Aristotle (those who said the stars are “fed by moisture”: Homer, Anacreon, Virgil, Lucretius, Pliny, Manilius, Seneca, Metrodorus, etc.)…]
(printed p. 239 — Chapter VII continued.)
Second opinion — on the Fluidity of the Heavens, universally or indefinitely
[Margin: Most of the ancients.]
The second opinion affirms all the heavens to be fluid—either expressly, or implicitly, in so far as it asserts them indefinitely to be fluid, that is, freely permeable by the stars. Thus [thought] certain of the ancients in Aristotle (On the Heavens bk. 2, text 45 and 56)—to whom are referred all who said the stars are fed by moisture, namely Homer, Anacreon, Virgil, Lucretius, Pliny, Manilius, Seneca, Metrodorus, and others adduced by our Lorinus (on 2 Peter 3).
[Margin: Cicero.]
The same thought Cicero, with those learned in physical matters, when (On the Nature of the Gods bk. 2) he said: “But the stars hold the ethereal place; which, since it is most thin, and is always in motion and vigor…”; and shortly after: “Nor do they have ethereal courses, nor [are they] inhering in the heaven, as very many say who are ignorant of physical reasoning. For the nature of the ether is not such that, embracing the stars by its own force, it whirls them around; for the ether, thin and translucent and suffused with an even heat, does not seem sufficiently apt for containing the stars. The fixed stars, therefore, have their own sphere, separated and free from ethereal conjunction.”
[Margin: Pliny.]
Of the same opinion Pliny seems to have been (bk. 2, ch. 5), where by the name “spirit” he understands both air and ether; in which sense (ch. 6) he says: “Between the earth and the heaven, suspended by the same spirit [air], separated by fixed intervals, are the seven stars which from their movement we call wandering.”
[Margin: Vitruvius.]
But Vitruvius too (bk. 9, ch. 4) sufficiently indicated that at least that part of the heaven through which the Planets travel is free and fluid, when he said that Mercury and Venus go around the Sun, crowning the center itself, [and] stand still, [and] go backward; and that the seven planets make their journeys, as if through channels, against the diurnal motion.
[Margin: Hyginus.]
Hyginus likewise (bk. 1 of the Poetic Astronomy), enumerating the sum of the things he had written, says: “Then we set forth whether the Sun would be turned, fixed with the World, or would be moved by itself; and since it is moved by itself, and goes against the risings of the twelve signs—why [should it] rise and set with the World?” Then (bk. 4) he tries to prove that the Planets are not moved as [things] fixed in the heaven—by an argument indeed not at all necessary, yet revealing his own opinion—saying: “But as I said before, we shall now go on at once to speak of the course of the Sun. For it is necessary that the Sun either be moved by itself, or be turned with the world, remaining in one place. But if it remained [fixed], it would necessarily set and rise in the same place where it had risen the day before, just as the [fixed] signs rise and set in the same place, etc. If, therefore, it rises and sets in different places, it is necessary that it be moved, not stand still”—that is, [that it] not be moved with the World, but by itself and freely.
[Margin: Germanicus.]
With whom agrees Germanicus, the interpreter of Aratus, saying: “It is agreed that the Sun is moved by itself, [and] not turned with the World.”
[Margin: Manilius.]
And (bk. 1 of the Astronomica) Manilius indicates [it], when, on the motions of the stars, he says: “All things are passable”; and again: “When the Moon and stars flit through the empty spaces of the world.”
[Margin: Seneca.]
Most manifestly Seneca teaches that Comets and stars travel freely through the liquid ether, and rejects the opinion of Artemidorus, which builds a hardness into the heaven, as is clear in bk. 7 of the Natural Questions, ch. 12, 13, 14, 15, 23, and 24.
[Margin: Ptolemy.]
And Ptolemy, St. Thomas reckons in this very class (Prima Pars, q. 70, art. 1), in these words: “It must be said that, according to Ptolemy, the luminaries are not fixed in spheres, but have a motion separate from the motion of the spheres.” Where the Holy Doctor leaves it free for anyone to think [as he wishes] about the hardness or liquidity of the heaven. So Dionysius the Carthusian (on ch. 1 of Genesis, art. 10), on those words, “Let there be Luminaries in the firmament,” says: “Plato in the Timaeus says the stars are not fixed in the firmament, but travel and lead a dance in it; and in this Ptolemy followed Plato; whence they say that not the heaven, but the stars of the heaven, are moved and carried around.” Likewise Vielmius (On the Six Days, lecture 20): “It is certain that Ptolemy, the chief of Astronomers, by no means affirmed that the Eccentrics and Epicycles really exist.” And the same about Ptolemy, for the liquidity of the heaven, think Cornelius a Lapide (on the 2nd Letter of St. Peter, ch. 3) and Scheiner (bk. 4 of the Rosa Ursina, part 2, ch. 29), who, about to bring forward Ptolemy himself, wittily says: “Let Ptolemy come forth and speak for himself, for he is of the age of 1498 years, and, hoary, still lives in much wisdom—he lives, I say, because Ptolemy himself, in the preface of the Almagest, says: ‘The teaching of man is the companion of his intellect, and his intercessor among men; and he who has vivified knowledge has not died.’” Now indeed Ptolemy (bk. 13 of the Great Construction [Almagest], ch. 2), when he saw that the ways of the Planets would seem difficult to many, says: “Those bodies are divine, which suffer no impediments either from others or from themselves”; and shortly after: “especially since their nature is endowed with no power of resisting at all, but accommodates itself with the highest proportion and facility, and, by yielding, gives place to the motions that are according to nature—even if they be found contrary to one another—so that all the flowings [currents] are able to permeate and pass through any [bodies] whatever.” That Ptolemy then judged the heaven to consist of all the elements, Raphael Aversa affirms (vol. 2 of the Philosophy, q. 33, sect. 1).
[Margin: The Rabbis. Gilbert. Neander. Peucer. Tycho.]
Moreover, the fluidity of the heavens is expressly asserted by many Rabbis (in [the report of] Jacob Naclantus, in the Medulla); William Gilbert (On the Magnet bk. 6, ch. 3); Michael Neander (in the Astronomical Elements, ch. 4); Caspar Peucer (in the Tychonic Letters, p. 157); and in the same [Letters] Christopher Rothmann (p. 149); Tycho, as we shall soon see, in the letters (p. 149), and vol. 1 of the Progymnasmata (p. 794), and vol. 2 (p. 268)—whose words we shall report under the 5th opinion, in which some place him.
[Margin: Longomontanus. Kepler. Galileo. Scheiner. Maestlin. Gemma. Wittich. Raymarus. Chinese Mathematicians.]
