Title: The gradual acceptance of the Copernican theory of the universe
Author: Stimson, Dorothy, 1890-1988
Language: English
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The Gradual Acceptance

OF THE

Copernican Theory of the Universe


DOROTHY STIMSON, Ph.D.


NEW YORK
1917

COPYRIGHT 1917 BY DOROTHY STIMSON

  Trade Selling Agents
  The Baker & Taylor Co.,
  354 Fourth Ave.,
  New York



TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER



[Illustration: THE SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD IN 1651 ACCORDING TO FATHER
RICCIOLI

(Reduced facsimile of the frontispiece in Riccioli: _Almagestum
Novum_. Bologna, 1651.)]


EXPLANATION

"Astrea, goddess of the heaven, wearing angel's wings and gleaming
everywhere with stars, stands at the right; on the left is Argus of
the hundred eyes, not tense, but indicating by the position of the
telescope at his knee rather than at the eyes in his head, that while
observing the work of God's hand, he appears at the same time to be
worshipping as in genuflexion." (Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._, _Præfatio_,
xvii). He points to the cherubs in the heavens who hold the planets,
each with its zodiacal sign: above him at the top is Mars, then
Mercury in its crescent form, the Sun, and Venus also in the crescent
phase; on the opposite side are Saturn in its "tripartite" form (the
ring explanation was yet to be given), the sphere of Jupiter encircled
by its four satellites, the crescent Moon, its imperfections clearly
shown, and a comet. Thus Father Riccioli summarized the astronomical
knowledge of his day. The scrolls quote Psalms 19:2, "Day unto day
uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge."

Astrea holds in her right hand a balance in which Riccioli's theory of
the universe (an adaptation of the Tychonic, see p. 68) far outweighs
the Copernican or heliocentric one. At her feet is the Ptolemaic
sphere, while Ptolemy himself half lies, half sits, between her and
Argus, with the comment issuing from his mouth: "I will arise if only
I am corrected." His left hand rests upon the coat of arms of the
Prince of Monaco to whom the _Almagestum Novum_ is dedicated.

At the top is the Hebrew _Yah-Veh_, and the hand of God is stretched
forth in reference to the verse in the Book of Wisdom (10:20): "But
thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number and weight."



CONTENTS


  ILLUSTRATIONS                                                      7

  PREFACE                                                            8


  PART I. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE HELIOCENTRIC
  THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE.

  Chapter I. The Development of Astronomical Thought to 1400:
  Preliminary Review                                                 9

  Chapter II. Copernicus and his Times                              20

  Chapter III. Later Development and Scientific Defense
  of the Copernican Theory                                          33


  PART II. THE RECEPTION OF THE COPERNICAN THEORY.

  Chapter I. Opinions and Arguments in the Sixteenth Century        39

  Chapter II. Bruno and Galileo                                     49

  Chapter III. The Opposition and their Arguments                   71

  Chapter IV. The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory       85

  Chapter V. The Church and the New Astronomy: Conclusion           95


  APPENDICES: TRANSLATIONS BY THE WRITER.

  A. Ptolemy: _Almagest_. Bk. I, chap. 7: That the earth has no
  movement of rotation                                             107

  B. Copernicus: _De Revolutionibus_, Dedication to the Pope       109

  C. Bodin: _Universæ Naturæ Theatrum_, Bk. V, sections 1 and 2
  in part, and section 10 entire                                   115

  D. Fienus: _Epistolica Quæstio_: Is it true that the heavens
  are moved and the earth is at rest?                              124


  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                     130

  INDEX                                                            145



ILLUSTRATIONS


  Facsimile of the frontispiece "The Systems of the
  World" in Riccioli: _Almagestum Novum_,
  1651                                                  _Frontispiece_

  Photographic facsimile (reduced) of a page from a
  copy of Copernicus: _De Revolutionibus_, as
  "corrected" in the 17th century according to
  the directions of the Congregations of the
  Index in 1620                                                  p. 61

  Photographic facsimile (reduced) of another "corrected"
  page from the same copy                                       p. 113



PREFACE


This study does not belong in the field of astronomy, but in that of
the history of thought; for it is an endeavor to trace the changes in
people's beliefs and conceptions in regard to the universe as these
were wrought by the dissolution of superstition resulting from the
scientific and rationalist movements. The opening chapter is intended
to do no more than to review briefly the astronomical theories up to
the age of Copernicus, in order to provide a background for the better
comprehension of the work of Copernicus and its effects.

Such a study has been rendered possible only by the generous loan of
rare books by Professor Herbert D. Foster of Dartmouth College,
Professor Edwin E. Slosson of Columbia University, Doctor George A.
Plimpton and Major George Haven Putnam, both of New York, and
especially by the kindly generosity of Professor David Eugene Smith of
Teachers College who placed his unique collection of rare mathematical
books at the writer's disposal and gave her many valuable suggestions
as to available material. Professors James T. Shotwell and Harold
Jacoby of Columbia University have read parts of this study in
manuscript. The writer gratefully acknowledges her indebtedness not
only to these gentlemen, but to the many others, librarians and their
assistants, fellow-students and friends, too numerous to mention
individually, whose ready interest and whose suggestions have been of
real service, and above all to Professor James Harvey Robinson at
whose suggestion and under whose guidance the work was undertaken, and
to the Reverend Doctor Henry A. Stimson whose advice and criticism
have been an unfailing source of help and encouragement.



PART ONE

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE HELIOCENTRIC THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE.



CHAPTER I.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ASTRONOMICAL THOUGHT TO 1400 A.D.

_A Preliminary Sketch of Early Theories as a Background._


The appearances in the heavens have from earliest historic ages filled
men with wonder and awe; then they gradually became a source of
questioning, and thinkers sought for explanations of the daily and
nightly phenomena of sun, moon and stars. Scientific astronomy,
however, was an impossibility until an exact system of chronology was
devised.[1] Meanwhile men puzzled over the shape of the earth, its
position in the universe, what the stars were and why the positions of
some shifted, and what those fiery comets were that now and again
appeared and struck terror to their hearts.

