 No such hierarchy could obtain in a homogeneous universe populated by animate suns and earths of the kind that Bruno imagined. Fire, air, water and earth, as they were commonly conceived, were present in each and every celestial body, indeed all four were present in each part of every celestial body. Just as in a syllable, each letter was equally important—an Aristotelian analogy that Bruno turned to his own purposes (BOL I.2, 118; Aristotle Metaphysics, VII.17, 1041b11–33)—so too were the elements in the composition of a body. Timely support came from contemporary accounts of the 1572 supernova and theories about comets proposed by Tycho Brahe and others (Tessicini 2007, 112–150). The birth of a new star proved that generation did, after all, occur in the superlunary region. As for comets, they were indeed, as Aristotle and others held, composed of the same elements as other sublunary things but they were not, as they had concluded, sublunary phenomena peculiar to the air and fire spheres. Their trajectories proved that were superlunary objects or, more exactly, planets which, owing to the incline at which they revolved around the sun, only intermittently reflected the sun’s light towards the earth. The supposedly sublunary elements occurred in the superlunary region! In short, not only reason but also observation disproved the notion of a cosmos divided into two finite regions of contrasting properties (BOL I.1, 219–221). This was a vivid example of Bruno’s constant refrain that the senses, regulated by reason, could be used to advantage (BOI II, 10, 136–137; BOL I.2, 196, 218; II.2, 78; Firpo 2000, 57, doc. 11).