Longomontanus (ch. 5, On Comets; and in the Danish Astronomy, bk. 1 of the Theorics, ch. 1, folio 161, and ch. 4, folio 220), teaching that the Fixed [stars] too, no less than the Planets, are balanced in the most limpid ether—just like the Earth in the air—and are not moved, lest they be torn apart from one another in the expanded firmament: which would not be feared if they were [stars] fixed in solid spheres. Kepler (in [the commentary on] Mars, ch. 4; [and] in the Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, pp. 53, 142, 495) says that the single heaven of all the stars consists of the most tenuous ethereal breeze. Galileo (in the Sidereal Messenger; in the History of the [Sun]spots; in Dialogues 1 and 2 On the System of the World); Christopher Scheiner (bk. 4 of the Rosa Ursina, part 2, from ch. 26 to 30); and with him Cornelius Gemma, Wittich, Maestlin, Nicolaus Raymarus [Ursus], [and] Horatio Grassi—the last adding (p. 765) that the old opinion of our [men] among the Chinese, about the hardness and simplicity of the Planetary heavens, is held [by the Chinese] to be exotic, new, and vain, nor do they suffer themselves to be moved from [it] by the opposite [view].
[Margin: Cecco. Michael Scot. Origanus. Mariana. Celada. Descartes. Aversa. Boulliau. Téllez. Hevelius. Snell. Stevin. Gassendi. Crüger. Eichstad. Linemann. Pena. Cysat. The Parmesans. Bellarmine.]
[Likewise] Marin Mersenne (on Genesis, pp. 836 and 843); Cecco [d’Ascoli] (on the Sphere), saying that the orbs of the Planets are neither continuous nor contiguous, but hold a middle way, and that there is between them a body which receives compression; and Michael Scot (in the Questions on the Sphere, p. 105) says that “solid” is said in three ways: one, [that] which is hard like earth; second, [that] which is continuous, as are the rest of the elements and the supercelestial bodies; third, [that] which has the threefold dimension. Origanus (in the preface to the Ephemerides), Mariana (on Genesis ch. 1, verse 12), Celada (in the same place), René Descartes (part 3 of the Philosophy, num. 24), Raphael Aversa (vol. 2, q. 34), Bullialdus [Boulliau] (bk. 1 of the Philolaic Astronomy, ch. 2 and 4), Téllez (disp. 40, Physics, sect. [—], num. 16 and 21; and disp. 44, sect. 3, num. 5), Aristarchus [of Samos] (edited by Wallis, p. 23), John Hevelius (ch. 7 of the Selenography)—and in his [work] Snell, Stevin, Gassendi, Crüger, Eichstad, [and] Linemann; likewise John Pena (in the preface to the Optics), [and] John Baptist Cysat (On the Comet of the year 1618), affirming that Comets pursue their courses in the most limpid expanse of the ether. And the same opinion our Professors first defended in the theses published at Parma in 1613 (theses 742, 743, 783); and that Bellarmine was of the same opinion, Federico Cesi testifies (in the letter to Faber, in Scheiner, Rosa Ursina, bk. 4, part 2, ch. 27).
[Margin: 3. Opinion, positing the same heaven partly solid, partly fluid.]
The third opinion distinguishes the same heaven into a solid part and a fluid part, positing channels in any Planetary heaven, full of air or of a subtle and thin breeze, through which the Planets can travel—as Hurtado posits (disp. 2, On the Heavens, sect. 1; though see also disp. 1, sect. 5, paragraph 29). But St. Bonaventure (on [Sentences] 2, dist. 14, part 2, art. 1, q. 1) teaches that the Luminaries are placed in several orbs, but [orbs that are] continuous and movable and apt for motion; and that the diversity of [their] motions does not remove the continuity of those orbs, just as it does not remove [it] in water and in air. From which words Tanner and Amicus gather that he [Bonaventure] acknowledges the heavens of the Planets to be in part soft and fluid.
[Margin: 4. Opinion, that only the outermost heavens are fluid.]
The fourth opinion is that of our Father Nicolaus Cabeus (on bk. 1 of the Meteorology, text 37, q. 6; and bk. 2, text 11, q. 4), where he thinks it more probable that the heaven of the Fixed [stars] and the heaven of the Moon are solid, so that the starry heaven may thus be enclosed on both sides by a stable boundary; and because we have no argument of fluidity in these heavens from the—
[…continues on p. 240 (PDF 275): “…celestial Phenomena, such as we have for the fluidity of the remaining heavens enclosed within [those two]. But he is moved chiefly to suspect this, lest the exhalations of earth and sea, and the volatile salts, flying up into infinity, be consumed, never returning to ferment the earth—but rather be prevented by the hardness of the Lunar heaven from going upward, and be driven back downward.” Then follows the 5th opinion (Tycho).]
(printed p. 240 — Chapter VII continued, completing the 4th opinion, that of Cabeus: there is no argument for the fluidity of the two outermost heavens from the celestial phenomena, as there is for the heavens enclosed within them. Cabeus is chiefly moved to suspect a hard Lunar heaven lest the exhalations of earth and sea fly upward and be consumed, rather than being driven back down to ferment the earth.)
[Margin: 5. Opinion: the heaven of the Fixed [stars] solid, the Planetary [heavens] fluid.]
The fifth, and now most celebrated, opinion is that the Heaven of the Fixed stars is solid, and that the non-wandering stars are fixed in it like nails or knots; but that the heavens of all the Planets are fluid. Which distinction, so far as I know, Empedocles first handed down; for Plutarch says (On the Opinions bk. 2, ch. 13): “Empedocles [held] the non-wandering stars to be bound into the crystal, but the wandering ones to be loose”—with whom Anaximenes seems to agree; for Plutarch goes on thus (ch. 14): “The Stoics [held] the stars to be globular, just as also the world and the Sun and the Moon; Cleanthes [held them] conical [top-shaped]; Anaximenes [held them] fastened, in the manner of nails, to a certain crystalline [vault].” There are those who think them to be fiery plates, like ornaments: where he seems to report opinions about the stars [as] distinct from the Sun and Moon and the other wanderers. Plato too called the non-wandering stars “Adhering,” as Plutarch has it (On the Opinions bk. 2, ch. 15); wherefore that which the Carthusian says (on Genesis, art. 10), “Plato in the Timaeus said the stars are not Fixed in the firmament, but travel and lead dances in it,” is to be understood of the Planets. After these, Richard of St. Victor (bk. 2 of the Exceptiones, ch. 7) expressly said: “The lights of the stars are shown [to be] fixed in the firmament, except for the seven Planets.” And St. Anselm (bk. 1 On the Image of the World, ch. 24) says that the ether, in which the seven Planets are moved, is as much thinner and subtler than air as air is thinner than water; and that in it the seven stars are moved wanderingly, although they are carried off by the Firmament—just like a fly on the wheel of a Mill, etc.