[Footnote 1: The earliest observation Ptolemy uses is an Egyptian one
of an eclipse occurring March 21, 721 B.C. (Cumont: 7). [In these
references, the Roman numerals refer to the volume, the Arabic to the
page, except as stated otherwise. The full title is given in the
bibliography at the back under the author's name.]]

In answer to such questions, the Chaldean thinkers, slightly before
the rise of the Greek schools of philosophy, developed the idea of the
seven heavens in their crystalline spheres encircling the earth as
their center.[2] This conception seems to lie back of both the later
Egyptian and Hebraic cosmologies, as well as of the Ptolemaic. Through
the visits of Greek philosophers to Egyptian shores this conception
helped to shape Greek thought and so indirectly affected western
civilization. Thus our heritage in astronomical thought, as in many
other lines, comes from the Greeks and the Romans reaching Europe (in
part through Arabia and Spain), where it was shaped by the influence
of the schools down to the close of the Middle Ages when men began
anew to withstand authority in behalf of observation and were not
afraid to follow whither their reason led them.

[Footnote 2: Warren: 40. See "Calendar" in Hastings: _Ency. of
Religion and Ethics_.]

But not all Greek philosophers, it seems,[3] either knew or accepted
the Babylonian cosmology.[4] According to Plutarch, though Thales
(640?-546? B.C.) and later the Stoics believed the earth to be
spherical in form, Anaximander (610-546? B.C.) thought it to be like a
"smooth stony pillar," Anaximenes (6th cent.) like a "table."
Beginning with the followers of Thales or perhaps Parmenides (?-500
B.C.), as Diogenes Laërtius claims,[5] a long line of Greek thinkers
including Plato (428?-347? B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) placed
the earth in the center of the universe. Whether Plato held that the
earth "encircled" or "clung" around the axis is a disputed point;[6]
but Aristotle claimed it was the fixed and immovable center around
which swung the spherical universe with its heaven of fixed stars and
its seven concentric circles of the planets kept in their places by
their transparent crystalline spheres.[7]

[Footnote 3: For a summary of recent researches, see the preface of
Heath: _Aristarchus of Samos_. For further details, see Heath: _Op.
cit._, and the writings of Kugler and Schiaparelli.]

[Footnote 4: See Plutarch: _Moralia: De placitas Philosophorum_, Lib.
I et II, (V. 264-277, 296-316).]

[Footnote 5: Diogenes Laërtius: _De Vitis_, Lib. IX, c. 3 (252).]

[Footnote 6: Plato: _Timæus_, sec. 39 (III, 459 in Jowett's
translation).]

[Footnote 7: Aristotle: _De Mundo_, c. 2 et 6 (III, 628 and 636).]

The stars were an even greater problem. Anaximenes thought they were
"fastened like nails" in a crystalline firmament, and others thought
them to be "fiery plates of gold resembling pictures."[8] But if the
heavens were solid, how could the brief presence of a comet be
explained?

[Footnote 8: Plutarch: _Op. cit._, Lib. III, c. 2 (V, 303-4).]

Among the philosophers were some noted as mathematicians whose leader
was Pythagoras (c. 550 B.C.). He and at least one of the members of
his school, Eudoxus (409?-356? B.C.), had visited Egypt, according to
Diogenes Laërtius,[9] and had in all probability been much interested
in and influenced by the astronomical observations made by the
Egyptian priests. On the same authority, Pythagoras was the first to
declare the earth was round and to discuss the antipodes. He too
emphasized the beauty and perfection of the circle and of the sphere
in geometry, forms which became fixed for 2000 years as the fittest
representations of the perfection of the heavenly bodies.

[Footnote 9: Diogenes Laërtius: _De Vitis_, Lib. VIII, c. 1, et 8
(205, 225).]

There was some discussion in Diogenes' time as to the author of the
theory of the earth's motion of axial rotation. Diogenes[10] gives the
honor to Philolaus (5th cent. B.C.) one of the Pythagoreans, though he
adds that others attribute it to Icetas of Syracuse (6th or 5th cent.
B.C.). Cicero, however, states[11] the position of Hicetas of Syracuse
as a belief in the absolute fixedness of all the heavenly bodies
except the earth, which alone moves in the whole universe, and that
its rapid revolutions upon its own axis cause the heavens apparently
to move and the earth to stand still.

[Footnote 10: Diogenes: _Op. cit._, Lib. VIII, c. 7 (225).]

[Footnote 11: Cicero: _Academica_, Lib. II, c. 39 (322).]

Other thinkers of Syracuse may also have felt the Egyptian influence;
for one of the greatest of them, Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.), stated
the theory of the earth's revolution around the sun as enunciated by
Aristarchus of Samos. (Perhaps this is the "hearth-fire of the
universe" around which Philolaus imagined the earth to whirl.[12]) In
_Arenarius_, a curious study on the possibility of expressing infinite
sums by numerical denominations as in counting the sands of the
universe, Archimedes writes:[13] "For you have known that the universe
is called a sphere by several astrologers, its center the center of
the earth, and its radius equal to a line drawn from the center of the
sun to the center of the earth. This was written for the unlearned, as
you have known from the astrologers.... [Aristarchus of Samos][14]
concludes that the world is many times greater than the estimate we
have just given. He supposes that the fixed stars and the sun remain
motionless, but that the earth following a circular course, revolves
around the sun as a center, and that the sphere of the fixed stars
having the same sun as a center, is so vast that the circle which he
supposes the earth to follow in revolving holds the same ratio to the
distance of the fixed stars as the center of a sphere holds to its
circumference."

