Riccioli in Old Age
The sun showing first as penumbra that turned Riccioli’s single bedroom from black to gray woke, before his eyes flickered open, pain— which draped like a shawl, from the nape of his neck to his shoulders and down the length of both arms, swinging its fringe of twinges at each wrist. The telescope like a “great weight,” he wrote Kircher, shoved uphill, had forced Riccioli, for hours, to lift his hands high above his head, which he cocked at its own upright angle; and he felt that night all day, as he opened the shutter or raised a book, reminding himself of work he pursued for the glory of God. His scapula ached with the sign of the cross.
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