[Translator’s note: the work On the Image of the World (De imagine mundi) is not St. Anselm’s, but Honorius Augustodunensis’s—the same misattribution noted earlier (p. 206).]
Junilius too, in the Hexaemeron, distinguishes the Firmament, in which are the Fixed [stars], from the ether—which he affirms to be similar to pure air—and says that it [the ether] extends up to the stars of the firmament, and that in it the seven wandering stars are carried wanderingly; whose words, as also Anselm’s, I reported in ch. 2, q. 2, at the end of number 4. Among the more recent [writers], the same distinction is indicated by Philalthaeus (On the Heavens 2, text 46), John Anthony Delphinus (On the Celestial Globes and Motions, p. 80), [and] Antonius Mizaldus (in the Planetologia); Tycho too is adduced by some. But he calls the heaven “liquid” indefinitely, in the Letter to Rothmann of the year 1587, January 20, p. 60; and of the year 1588, August 17, p. 106; and in others, pp. 109, 120, 137, 152—from which it is established that Rothmann too was of the same opinion, namely that the heaven in which the Planets are moved is most liquid and not at all hard; granted that Rothmann [holds] it to be airy, [while] Tycho determines [it to be] ethereal and of a nature different from the elemental. The same opinion he also inculcates (vol. 1 of the Progymnasmata, pp. 92 and 641), in all which places he explodes [rejects] real orbs. But (vol. 1 of the Progymnasmata, p. 794), treating of the matter from which the new star of the year 1572 was compacted—and which he had often said was in the Eighth sphere—he says:
For although the whole heaven is something most tenuous, and everywhere pervious to the motion of the stars without any obstacle, yet it is by no means altogether incorporeal (otherwise it would also be infinite and place-less). The matter of the heaven itself, therefore—as most subtle, and pervious to our sight and to the powers of the Planets—was nevertheless able, condensed and compacted into a single globe, and illumined by a light if not its own, at least the Sun’s, to form this star.
And shortly after:
And although, in the whole vastness of the celestial World, matter for the forming of some adventitious star is, in my judgment, abundantly at hand, yet nowhere more copiously and fully than along the Milky Way, etc.
Therefore, although he once said that the heaven is pervious to the motions of the Planets, yet because he said universally [that it is] pervious to the motions of the Stars, and called the whole heaven such—and that signally, in which are the stars of the Milky Way—he acknowledged the heaven of the Fixed [stars] too [to be] liquid; and accordingly he is to be numbered among the authors of the second opinion. Yet in this fifth opinion were Tassonus (bk. 2, query 3); Blancanus (in [his] Sphere), attributing spiral and free motions to the Planets, but to the Fixed [stars] a motion [conformed] to the motion of the Firmament; Fortunius Licetus (bk. 5 On New Stars, ch. 50); John Camillus Gloriosus (bk. 4 On Comets); Fromondus (bk. 3, Meteorology, ch. 1), Paulus Aresius (bk. 1 On Generation, q. 23, sect. 8), Hugh Sempill (bk. 10 On the Mathematical Disciplines, ch. 1), Francisco Oviedo (the single controversy On the Heavens, point 3, paragraph 4), Rodrigo Arriaga (the single disputation On the Heavens, num. 41), and John Baptist Zupus (in Amicus, tract 5, On the Heavens, q. 5, art. 2); and Mastrius and Bellutus think this very probable (disp. 2, On the Heavens, q. 1, num. 38). All these, I say, assert the heavens of the Planets [to be] fluid; but concerning the heaven of the Fixed [stars], they either affirm it [to be] solid, or only adduce arguments of fluidity which fit the Planetary heavens alone—which holds also of many [authorities] adduced for the 2nd opinion. It must be noted, however, that most followers of the Copernican sect attribute no motion to the Fixed stars; and because they think the earth, like a Planet, is moved in the heaven around the Sun, the center of the world, they accordingly acknowledge the whole Planetary system [to be] thin and permeable—which also of old Aristarchus, and certain Pythagoreans, posited for the same cause.
[Margin: Ptolemy, an asserter of fluidity.]
But that Ptolemy is to be numbered in this fifth class, we shall teach in sect. 2, ch. 2, num. 3; and it is sufficiently clear from the Almagest (bk. 13, ch. 2); and St. Thomas expressly teaches [it] (Prima Pars, q. 70, art. 1, ad 3), and the Carthusian (on Genesis, art. 12).
The Arguments for the Solidity of All, or of Some, of the Heavens are Examined; and their Solutions
[Margin: 1. Argument, from Sacred Scripture.]
[III.] The first argument is sought from Sacred Scripture; for the heaven, in Genesis 1, is called “Firmament,” from the word Raquiah, which signifies a firmament, or indeed an expansion or extension, but [one] with firmness and solidity; and therefore it was rightly rendered by the 70 Interpreters [the Septuagint] stereōma (στερέωμα), that is, “solid,” as I have taught at length in ch. 2, from number 2—where [I showed] also that that [saying] of Elihu in Job 37, “Thou perhaps hast made the heavens, which are most solid, as if cast of bronze,” has great authority, because in it he was not rebuked by the Lord, and other opinions of Job’s friends were adduced by the Apostles to confirm their own statements. Reread there what was said. But also in Job 14 it is said: “Until the heaven be worn away”; and Isaiah 51: “The heavens shall melt like smoke”; and to the Hebrews 4: “Who has penetrated the heavens”—but what is worn away, melts, and is penetrated, presupposes [something] solid.
[Margin: 1. Response.]
It can be answered, however, that the name Raquiah, among not a few skilled in the Hebrew tongue, sometimes signifies mere expansion; and that some Fathers and interpreters, by the name “Firmament,” understood not something hard, but a stable, durable, and impassable boundary between the upper and lower waters, as I taught in ch. 2, num. 2 and num. 5, confirming it by the authority of Sts. Basil, [Gregory of] Nyssa, [and] Augustine, and likewise of Albertus Magnus and Tostatus [the Abulensis]. And [it can be answered] that the words of Elihu are not those of the Canonical writer himself, since many of his sayings were rebuked by the Lord: for when Elihu had spoken from ch. 32 to 37 inclusive, immediately in ch. 38 it is said: “But the Lord, answering Job out of the whirlwind, said: Who is this that wraps up sentences in unskilled words?”—where the Lord, although he speaks to Job himself, yet designated Elihu and his many sayings [uttered] unskillfully, although mixed with true opinions; nor is that opinion of Elihu found confirmed by any canonical writer. Wherefore the Carthusian undeservedly called this an inviolable authority of canonical Scripture (on [Sentences] 2, dist. 14, q. 3); and that special rebuke by the Lord of Elihu’s sayings suffices—granted that in ch. 42 he [Elihu] was not again reproved, but only the three former friends of Job, namely Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, in these words: “But after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite: My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends, because you have not spoken before me the thing that is right, as my servant Job [has].” Nay, it suffices that those words [of Elihu] were not uttered by the person of the Canonical writer himself, nor approved by any other canonical writer—so that they can be rejected as outside the canon of infallible authority. And by the word “to melt like smoke,” and “to be worn away,” is signified the corruption of the pristine form, which will vanish and be consumed at the end of the World. Nor indeed do solid [things] alone melt, or are subject to wearing-away, since wax too, and oil, and clouds melt, and the air itself and water, when struck by the winds, give forth a sound. Finally, the impenetrability of which the physicists [speak] belongs also to fluid bodies; wherefore, if Christ penetrated the heavens, using the endowment of a glorified body, it was a great miracle—whether he penetrated fluid or solid heavens; but [it was] without doubt greater, if [he penetrated] also some—
[…continues on p. 241 (PDF 276): “…heaven that is hard, of which sort it suffices that the heaven of the Fixed [stars] be. Therefore, neither from these passages of sacred Scripture (which are the principal ones), nor much less from others, is it necessarily gathered that all the heavens are solid.” — Then the 2nd argument, from the authority of the Fathers.]