[Footnote 12: Plutarch: _Op. cit._, Lib. II (V. 299-300).]

[Footnote 13: Archimedes: _Arenarius_, c. 1. Delambre: _Astr. Anc._,
I, 102.]

[Footnote 14: This is the only account of his system. Even the age in
which he flourished is so little known that there have been many
disputes whether he was the original inventor of this system or
followed some other. He was probably a contemporary of Cleanthes the
Stoic in the 3rd century B.C. He is mentioned also by Ptolemy,
Diogenes Laërtius and Vitruvius. (Schiaparelli: _Die Vorlaufer des
Copernicus im Alterthum_, 75. See also Heath: _Op. cit._)]

These ancient philosophers realized in some degree the immensity of
the universe in which the earth was but a point. They held that the
earth was an unsupported sphere the size of which Eratosthenes (c.
276-194 B.C.) had calculated approximately. They knew the sun was far
larger than the earth, and Cicero with other thinkers recognized the
insignificance of earthly affairs in the face of such cosmic
immensity. They knew too about the seven planets, had studied their
orbits, and worked out astronomical ways of measuring the passage of
time with a fair amount of accuracy. Hipparchus and other thinkers had
discovered the fact of the precession of the equinoxes, though there
was no adequate theory to account for it until Copernicus formulated
his "motion of declination." The Pythagoreans accepted the idea of the
earth's turning upon its axis, and some even held the idea of its
revolution around the motionless sun. Others suggested that comets had
orbits which they uniformly followed and therefore their reappearance
could be anticipated.[15]

[Footnote 15: Plutarch: _Op. cit._: Bk. III, c. 2 (V, 317-318).]

Why then was the heliocentric theory not definitely accepted?

In the first place, such a theory was contrary to the supposed facts
of daily existence. A man did not have to be trained in the schools to
observe that the earth seemed stable under his feet and that each
morning the sun swept from the east to set at night in the west.
Sometimes it rose more to the north or to the south than at other
times. How could that be explained if the sun were stationary?

Study of the stars was valuable for navigators and for surveyors,
perhaps, but such disturbing theories should not be propounded by
philosophers. Cleanthes,[16] according to Plutarch,[17] "advised that
the Greeks ought to have prosecuted Aristarchus the Samian for
blasphemy against religion, as shaking the very foundations of the
world, because this man endeavoring to save appearances, supposed that
the heavens remained immovable and that the earth moved through an
oblique circle, at the same time turning about its own axis." Few
would care to face their fellows as blasphemers and impious thinkers
on behalf of an unsupported theory. Eighteen hundred years later
Galileo would not do so, even though in his day the theory was by no
means unsupported by observation.

[Footnote 16: The Stoic contemporary of Aristarchus, author of the
famous Stoic hymn. See Diogenes Laërtius: _De Vitis_.]

[Footnote 17: Plutarch: _De Facie in Orbe Lunæ_, (V, 410).]

Furthermore, one of the weaknesses of the Greek civilization militated
strongly against the acceptance of this hypothesis so contrary to the
evidence of the senses. Experimentation and the development of applied
science was practically an impossibility where the existence of slaves
made manual labor degrading and shameful. Men might reason
indefinitely; but few, if any, were willing to try to improve the
instruments of observation or to test their observations by
experiments.

At the same time another astronomical theory was developing which was
an adequate explanation for the phenomena observed up to that
time.[18] This theory of epicycles and eccentrics worked out by
Apollonius of Perga (c. 225 B.C.) and by Hipparchus (c. 160 B.C.) and
crystallized for posterity in Ptolemy's great treatise on astronomy,
the _Almagest_, (c. 140 A.D.) became the fundamental principle of the
science until within the last three hundred years. The theory of the
eccentric was based on the idea that heavenly bodies Following
circular orbits revolved around a center that did not coincide with
that of the observer on the earth. That would explain why the sun
appeared sometimes nearer the earth and sometimes farther away. The
epicycle represented the heavenly body as moving along the
circumference of one circle (called the epicycle) the center of which
moves on another circle (the deferent). With better observations
additional epicycles and eccentric were used to represent the newly
observed phenomena till in the later Middle Ages the universe became a

                                  "----Sphere
    With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er,
    Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb"--[19]

[Footnote 18: Young: 109.]

[Footnote 19: Milton: _Paradise Lost_, Bk. VIII, ll. 82-85.]

Yet the heliocentric theory was not forgotten. Vitruvius, a famous
Roman architect of the Augustan Age, discussing the system of the
universe, declared that Mercury and Venus, the planets nearest the
sun, moved around it as their center, though the earth was the center
of the universe.[20] This same notion recurs in Martianus Capella's
book[21] in the fifth century A.D. and again, somewhat modified, in
the 16th century in Tycho Brahe's conception of the universe.

[Footnote 20: Vitruvius: _De Architectura_, Lib. IX, c. 4 (220).]

[Footnote 21: Martianus Capella: _De Nuptiis_, Lib. VIII, (668).]

Ptolemy devotes a column or two of his _Almagest_[22] (to use the
familiar Arabic name for his _Syntaxis Mathematica_) to the refutation
of the heliocentric theory, thereby preserving it for later ages to
ponder on and for a Copernicus to develop. He admits at the outset
that such a theory is only tenable for the stars and their phenomena,
and he gives at least three reasons why it is ridiculous. If the earth
were not at the center, the observed facts of the seasons and of day
and night would be disturbed and even upset. If the earth moves, its
vastly greater mass would gain in speed upon other bodies, and soon
animals and other lighter bodies would be left behind unsupported in
the air--a notion "ridiculous to the last degree," as he comments,
"even to imagine it." Lastly, if it moves, it would have such
tremendous velocity that stones or arrows shot straight up in the air
must fall to the ground east of their starting point,--a "laughable
supposition" indeed to Ptolemy.