(printed p. 241 — Chapter VII continued, completing the 1st Response: even if Christ penetrated some hard heaven, it suffices that the heaven of the Fixed stars be such. Therefore neither from the principal passages of sacred Scripture, nor much less from others, is it necessarily gathered that all the heavens are solid.)
[Margin: 2. Argument. The authority of the Fathers.]
[IV.] The second Argument is drawn from the Authority of many Fathers and Doctors of the Church, asserting in the most express words that the Firmament was so made by God in the midst of the waters that it congealed from the waters consolidated in the manner of ice, or of crystalline stone, or of an eggshell, or of a vault and wall—as is clear from their words faithfully recited in ch. 2, from number 3. And these indeed are not only Josephus the Hebrew, but Pope Clement (speaking from the mind of St. Peter), Tertullian, Caesarius, Jerome, Chrysostom, Acacius, Severian, Claudius Marius Victor, Gennadius, Theodoret, Junilius, Procopius, Olympiodorus, [Walafrid] Strabo, Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm of Laon (author of the Interlinear Gloss), Peter Comestor, the Master of the Sentences, Hugh Carensis, [and] the Carthusian: indeed, how many, I ask, and what [great] men? Nor does St. Augustine, reporting this opinion (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 1), dare to condemn it.
[Margin: Response.]
It is answered, however, that many other Fathers and Doctors of the Church, adduced by us in ch. 2, q. 2, stand for the fluidity of the heaven—as we make clear [liquidum facimus] from their words reported in the same place. And therefore one of two [things] must be concluded: either that it is free to follow whichever opinion [one wishes], or rather that they are to be reconciled thus—that the former be understood of one heaven only, namely the Eighth sphere, [and] the latter of the heaven of the Planets, as we have already done (ch. 3, Conclusion 4), having adduced the foundations of this distinction.
[Margin: 3. Aristotle’s argument, and the Response.]
[V.] The third Argument is Aristotle’s (On the Heavens bk. 2, ch. 7), where he says it is congruous to reason that the heaven be of the same body as the star; but every star is solid; therefore also the body of the heaven, of which it is [part]. But, granted that the heaven and the Star which is in it were conceded to be of the same matter, yet it is denied that they have the same conditions; otherwise, because the star is luminous and opaque, the whole heaven too would have to be luminous and opaque.
[Margin: 4. Argument. The Conimbricenses.]
[VI.] The fourth Argument. If the heaven, in which the stars are moved, were fluid, and a vacuum or the penetration of bodies be not admitted, it would follow that, at the motion of the star, either the whole heaven fluctuates [is set in waves], or [that] part of the heaven, pushed by the star, is condensed, while part, deserted by the star, is rarefied: but condensation and rarefaction are repugnant to the heaven, and are an indication of corruptibility; and the same holds of that fluid body with which the channels would be filled—[the channels] admitted by some [authors] in that portion of the heaven through which the stars are moved.
[Margin: 1. Response. Admitting the penetration of celestial bodies.]
Some would answer that in luminous and celestial bodies a mutual penetration can be admitted, whether they be fluid or not; which John Provenzalis admits (Quodlibet 3, q. 7); nor does Punch refuse it (disp. 22, Physics, num. 52 and 55), nor Amicus (art. 5, num. 25); and certain Mathematicians [do so] in St. Bonaventure (on [Sentences] 2, dist. 14, part 2, art. 1, q. 2), who says: “Others say that that body is not cleft, and the Planets pass through; for a body of light can be together with another body”; and in Albertus Magnus (Summa, part 1, q. 4, art. 19), where he says: “Certain of the ancients said that the Eccentrics and the stars pass through the body which is between the spheres, and yet do not divide it; and this happens because of the formality [formal nature] of those bodies, just as light too passes through air.” Nor were there a few among the ancients who thought light to be a corporeal substance, which nevertheless penetrates diaphanous bodies.
[Margin: 2nd & 3rd Response.]
Others, however, could answer either that that whole tract of the heaven, or the Zone in which is the path of the planet, fluctuates; others, again, will concede rarefaction and condensation in the heaven, and will deny that it is a property belonging to a corruptible body alone—for, granted that that [rarefaction/condensation] which arises from heating and cooling seems such [a mark of corruptibility], yet that which comes about from mere local motion is common to a corruptible and an incorruptible body, since density of itself includes nothing but a multitude of parts in the same space, and rarity [nothing but] a fewness [of parts].
[Margin: 4th Response.]
Others, finally, granting but not conceding this [to be] an indication of corruptibility, will deny that the starry heaven is an incorruptible body, according to what was said in ch. 6, num. 4.
[Margin: 5. Tanner’s argument.]
[VII.] The fifth Argument is drawn from sound: For it could scarcely be avoided, says Tanner, that an enormous sound would be excited by the stars, if such vast bodies should, with so incredible swiftness, break through a liquid body by collision; for it is established that our air, when stones are hurled by the whirling of a sling, hisses horribly, and that the same [air], scourged by thongs swiftly bent this way and that, resounds.
[Margin: 1. Response.]
Tycho would answer this argument (in the Letters, p. 106): if the celestial orbs were solid, then—whether they collided mutually by immediate friction, or air were enclosed between them—from the most violent motion of the stars an enormous sound would be emitted, which would strike our hearing too. But Rothmann would answer better (in the same letters, p. 121), by denying that that sound, if there were any, would reach our ears—both because of the rarity of the ethereal breeze, and because of the enormous distance; for he himself had been in a place five miles distant from another place in which a most violent wind had overturned buildings and trees, and yet that sound had not been heard by him; but the air which is near us, on account of the watery thickness mixed [in it], and on account of [its] nearness, renders the sound perceptible to us. And indeed, who of us perceives the crash and roar accompanying thunderbolts from a distance of 10 or 20 miles?
[Margin: 2nd & 3rd Response.]
Oviedo adds that, just as within water no sound is made by the motion of fishes—because the medium is not thought apt for the species [transmission] of sound—so neither are the heavens apt for it. Finally, the very asserters of solid orbs must answer why the fire and air, from the turning of the Lunar heaven, do not give forth a perceptible sound.
[Margin: 6. Argument, of Aristotle and Pererius.]
[VIII.] The sixth Argument, indicated by Aristotle and inculcated by Pererius, is taken from the multiplicity of motion; for it is impossible that the same body be moved by several motions, and indeed contrary [ones], as it is established that the Planets—nay, also the Fixed [stars]—are moved, unless they be moved by one motion of themselves toward one region, but moved by the rest [of the motions] in accordance with the motion of a solid body to which they are affixed, or on which they sit.
[Margin: Response.]
It is answered by denying the antecedent: for that can come about through a spiral, or quasi-spiral, motion—in a manner indicated elsewhere (bk. 7, sect. 1, last chapter), and to be expounded below in this book, in the second section. Then, even if a solid body were required for it, it would not necessarily be solid; for fishes too, carried down by a rapid river, can nevertheless strive upward toward the source of the river. Clavius proposes this argument otherwise (on ch. 4 of the Sphere, p. 449); for he says: if [the planets] were moved like fishes and birds in a fluid, the motion of the planets would be free and too wandering, and thus there would be no certain knowledge of their motions—as if, forsooth, they could not be moved by an Intelligence in a fluid, the laws of [their] motions being nevertheless preserved.
[Margin: 7. Argument, of Tanner and Punch.]
[IX.] The seventh Argument, which Tanner and Punch use, is of this kind. It is impossible, or too difficult, that the Intelligences should move the stars with so great a velocity, and with so perpetual and constant a uniformity, except by means of solid orbs; for otherwise, since they cannot move bodies distant from themselves, they would have to be moved together with them at equal velocity. But this seems absurd.
[Margin: Response.]
It is answered by denying [both] the major and the minor [premise]; for neither is it repugnant that an Intelligence, residing in a single place, should impress on the star such and so great a motion that it lasts in its vigor and intensity until [the star] revolves back to the same place, in which it receives the impulse of motion from it; nor, likewise, is it repugnant that the Intelligences be moved together with the stars—for there is no danger that they either grow weary, or at length disdain to serve their Creator in this ministry. But in which of the two ways they move the Stars is to be investigated in the following section.
[Margin: 8. Tanner’s argument.]
[X.] The eighth Argument. If solid orbs be not conceded, it will be necessary, for moving the celestial bodies, to multiply innumerable Intelligences—indeed as many, says Tanner, as there are Fixed stars, and as many as there are spots of the Sun.
[Margin: Response.]
It is answered by denying the antecedent; because the heavens of the Planets can be posited [as] liquid, and the heaven of the Fixed [stars as] solid, movable by one or a few Intelligences; while the spots around the Sun, since they are bodies very near to it and erupting from it, are easily carried around by the very whirling of the Sun—or, [if] those nearer to one another [be considered], a single Intelligence [could] preside over and direct [them], if an Intelligence be said to be needed for these things. But as regards the Planets, the asserters of solidity multiply far more entities of Eccentrics and Epicycles.
[Margin: 9. Tanner’s argument.]
[XI.] The ninth Argument. Solidity of the orbs being admitted, the Divine artifice shines forth more in the machine of the heaven, [composed] of so many and various orbs, like a clock skillfully com—
[…continues on p. 242 (PDF 277): “…compacted, and in which, as gems in rings, the stars are set; and [thus] is better preserved that subordination of influences and motions in the lower heavens with respect to the higher, which both St. Dionysius the Areopagite and our Holy Patriarch Ignatius (in the letter On Obedience) supposed.” — to which it is answered that this artifice shines forth none the less if God, from the beginning, has infused the species and idea of the motions into the Angelic minds, by force of which they can certainly and infallibly move the Planets and direct them to their ends.]
(printed p. 242 — Chapter VII continued, completing the response to the 9th solidity argument: the heaven is likened to a skilfully compacted clock in which the stars are set as gems in rings, and a solid heaven better preserves the subordination of influences and motions of the lower heavens to the higher, as St. Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Ignatius supposed.)
[Margin: Response.]
It is answered, however, that this artifice shines forth none the less if God has, from the beginning, infused the species and idea of the motions into the Angelic minds, by force of which they can certainly and infallibly move the Planets and direct [them] to their ends; yet in such a way that the lower [Intelligences] regard the higher, and strive to imitate something in them. For this artifice is rational and intellectual, which is assuredly nobler than a mechanical one. Just as a painter would be far more excellent who drew a perfectly straight line without any ruler, or a most perfectly round circle without a compass, than one who could [do] neither without the aid of ruler and compass. Nay, if the Orbs of the Planets consisted of solid Eccentrics and Epicycles, either the artifice would be greater if they were moved of themselves without an Intelligence, or [else] there would be no need of an Intelligence of excellent knowledge, but only of a moving power. But the good Father Tanner—a German man, too much attached to those horary [clock] machines perfected in Germany—seems to have been able to imagine nothing more excellent as regards this matter. I said “perfected,” because it is known to us that Gianello of Cremona, the Architect (or, as they call [it], the Organ-maker) of Charles V, began at Cremona, in his own house, to sketch out the machine of the Horisonian Clock; which afterward some German or other, having inspected it, perfected and reduced to a better form—which is to be ascribed to no small praise.
[Margin: 10. Argument.]
[XII.] The tenth and last argument Palingenius indicates (in “Aquarius”); which, reduced to form, is such: The longer anything lasts in its state, the more hard and solid it is, and conversely; but the heaven lasts in its state from the beginning of the world to the end; therefore the heaven is most hard.
[Margin: Response.]
But the major proposition is denied, if other things are not equal: for neither is earth more durable than water and air as a whole, nor an apple [more durable] than oil, nor the flesh of dead animals [more durable] than water drawn off drop by drop. The verses of Palingenius are written below:
But the heaven is eternal, thus is consumed by no age; But since the things that are harder are [also] more long-lasting, And are less harmed; therefore the ether is hardest, [harder] than adamant, so that it scorns iron and fire, And every force, except the Lord’s, by whom it itself was founded.
The Arguments for the Fluidity of the Heavens are Weighed, and Responses to them are Adduced
[Margin: 1. Argument. The authority of Sacred Scripture.]