[Footnote 22: Ptolemy: _Almagest_, Lib. I, c. 7, (1, 21-25).
Translated in Appendix B.]

This book became the great text of the Middle Ages; its author's name
was given to the geocentric theory it maintained. Astronomy for a
thousand years was valuable only to determine the time of Easter and
other festivals of the Church, and to serve as a basis for astrology
for the mystery-loving people of Europe.

To the Arabians in Syria and in Spain belongs the credit of preserving
for Europe during this long period the astronomical works of the
Greeks, to which they added their own valuable observations of the
heavens--valuable because made with greater skill and better
instruments,[23] and because with these observations later scientists
could illustrate the permanence or the variability of important
elements. They also discovered the so-called "trepidation" or apparent
shifting of the fixed stars to explain which they added another sphere
to Ptolemy's eight. Early in the sixth century Uranus translated
Aristotle's works into Syrian, and this later was translated into
Arabic.[24] Albategnius[25] (c. 850-829 [Transcriber's Note: 929]
A.D.), the Arabian prince who was the greatest of all their
astronomers, made his observations from Aracte and Damascus, checking
up and in some cases amending Ptolemy's results.[26]

[Footnote 23: Whewell: I, 239.]

[Footnote 24: Whewell: I, 294.]

[Footnote 25: Berry: 79.]

[Footnote 26: His book _De Motu Stellarum_, translated into Latin by
Plato Tiburtinus (fl. 1116) was published at Nuremberg (1557) by
Melancthon with annotations by Regiomontanus. _Ency. Brit._ 11th.
Edit.]

Then the center of astronomical development shifted from Syria to
Spain and mainly through this channel passed on into Western Europe.
The scientific fame of Alphonse X of Castile (1252-1284 A.D.) called
the Wise, rests chiefly upon his encouragement of astronomy. With his
support the Alfonsine Tables were calculated. He is said[27] to have
summoned fifty learned men from Toledo, Cordova and Paris to translate
into Spanish the works of Ptolemy and other philosophers. Under his
patronage the University of Salamanca developed rapidly to become
within two hundred years one of the four great universities of
Europe[28]--a center for students from all over Europe and the
headquarters for new thought, where Columbus was sheltered,[29] and
later the Copernican system was accepted and publicly taught at a time
when Galileo's views were suppressed.[30]

[Footnote 27: Vaughan: I, 281.]

[Footnote 28: Graux: 318.]

[Footnote 29: Graux: 319.]

[Footnote 30: Rashdall: II, pt. I, 77.]

Popular interest in astronomy was evidently aroused, for Sacrobosco
(to give John Holywood[31] his better known Latin name) a Scotch
professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 13th century, published a
small treatise _De Sphæri Mundo_ that was immensely popular for
centuries,[32] though it was practically only an abstract of the
_Almagest_. Whewell[33] tells of a French poem of the time of Edward I
entitled _Ymage du Monde_, which gave the Ptolemaic view and was
illustrated in the manuscript in the University of Cambridge with a
picture of the spherical earth with men upright on it at every point,
dropping balls down perforations in the earth to illustrate the
tendency of all things toward the center. Of the same period (13th
century) is an Arabian compilation in which there is a reference to
another work, the book of Hammarmunah the Old, stating that "the earth
turns upon itself in the form of a circle, and that some are on top,
the others below ... and there are countries in which it is constantly
day or in which at least the night continues only some instants."[34]
Apparently, however, such advanced views were of no influence, and the
Ptolemaic theory remained unshaken down to the close of the 15th
century.

[Footnote 31: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._]

[Footnote 32: MSS. of it are extremely numerous. It was the second
astronomical book to be printed, the first edition appearing at
Ferrara in 1472. 65 editions appeared before 1647. It was translated
into Italian, French, German, and Spanish, and had many commentators.
_Dict. of Nat. Biog._]

[Footnote 33: Whewell: I, 277.]

[Footnote 34: Blavatski: II, 29, note.]

Aside from the adequacy of this explanation of the universe for the
times, the attitude of the Church Fathers on the matter was to a
large degree responsible for this acquiescence. Early in the first
century A.D., Philo Judæus[35] emphasized the minor importance of
visible objects compared with intellectual matters,--a foundation
stone in the Church's theory of an homocentric universe. Clement of
Alexandria (c. 150 A.D.) calls the heavens solid since what is solid
is capable of being perceived by the senses.[36] Origen (c. 185-c.
254.) has recourse to the Holy Scriptures to support his notion that
the sun, moon, and stars are living beings obeying God's commands.[37]
Then Lactantius thunders against those who discuss the universe as
comparable to people discussing "the character of a city they have
never seen, and whose name only they know." "Such matters cannot be
found out by inquiry."[38] The existence of the antipodes and the
rotundity of the earth are "marvelous fictions," and philosophers are
"defending one absurd opinion by another"[39] when in explanation why
bodies would not fall off a spherical earth, they claim these are
borne to the center.

[Footnote 35: Philo Judæus: _Quis Rerum Divinarum Hæres._ (IV, 7).]

[Footnote 36: Clement of Alexandria: _Stromatum_, Lib. V, c. 14, (III,
67).]

[Footnote 37: Origen: _De Principiis_, Lib. I, c. 7, (XI, 171).]

[Footnote 38: Lactantius: _Divinarum Institutionum_, Lib. III, c. 3
(VI, 355).]

[Footnote 39: Ibid: Lib. III, c. 24, (VI, 425-428).]