[XIII.] The first Argument is the authority of the divine writings; for it is said in Isaiah 51: “The heavens shall melt like smoke”—where the Septuagint reads, “The heaven is made firm like smoke”; following which version St. Basil says (homily 1 of the Hexaemeron): “But concerning the substance of the heaven, those things satisfy us which were said by the Prophet Isaiah, who in common words opened to us a fitting sense of its nature, when he said: who made firm the heaven like smoke”—that is, who produced [a heaven] of a thin nature, neither solid nor thick, for the composition and substance of the heaven. Moreover, Sacred Scripture never attributes motion to the heaven except by way of miracle—as when it is said in Isaiah 34: “The heavens shall be folded together like a book”; and Joel ch. 2: “At his presence the earth trembled, the heavens were moved”; and ch. 3: “The heavens and the earth shall be moved.” But whenever there is talk of the natural motion of the stars—such as of the Sun and Moon—it is never attributed to the heaven, as is clear to one reading Sacred Scripture, and the passages which I already reviewed in ch. 2, num. 5.
[Margin: 1. Response.]
It can be answered that that version of the 70 [Septuagint] does not outweigh the Vulgate, [or those] of St. Jerome, Pagninus, Vatablus, [and] Arias Montanus; and that the simile of smoke is not apt for explaining firmness; and that [the verse] should rather be translated, from the Hebrew word Racha [רקע], “they are expanded” or “they shall be expanded”; or [that] the sense is that the heavens do not have, according to the form and conditions of the present time, a greater duration than smoke has, but that they too are to be transmuted very soon: just as in Psalm 36 [37] it is said, “As smoke they shall vanish”; and Psalm 101 [102], “My days have vanished like smoke.” Moreover, Sacred Scripture expresses [in motion] only that of the Sun and Moon, because that [motion] alone is manifest to the common [people] and strikes the eyes; and the Planets are those for whose sake the heavens are moved, if they are moved—just as a horseman, or one carried in a chariot, is said to arrive in the city, even though his horse too, or the chariot, has arrived. It can happen, therefore, that the heavens too are moved, and yet that Scripture keeps silent about their motion, as being less sensible and less principal; which response is that of Pererius (On Genesis bk. 2, q. 9), Martinengus (in the Gloss on Genesis, p. 1019), and Amicus (above, art. 5).
[Margin: 2. Response.]
It could be answered, secondly, that even if the stars were moved while the heaven [remained] unmoved, it would not follow from that that the heaven is liquid; for someone could admit, with Arriaga (the single disputation On the Heavens, num. 26), a vacuum in the heaven through which not only the stars but also the Epicycles are carried—for he says that a vacuum is impeded by God only in sublunary [things]—or, if this is too bold, [could] admit the penetration of the stars with the heaven, which others, already named under number 6, have admitted.
[Margin: 2. Argument. The authority of the Fathers.]
[XIV.] The second Argument is the Authority of 30 Fathers and Doctors, in [the report of] Father Schomberger; of whom some denied the Firmament to be solid with a solidity including hardness, while others affirmed that the Planets are moved by themselves in the heaven, the heaven itself [remaining] unmoved—and accordingly are moved like birds in the air, and fishes in water—and thus that the heaven is liquid: whose words I have already reported in ch. 2, q. 2. For to say, as Amicus says, that they [the Fathers] only deny to the heaven such a solidity as elemental bodies have, is forced and arbitrarily said; otherwise the same could be said of the solidity of the heaven, which he himself strives to confirm from the Fathers.
[Margin: 1. Response.]
It could therefore be better answered that many other Fathers stand for solidity, and therefore [that] either it is free to follow whichever side, or [that] they are to be reconciled, in such a way that some asserted the solidity of the supreme heaven—that is, of the Fixed [stars]—chiefly or solely, while others [asserted] the fluidity of the Planetary heaven: how much foundation this distinction has in the Fathers, I have already made plain in ch. 3, Conclusion 4.
[Margin: 2. Response.]
It is answered, secondly, that from those who say that the Planets are moved while the heaven [is] unmoved, the fluidity of the heaven does not follow; because one could admit either a vacuum in the heaven, or the penetration of bodies, according to what was said under number 6, and toward the end, num. 13.
[Margin: 3. Argument, from the superfluity of motions and instruments.]
[XV.] The third Argument. So many real and solid orbs of the Planets, and their motions, are multiplied in vain—nay, not only in vain, but with danger of mutual collision and impediment, given so great a variety of motions; or at least, without necessity, we are compelled to weary the imagination in conceiving so many real and solid Epicycles, Eccentrics, Concentrics, Eccentr-Epicycles, carriers, counter-carriers, deferents, counter-deferents, etc. Finally, it seems incongruous to the divine Wisdom that, on account of the motion of a single Planet—say Saturn, which can most easily be moved by itself or by an Intelligence—there should be moved so great and so vast a machine as is the whole heaven of each Planet, which, compared to its own heaven, is but as a point, and is smaller than a drop is in respect of the Ocean; just as it would seem incongruous, if, on account of the motion of a single little drop of water, the whole Ocean (which otherwise would remain immobile) were moved; or if, to move an ant, the whole earth had to be displaced. By which argument—concerning a fitness partly physical, partly moral—Arriaga (the single disputation On the Heavens, num. 53), being moved, yielded so as to assert that it is more probable that the heavens of the Planets are liquid.
[Margin: Response.]
Nevertheless Tanner and Amicus answer that in the structure of these Machines, and in the subordination of motions, the artifice of the supreme Workman, and his Omnipotence, and the power of the Intelligences divinely communicated [to them], for perpetually setting in motion such vast bodies, appears more [strikingly].
[Margin: 4. Argument, from the trajectory of Comets.]
[XVI.] The fourth Argument is taken from the manifold and wandering motion—that is, the free and oblique trajectory—of those Comets which Tycho and others are reckoned to have demonstrated to have been generated and moved above the Moon; for [that] this was demonstrated by the Astronomers concerning many Comets, [these] thought—both those whom we adduced in bk. 8, sect. 1, ch. 23, and, on the occasion of this controversy about solidity, Scheiner (in the Rosa Ursina, pp. 740 and 765), Oviedo (num. 15), Téllez (disp. 40, num. 7), and in his [work] our Father Ignatius Stafford, a distinguished Mathematician, in manuscripts, and in Oviedo our Eusebius [Nieremberg] (bk. 6 of the Philosophy). Now, if the heavens were solid, their whole mass would have gone over into the Eccentrics, Concentrics, and Epicycles of the Planets, and there would remain no matter or place for the Epicycles of the Comets. Therefore, from the trajectories—
[…continues on p. 243 (PDF 278): “…of the Comets, the fluidity of the heaven was demonstrated by Tycho — so thought Kepler (Epitome bk. 4, p. 442), saying: ‘Tycho Brahe refutes solid orbs by three arguments: one from the motion of the Comets; another from unrefracted Light; the third from the proportion of the orbs. For if the orbs were solid, the Comets would not be seen to cross from one orb into another…’” — followed by three responses (the most important being Riccioli’s own bk. 8 case for supralunar comets).]