How clearly even this brief review illustrates what Henry Osborn
Taylor calls[40] the fundamental principles of patristic faith: that
the will of God is the one cause of all things (voluntate Dei
immobilis manet et stat in sæculum terra.[41] Ambrose: _Hexæmeron_.)
and that this will is unsearchable. He further points out that
Augustine's and Ambrose's sole interest in natural fact is as
"confirmatory evidence of Scriptural truth." The great Augustine
therefore denies the existence of antipodes since they could not be
peopled by Adam's children.[42] He indifferently remarks
elsewhere:[43] "What concern is it to me whether the heavens as a
sphere enclose the earth in the middle of the world or overhang it on
either side?" Augustine does, however, dispute the claims of
astrologers accurately to foretell the future by the stars, since the
fates of twins or those born at the same moment are so diverse.[44]

[Footnote 40: Taylor: _Mediæval Mind_, I, 74.]

[Footnote 41: By the will of God the earth remains motionless and
stands throughout the age.]

[Footnote 42: Augustine: _De Civitate Dei_, Lib. XVI, c. 9, (41, p.
437).]

[Footnote 43: Augustine: _De Genesi_, II, c. 9, (v. 34, p. 270).
(White's translation).]

[Footnote 44: Augustine: _Civitate Dei_, Lib. V, c. 5, (v. 41, p.
145).]

Philastrius (d. before 397 A.D.) dealing with various heresies,
denounces those who do not believe the stars are fixed in the heavens
as "participants in the vanity of pagans and the foolish opinions of
philosophers," and refers to the widespread idea of the part the
angels play in guiding and impelling the heavenly bodies in their
courses.[45]

[Footnote 45: Philastrius: _De Hæresibus_, c. 133, (v. 12, p. 1264).]

It would take a brave man to face such attitudes of scornful
indifference on the one hand and denunciation on the other, in support
of a theory the Church considered heretical.

Meanwhile the Church was developing the homocentric notion which
would, of course, presuppose the central position in the universe for
man's abiding place. In the pseudo-Dionysius[46] is an elaborately
worked out hierarchy of the beings in the universe that became the
accepted plan of later centuries, best known to modern times through
Dante's blending of it with the Ptolemaic theory in the _Divine
Comedy_.[47] Isidore of Seville taught that the universe was created
to serve man's purposes,[48] and Peter Lombard (12th cent.) sums up
the situation in the definite statement that man was placed at the
center of the universe to be served by that universe and in turn
himself to serve God.[49] Supported by the mighty Thomas Aquinas[50]
this became a fundamental Church doctrine.

[Footnote 46: Pseudo-Dionysius: _De Coelesti Ierarchia_, (v. 122, p.
10354).]

[Footnote 47: Milman: VIII, p. 228-9. See the _Paradiso_.]

[Footnote 48: Isidore of Seville: _De Ordine Creaturarum_, c. 5, sec.
3, (v. 83, p. 923).]

[Footnote 49: Lombard: _Sententia_, Bk. II, Dist. I, sec. 8, (v. 192,
p. 655).]

[Footnote 50: Aquinas: _Summa Theologica_, pt. I, qu. 70, art. 2.
(_Op. Om. Caietani_, V, 179).]

An adequate explanation of the universe existed. Aristotle, Augustine,
and the other great authorities of the Middle Ages, all upheld the
conception of a central earth encircled by the seven planetary spheres
and by the all embracing starry firmament. In view of the phrases used
in the Bible about the heavens, and in view of the formation of
fundamental theological doctrines based on this supposition by the
Church Fathers, is it surprising that any other than a geocentric
theory seemed untenable, to be dismissed with a smile when not
denounced as heretical? Small wonder is it, in the absence of the
present day mechanical devices for the exact measurement of time and
space as aids to observation, that the Ptolemaic, or geocentric,
theory of the universe endured through centuries as it did, upheld by
the authority both of the Church and, in essence at least, by the
great philosophers whose works constituted the teachings of the
schools.



CHAPTER II.

COPERNICUS AND HIS TIMES.


During these centuries, one notable scholar at least stood forth in
open hostility to the slavish devotion to Aristotle's writings and
with hearty appreciation for the greater scientific accuracy of
"infidel philosophers among the Arabians, Hebrews and Greeks."[51] In
his _Opus Tertium_ (1267), Roger Bacon also pointed out how inaccurate
were the astronomical tables used by the Church, for in 1267,
according to these tables "Christians will fast the whole week
following the true Easter, and will eat flesh instead of fasting at
Quadragesima for a week--which is absurd," and thus Christians are
made foolish in the eyes of the heathen.[52] Even the rustic, he
added, can observe the phases of the moon occurring a week ahead of
the date set by the calendar.[53] Bacon's protests were unheeded,
however, and the Church continued using the old tables which grew
increasingly inaccurate with each year. Pope Sixtus IV sought to
reform the calendar two centuries later with the aid of Regiomontanus,
then the greatest astronomer in Europe (1475);[54] the Lateran Council
appealed to Copernicus for help (1514), but little could be done, as
Copernicus replied, till the sun's and the moon's positions had been
observed far more precisely;[55] and the modern scientific calendar
was not adopted until 1582 under Pope Gregory XIII.

[Footnote 51: Roger Bacon: _Opus Tertium_, 295, 30-31.]

[Footnote 52: Ibid: 289.]

[Footnote 53: Ibid: 282.]

[Footnote 54: Delambre: _Moyen Age_, 365.]

[Footnote 55: Prowe: II, 67-70.]

What was the state of astronomy in the century of Copernicus's birth?
Regiomontanus--to use Johann Müller's Latin name--his teacher Pürbach,
and the great cardinal Nicolas of Cues were the leading astronomers of
this fifteenth century. Pürbach[56] (1432-1462) died before he had
fulfilled the promise of his youth, leaving his _Epitome of Ptolemy's
Almagest_ to be completed by his greater pupil. In his _Theorica
Planetarum_ (1460) Pürbach sought to explain the motions of the
planets by placing each planet between the walls of two curved
surfaces with just sufficient space in which the planet could move. As
M. Delambre remarked:[57] "These walls might aid the understanding,
but one must suppose them transparent; and even if they guided the
planet as was their purpose, they hindered the movement of the comets.
Therefore they had to be abandoned, and in our own modern physics they
are absolutely superfluous; they have even been rather harmful, since
they interfered with the slight irregularities caused by the force of
attraction in planetary movements which observations have disclosed."
This scheme gives some indication of the elaborate devices scholars
evolved in order to cope with the increasing number of seeming
irregularities observed in "the heavens," and perhaps it makes clearer
why Copernicus was so dissatisfied with the astronomical hypothesis of
his day, and longed for some simpler, more harmonious explanation.