(printed p. 243 — Chapter VII continued, completing the 4th fluidity argument, from the Comets: Kepler, in the Epitome of Astronomy bk. 4, held that Tycho demonstrated the fluidity of the heaven from the trajectories of the Comets.)
Tycho Brahe refutes solid orbs by three arguments: one is from the motion of the Comets; another from unrefracted Light; the third from the proportion of the orbs. For if the orbs were solid, the Comets would not be seen to cross over from one orb into another, since they would be impeded by the solidity; but they do cross over from one into another, as Tycho demonstrated.
[Margin: 1. Response.]
Nevertheless Tanner, Amicus, and Hurtado answer that it has not been demonstrated that any Comets were above the Moon—which [denial] they indeed dared [to make] without discussing Tycho’s arguments (deduced chiefly from parallax), not without danger of incurring ridicule or indignation from those skilled in Astronomy and Geometry. Wherefore, to this end too, I judged that as much labor was to be undertaken by us as you have already seen drained out [accomplished], by God’s favor, in bk. 8, sect. 1—where at last, in ch. 23, I concluded that it has not indeed hitherto been absolutely demonstrated that any Comet was above the Moon, but that, on some highly probable hypothesis, it has been demonstrated.
[Margin: 2. Response.]
Therefore Tanner, Oviedo, Arriaga, and others (named in the same bk. 8, sect. 1, ch. 6, num. 12) answer, secondly, that both Comets and new stars are portents, divinely—and not without a miracle—created or made in the heaven, for arousing, terrifying, [and] warning Mortals, etc.; and that they could therefore also, in a supernatural manner—whether by penetration or by reproduction—cross over from one orb into another, however solid [the orb] be conceded [to be].
[Margin: 3. Response.]
Fracastorius would answer, thirdly (in the Homocentrica, sect. 3, ch. 23), that there is in the heaven of the Moon a certain orb serving the motion of the Comets in latitude—which Comets, however, he says are moved in the air; yet he acknowledges the difficulty of his response. Similarly, then, someone could imagine, within the orbs of the Planets, other and other orbs really distinct, and destined for the motion of the Comets. How arduous this is, let him judge who knows what we related about the motions of the Comets in bk. 8, sect. 1, ch. 3.
[Margin: 5. Argument, from the motion of the Satellites of Saturn (♄) and Jupiter (♃).]
[XVII.] The fifth Argument arises from the motions of the Satellites of Saturn and Jupiter; concerning which, [the things] are to be seen which I set forth in bk. 7, sect. 1, ch. 1 and 3, and in sect. 6, the last chapter; for so great is the variety in them, that around Saturn and Jupiter the solidity of the heaven does not seem able to be admitted, lest it impede such motions. But to say, with Tanner and Arriaga, that it is not yet certain whether [those bodies] conspicuous only through the telescope-tube are [merely apparent] rather than wandering—this is surely to show oneself less skilled in Astronomical matters. Wherefore the same [authors] answer better, that all those motions, since they are after all regular, can come about through peculiar Epicycles around Saturn and Jupiter, hollowed out in a larger Epicycle of Saturn and Jupiter.
[Margin: 6. Argument, from the motion of Mars (♂).]
[XVIII.] The sixth Argument arises from the motion of Mars; for we have already described its Spirals and convolutions, wonderfully perplexed and entangled, together with Kepler (bk. 7, sect. 1, ch. 8). Then, that it [Mars] is indeed carried above the Sun when it is around its own Apogee and conjunction with the Sun, but descends below the Sun and penetrates the Solar heaven when, become acronychal [at opposition], it tends toward [its] Perigee and toward opposition with the Sun—we showed both from the increase of [its] apparent magnitude at perigee, and from the parallax (which is required to be greater in it than in the Sun), so that the place of Mars, as to longitude and latitude—whether deduced from the tables or from the delineation of a Geometric hypothesis—agrees with the place then observed through exquisite instruments. This, I say, we showed—or [rather] we taught [it as] shown by Copernicus, Tycho, and Kepler—already in bk. 7, sect. 2, ch. 3, Scholium 4; and sect. 6, ch. 4, Scholia 3 and 4; and ch. 10, Scholium 1; where also we rebuked Tanner, Charles Malapert, and Bartholomew Amicus, [in] that, out of excessive love of the solidity of the Planetary heaven, they dared—without any examination of the Tychonic or Keplerian observations or demonstrations—to deny that descent of Mars below the Sun; which, however, can be gathered by those skilled in Astronomy and Geometry even from the mere comparison of the apparent diameter of Mars near apogee with its apparent diameter around perigee, as is to be seen from what we said in bk. 7, sect. 6, ch. 10, Scholium 1. Certainly Lansbergius, Magini, Galileo, Bullialdus [Boulliau], Gassendi, and all the most skilled of [those versed in] Astronomical subtleties yielded to Tycho and Kepler in this—except Rothmann, who, although he posits fluid heavens, nevertheless thought the order of the heavens would be disturbed if he conceded that Mars is carried now above, now below, the Sun; whereas this must [in fact] be conceded concerning Venus and Mercury, as we shall presently say. Just as, therefore, Tanner, by Epicycles around the Sun, maintains the ascent and descent of Mercury and Venus, so he could [maintain it] of Mars too—as Oviedo rightly argues against him (the single controversy On the Heavens, point [3], num. 22).
[Margin: Response.]
Tanner therefore answers (in the dissertation On the Heavens, q. 7, p. 58; and vol. 1 of the Summa of Theology, disp. 6, q. 3, dub. 3, num. 78; and with him Amicus, tract 5, On the Heavens, q. 5, art. 5, num. 30), granting but not conceding such a descent:
Nor perhaps is it impossible, even with the solidity of the heavens standing, to maintain phenomena of this kind, if the heavens of Mars and of the Sun, fitted together among themselves, are revolved at the same time; and, if it be needful for maintaining Mars’s Eccentricity, let its own Epicycle be joined to it besides—so that the Eccentrics of the Sun and of Mars be so disposed that, at [its] perigee, Mars be nearer to the earth than the Sun [is] at [its] apogee. Some more recent Mathematicians add that this can also come about if Mars and the Sun are moved in certain quasi-zones or rings, fitted together among themselves in a certain way, so that in turn the one can pass over the other, and again pass under [it]. Which I leave to be explained by the Mathematicians in [its] due time.
But it was not fitting to oppose these doubtful modes—not yet demonstrated by any diagram—to the observations and demonstrations of the Astronomers; nor, by obscure and fictitious and confused hypotheses of the mind, to build up (by a vain and superfluous effort) that the heaven of the Sun is intersected by the heaven, or Epicycle, or Eccentric of Mars—when, the liquidity of the heaven being admitted, the motions of both Planets can be explained far more easily and more “liquidly” [clearly], without the danger of an inconsistent and self-repugnant system. Wherefore the more recent Astronomers, and posterity, will deservedly hold—as long as the opposite has not been demonstrated—that by this, as by a most powerful dart of Mars, and as it were a thunderbolt, the solidity of the Solar heaven is shattered, especially when its [Mars’s] most tortuous spirals are regarded.
[Margin: 7. Argument, from the motion of Mercury (☿) and Venus (♀).]
[XIX.] The seventh Argument arises from the motion of Venus and Mercury, each of which encircles the Sun, and is sometimes carried up above it, sometimes glides down below it—[a fact] now laid open by the Telescope and by the most evident phenomena, [as] we showed in bk. 7, sect. 1, ch. 2 and 4. But since they do not depart from the Sun beyond [about] 50 degrees, it is necessary that their Epicycle intersect the orb of the Sun—which, although it might seem able to come about with the solidity of this heaven saved, yet so great is the difficulty in this (especially when the spirals and convolutions of Mercury are regarded, surpassing the most tortuous entanglements of the serpents which it has wrapped about the caduceus), that, for explaining these [phenomena], it is better to allow a free and permeable heaven than to be entangled in those [solid-sphere complications]—[merely] in order that solidity, otherwise of no use or convenience, be defended tooth and nail.
[Margin: 8. Argument, from the Sun’s spots.]
[XX.] The eighth Argument is sought from the spots and faculae bubbling up around the Sun, and tumultuating, as it were, with a varied motion—by an alternating surge, or by [the Sun’s] rotation; and by their concourse into one, or their dispersion and separation into various smaller spots. Which motion, although it can be accomplished through innumerable Epicycles, is yet better done freely in a fluid heaven.
[Margin: 9. Argument, from the Moon’s roughnesses.]
[XXI.] The ninth Argument is drawn from the Lunar roughnesses—namely, the valleys, mountains, and caverns on its surface, no otherwise than on the earth—made manifest by the Telescope, as is now established from what was said in bk. 4, ch. 7. Lest, therefore, a vacuum be admitted within those [hollows], it seems that around the Moon a liquid and yielding ethereal breeze must be admitted. The asserters of solidity will answer, however, that the globe of the Moon is so set into [its] Epicycle that the recesses of those roughnesses are filled by the solid parts of the Epicycle—just as the kernel of a nut, or the seeds of a pomegranate, are set into their rind.
[Margin: 10. Argument, from the Refraction and Reflection of rays.]
[XXII.] The tenth Argument Tycho took (as I reported from Kepler under num. 16), and Bullialdus [Boulliau] (bk. 1 of the Philolaic Astronomy, ch. 4), from the manifold Refraction of the rays of the Sun and of the other stars, which would come about on the surface of so many Epicycles and Eccentrics, both convex and concave—by reason of which marvelous rainbows or colors would be seen in the heaven, and the figures of the stars, and their mutual distances, would everywhere vary; nay, Boulliau thinks that, from the reflection of the Solar rays, there would never be night, but in the opposite part of the heaven an image of the Sun, as in a mirror, would be discerned by night—
[…continues on p. 244 (PDF 279): “…discerned [by night]. All which things are repugnant to the daily Phenomena of the stars. — Amicus answers that all the heavens are of the same density and rarity, and behave like several lenses, or spectacle-glasses (concave on one side, convex on the other) superimposed on one another; for if they are of the same matter, they do not vary a refraction once made…”]
(printed p. 244 — Chapter VII concluded, completing the response to the 10th fluidity argument: if the heavens were solid, an image of the Sun, as in a mirror, would be discerned by night — consequences repugnant to the daily phenomena of the stars.)
[Margin: Response.]
Amicus answers that all the heavens are of the same density and rarity, and behave like several lenses, or several spectacle-glasses, concave on one side, convex on the other, which are superimposed one on another; for if they are of the same matter, they do not vary a refraction once made. Yet from this it would follow that the apparent magnitudes of the stars are rendered uncertain, unless someone imagine that the refraction made in the heavens toward the perpendicular is compensated by the refraction made in the air away from the perpendicular, and that thus the images of the stars are restored to that pristine magnitude which would appear to us if no refraction intervened. It could be answered, however, that solidity and hardness are not an accident which necessarily has, in the heavens, an adjoined density; since even in sublunary [things] certain ones are harder than others and yet rarer—as ice is, in respect of water not yet frozen, for [water] grows rare and swells, and has within itself lighter exhalations, by force of which a body is constituted lighter than water is in an equal mass, and therefore ice floats upon water. But, on the contrary, lead is denser than silver, and yet less hard. It can happen, therefore, that the rarity of the ether be as great as that of the most purified air, and yet that it have a hardness and solidity greater than crystalline [hardness]. And indeed, those who posit the sphere of the Fixed [stars] solid must, in part, vindicate it from the aforesaid variety of refractions and reflections.
The Single Conclusion
[XXIII.] It is much more probable—although not yet Mathematically or Physically evident—that the Heaven of the Fixed [stars] is solid, but that [the heaven] of the Planets is Fluid.
This is established by the arguments and responses adduced on both sides hitherto: for by this distinction—both of probability from evidence, and of the heaven of the Fixed [stars] from the heaven of the Planets—very many opinions of the Fathers and Doctors are reconciled among themselves, and with the observations of the more recent Astronomers; and with less violence, or multiplicity, of motions and machines; with less danger, too, of physical repugnance among the so various motions of the Planets, are explained the Phenomena of the Comets, of Mars, of Venus, and of Mercury—which are the chief [matters] in this business—nay, also the motions of the Companions [satellites] of Saturn and Jupiter, and of the Solar Spots. But, on the contrary, if the sphere of the Fixed [stars] be posited solid, a readier reason is given why they perpetually keep the same distance among themselves, and innumerable movers of the Fixed [stars] will not have to be multiplied; nay, since that whole heaven is almost crammed with stars (as the Telescopes show), there is no inconvenience that the motion of so vast an orb was ordained by God for moving so many stars, which, taken together, occupy a great part of it.
But to posit the heaven of the Moon solid is to make it impervious to Comets—if perchance any come to be in it, or ascend upward through it; nor is it probable that volatile salts, or the spirituous parts of the earth, reach all the way up to the heaven of the Moon; or, if they did reach there, that they could rebound downward with such force as to descend 50 and more semidiameters of the earth, and return to ferment the earth; rather, since they are light, they would wander in a circle about the concavity of the Moon, like smoke about the vaulting of a chamber. Not, therefore, for that cause is the heaven of the Moon to be posited solid, as our Cabeus wished.
[Here Chapter VII ends.]