[Footnote 56: Delambre: _Moyen Age_, 262-272.]

[Footnote 57: Delambre: _Moyen Age_, 272.]

Regiomontanus[58] (1436-1476) after Pürbach's death, continued his
work, and his astronomical tables (pub. 1475) were in general use
throughout Europe till superseded by the vastly more accurate
Copernican Tables a century later. It has been said[59] that his fame
inspired Copernicus (born three years before the other's death in
1476) to become as great an astronomer. M. Delambre hails him as the
wisest astronomer Europe had yet produced[60] and certainly his renown
was approached only by that of the great Cardinal.

[Footnote 58: It has been claimed that Regiomontanus knew of the
earth's motion around the sun a hundred years before Copernicus; but a
German writer has definitely disproved this claim by tracing it to its
source in Schöner's _Opusculum Geographicum_ (1553) which states only
that he believed in the earth's axial rotation. Ziegler: 62.]

[Footnote 59: Ibid: 62.]

[Footnote 60: Delambre: _Op. cit._: 365.]

Both Janssen,[61] the Catholic historian, and Father Hagen[62] of the
Vatican Observatory, together with many other Catholic writers, claim
that a hundred years before Copernicus, Cardinal Nicolas Cusanus[63]
(c. 1400-1464) had the courage and independence to uphold the theory
of the earth's motion and its rotation on its axis. As Father Hagen
remarked: "Had Copernicus been aware of these assertions he would
probably have been encouraged by them to publish his own monumental
work." But the Cardinal stated these views of the earth's motions in a
mystical, hypothetical way which seems to justify the marginal heading
"Paradox" (in the edition of 1565).[64] And unfortunately for these
writers, the Jesuit father, Riccioli, the official spokesman of that
order in the 17th century after Galileo's condemnation, speaking of
this paradox, called attention, also, to a passage in one of the
Cardinal's sermons as indicating that the latter had perhaps
"forgotten himself" in the _De Docta Ignorantia_, or that this paradox
"was repugnant to him, or that he had thought better of it."[65] The
passage he referred to is as follows: "Prayer is more powerful than
all created things. Although angels, or some kind of beings, move the
spheres, the Sun and the stars; prayer is more powerful than they are,
since it impedes motion, as when the prayer of Joshua made the Sun
stand still."[66] This may explain why Copernicus apparently
disregarded the Cardinal's paradox, for he made no reference to it in
his book; and the statement itself, to judge by the absence of
contemporary comment, aroused no interest at the time. But of late
years, the Cardinal's position as stated in the _De Docta Ignorantia_
has been repeatedly cited as an instance of the Church's friendly
attitude toward scientific thought,[67] to show that Galileo's
condemnation was due chiefly to his "contumacy and disobedience."

[Footnote 61: Janssen: _Hist. of Ger._, I, 5.]

[Footnote 62: _Cath. Ency._: "Cusanus."]

[Footnote 63: From Cues near Treves.]

[Footnote 64: Cusanus: _De Docta Ignorantia_, Bk. II, c. 11-12:
"Centrum igitur mundi, coincideret cum circumferentiam, nam si centrum
haberet et circumferentiam, et sic intra se haberet suum initium et
finem et esset ad aliquid aliud ipse mundus terminatus, et extra
mundum esset aluid et locus, quæ omnia veritate carent. Cum igitur non
sit possibile, mundum claudi intra centrum corporale et
circumferentiam, non intelligitur mundus, cuius centrum et
circumferentia sunt Deus: et cum hic non sit mundus infinitus, tamen
non potest concipi finitus, cum terminis careat, intra quos claudatur.
Terra igitur, quæ centrum esse nequit, motu omni carere non potest,
nam eam moveri taliter etiam necesse est, quod per infinitum minus
moveri posset. Sicut igitur terra non est centram mundi.... Unde licet
terra quasi stella sit, propinquior polo centrali, tamen movetur, et
non describit minimum circulum in motu, ut est ostensum.... Terræ
igitur figura est mobilis et sphærica et eius motus circularis, sed
perfectior esse posset. Et quia maximum in perfectionibus motibus, et
figuris in mundo non est, ut ex iam dictis patent: tunc non est verum
quod terra ista sit vilissima et infima, nam quamvis videatur
centralior, quo'ad mundum, est tamen etiam, eadem ratione polo
propinquior, ut est dictum." (pp. 38-39).]

[Footnote 65: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._, II, 292.]

[Footnote 66: Cusanus: _Opera_, 549: Excitationum, Lib. VII, ex
sermone: _Debitores sumus_: "Est enim oratio, omnibus creaturis
potentior. Nam angeli seu intelligentiæ, movent orbes, Solem et
stellas: sed oratio potentior, quia impedit motum, sicut oratio Josuæ,
fecit sistere Solem."]

[Footnote 67: Di Bruno: 284, 286a; Walsh: _An Early Allusion_, 2-3.]

Copernicus[68] himself was born in Thorn on February 19, 1473,[69]
seven years after that Hansa town founded by the Teutonic Order in
1231 had come under the sway of the king of Poland by the Second Peace
of Thorn.[70] His father,[71] Niklas Koppernigk, was a wholesale
merchant of Cracow who had removed to Thorn before 1458, married
Barbara Watzelrode of an old patrician Thorn family, and there had
served as town councillor for nineteen years until his death in
1483.[72] Thereupon his mother's brother, Lucas Watzelrode, later
bishop of Ermeland, became his guardian, benefactor and close
friend.[73]

[Footnote 68: _Nicolaus Coppernicus_ (Berlin, 1883-4; 3 vol.; Pt. I,
Biography, Pt. II, Sources), by Dr. Leopold Prowe gives an exhaustive
account of all the known details in regard to Copernicus collected
from earlier biographers and tested most painstakingly by the
documentary evidence Dr. Prowe and his fellow-workers unearthed during
a lifetime devoted to this subject. (_Allgemeine Deutsche
Biographie._) The manuscript authority Dr. Prowe cites (Prowe: I,
19-27 and footnotes), requires the double p in Copernicus's name, as
Copernicus himself invariably used the two p's in the Latinized form
_Coppernic_ without the termination _us_, and usually when this
termination was added. Also official records and the letters from his
friends usually give the double p; though the name is found in many
variants--Koppernig, Copperinck, etc. His signatures in his books, his
name in the letter he published in 1509, and the Latin form of it used
by his friends all bear testimony to his use of the double p. But
custom has for so many centuries sanctioned the simpler spelling, that
it seems unwise not to conform in this instance to the time-honored
usage.]

[Footnote 69: Prowe: I, 85.]

[Footnote 70: _Ency. Brit._: "Thorn."]

[Footnote 71: Prowe: I, 47-53.]

[Footnote 72: These facts would seem to justify the Poles today in
claiming Copernicus as their fellow-countryman by right of his
father's nationality and that of his native city. Dr. Prowe, however,
claims him as a "Prussian" both because of his long residence in the
Prussian-Polish bishopric of Ermeland, and because of Copernicus's own
reference to Prussia as "unser lieber Vaterland." (Prowe: II, 197.)]

[Footnote 73: Prowe: I, 73-82.]

After the elementary training in the Thorn school,[74] the lad entered
the university at Cracow, his father's former home, where he studied
under the faculty of arts from 1491-1494.[75] Nowhere else north of
the Alps at this time were mathematics and astronomy in better
standing than at this university.[76] Sixteen teachers taught these
subjects there during the years of Copernicus's stay, but no record
exists of his work under any of them.[77] That he must have studied
these two sciences there, however, is proved by Rheticus's remark in
the _Narratio Prima_[78] that Copernicus, after leaving Cracow, went
to Bologna to work with Dominicus Maria di Novara "non tarn discipulus
quam adjutor." He left Cracow without receiving a degree,[79] returned
to Thorn in 1494 when he and his family decided he should enter the
Church after first studying in Italy.[80] Consequently he crossed the
Alps in 1496 and was that winter matriculated at Bologna in the
"German nation."[81] The following summer he received word of his
appointment to fill a vacancy among the canons of the cathedral
chapter at Ermeland where his uncle had been bishop since 1489.[82] He
remained in Italy, however, about ten years altogether, studying civil
law at Bologna, and canon law and medicine at Padua,[83] yet receiving
his degree as doctor of canon law from the university of Ferrara in
1503.[84] He was also in Rome for several months during the Jubilee
year, 1500.

[Footnote 74: Ibid: I, 111.]

[Footnote 75: Ibid: I, 124-129.]

[Footnote 76: Ibid: I, 137.]

[Footnote 77: Ibid: I, 141-143.]

[Footnote 78: Rheticus: _Narratio Prima_, 448 (Thorn edit.).]

[Footnote 79: Prowe: I, 154.]

[Footnote 80: Ibid: I, 169.]

[Footnote 81: Ibid: I, 174.]

[Footnote 82: Ibid: I, 175. This insured him an annual income which
amounted to a sum equalling about $2250 today. Later he received a
sinecure appointment besides at Breslau. (Holden in _Pop. Sci._,
111.)]

[Footnote 83: Prowe: I, 224.]

[Footnote 84: Ibid: I, 308.]

At this period the professor of astronomy at Bologna was the famous
teacher Dominicus Maria di Novara (1454-1504), a man "ingenio et animo
liber" who dared to attack the immutability of the Ptolemaic system,
since his own observations, especially of the Pole Star, differed by a
degree and more from the traditional ones.[85] He dared to criticise
the long accepted system and to emphasize the Pythagorean notion of
the underlying harmony and simplicity in nature[86]; and from him
Copernicus may have acquired these ideas, for whether they lived
together or not in Bologna, they were closely associated. It was here,
too, that Copernicus began his study of Greek which later was to be
the means[87] of encouraging him in his own theorizing by acquainting
him with the ancients who had thought along similar lines.

[Footnote 85: Ibid: I, 240 and note. Little is known about him today,
except that he was primarily an observer, and was highly esteemed by
his immediate successors; see Gilbert: _De Magnete_.]

[Footnote 86: Clerke in _Ency. Brit._, "Novara."]

[Footnote 87: Prowe: I, 249.]

In the spring of the year (1501) following his visit to Rome,[88]
Copernicus returned to the Chapter at Frauenburg to get further leave
of absence to study medicine at the University of Padua.[89] Whether
he received a degree at Padua or not and how long he stayed there are
uncertain points.[90] He was back in Ermeland early in 1506.

[Footnote 88: Prowe: I, 279.]

[Footnote 89: Ibid, 294.]

[Footnote 90: Ibid: I, 319.]

His student days were ended. And now for many years he led a very
active life, first as companion and assistant to his uncle the Bishop,
with whom he stayed at Schloss Heilsberg till after the Bishop's death
in 1512; then as one of the leading canons of the chapter at
Frauenburg, where he lived most of the rest of his life.[91] As the
chapter representative for five years (at intervals) he had oversight
of the spiritual and temporal affairs of two large districts in the
care of the chapter.[92] He went on various diplomatic and other
missions to the King of Poland,[93] to Duke Albrecht of the Teutonic
Order,[94] and to the councils of the German states.[95] He wrote a
paper of considerable weight upon the much needed reform of the
Prussian currency.[96] His skill as a physician was in demand not only
in his immediate circle[97] but in adjoining countries, Duke Albrecht
once summoning him to Königsberg to attend one of his courtiers.[98]
He was a humanist as well as a Catholic Churchman, and though he did
not approve of the Protestant Revolt, he favored reform and
toleration.[99] Gassendi claims that he was also a painter, at least
in his student days, and that he painted portraits well received by
his contemporaries.[100] But his interest and skill in astronomy must
have been recognized early in his life for in 1514 the committee of
the Lateran Council in charge of the reform of the calendar summoned
him to their aid.[101]

[Footnote 91: Prowe: I, 335-380.]

[Footnote 92: Ibid: II, 75-110, 116, 124.]

[Footnote 93: Ibid: II, 204-8.]

[Footnote 94: Ibid: II, 110.]

[Footnote 95: Ibid: II, 144.]

[Footnote 96: Ibid: II, 146.]

[Footnote 97: Ibid: II, 293-319.]

[Footnote 98: Ibid: II, 464-472.]

[Footnote 99: Ibid: II, 170-187.]

[Footnote 100: Holden in _Pop. Sci._, 109.]

[Footnote 101: Prowe: II, 67-70.]

He was no cloistered monk devoting all his time to the study of the
heavens, but a cultivated man of affairs, of recognized ability in
business and statesmanship, and a leader among his fellow canons. His
mathematical and astronomical pursuits were the occupations of his
somewhat rare leisure moments, except perhaps during the six years
with his uncle in the comparative freedom of the bishop's castle, and
during the last ten or twelve years of his life, after his request for
a coadjutor had resulted in lightening his duties. In his masterwork
_De Revolutionibus_[102] there are recorded only 27 of his own
astronomical observations, and these extend over the years from 1497
to 1529. The first was made at Bologna, the second at Rome in 1500,
and seven of the others at Frauenburg, where the rest were also
probably made. It is believed the greater part of the _De
Revolutionibus_ was written at Heilsburg[103] where Copernicus was
free from his chapter duties, for as he himself says[104] in the
Dedication to the Pope (dated 1543) his work had been formulated not
merely nine years but for "more than three nines of years." It had not
been neglected all this time, however, as the original MS. (now in the
Prague Library) with its innumerable changes and corrections shows how
continually he worked over it, altering and correcting the tables and
verifying his statements.[105]

[Footnote 102: Copernicus: _De Revolutionibus_, Thorn edit., 444. The
last two words of the full title: _De Revolutionibus Orbium
Coelestium_ are not on the original MS. and are believed to have
been added by Osiander. Prowe: II, 541, note.]

[Footnote 103: Ibid: II, 490-1.]

[Footnote 104: Copernicus: Dedication, 4. (Thorn edit.)]

[Footnote 105: Prowe: II, 503-508.]

Copernicus was a philosopher.[106] He thought out a new explanation of
the world machine with relatively little practical work of his
own,[107] though we know he controlled his results by the accumulated
observations of the ages.[108] His instruments were inadequate,
inaccurate and out of date even in his time, for much better ones were
then being made at Nürnberg[109]; and the cloudy climate of Ermeland
as well as his own active career prevented him from the
long-continued, painstaking observing, which men like Tycho Brahe were
to carry on later. Despite such handicaps, because of his
dissatisfaction with the complexities and intricacies of the Ptolemaic
system and because of his conviction that the laws of nature were
simple and harmonious, Copernicus searched the writings of the classic
philosophers, as he himself tells us,[110] to see what other
explanation of the universe had been suggested. "And I found first in
Cicero that a certain Nicetas had thought the earth moved. Later in
Plutarch I found certain others had been of the same opinion." He
quoted the Greek referring to Philolaus the Pythagorean, Heraclides of
Pontus, and Ecphantes the Pythagorean.[111] As a result he began to
consider the mobility of the earth and found that such an explanation
seemingly solved many astronomical problems with a simplicity and a
harmony utterly lacking in the old traditional scheme. Unaided by a
telescope, he worked out in part the right theory of the universe and
for the first time in history placed all the then known planets in
their true positions with the sun at the center. He claimed that the
earth turns on its axis as it travels around the sun, and careens
slowly as it goes, thus by these three motions explaining many of the
apparent movements of the sun and the planets. He retained,[112]
however, the immobile heaven of the fixed stars (though vastly farther
off in order to account for the non-observance of any stellar
parallax[113]), the "perfect" and therefore circular orbits of the
planets, certain of the old eccentrics, and 34 new epicycles in place
of all the old ones which he had cast aside.[114] He accepted the
false notion of trepidation enunciated by the Arabs in the 9th century
and later overthrown by Tycho Brahe.[115] His calculations were
weak.[116] But his great book is a sane and modern work in an age of
astrology and superstition.[117] His theory is a triumph of reason and
imagination and with its almost complete independence of authority is
perhaps as original a work as an human being may be expected to
produce.

[Footnote 106: Ibid: II, 64.]

[Footnote 107: Ibid: II, 58-9.]

[Footnote 108: Rheticus: _Narratio Prima_.]

[Footnote 109: Prowe: II, 56.]

[Footnote 110: Copernicus: Dedication, 5-6. See Appendix B.]

[Footnote 111: For a translation of this dedication in full, see
Appendix B.

In the original MS. occurs a reference (struck out) to Aristarchus of
Samos as holding the theory of the earth's motion. (Prowe: II, 507,
note.) The finding of this passage proves that Copernicus had at least
heard of Aristarchus, but his apparent indifference is the more
strange since an account of his teaching occurs in the same book of
Plutarch from which Copernicus learned about Philolaus. But the chief
source of our knowledge about Aristarchus is through Archimedes, and
the editio princeps of his works did not appear till 1544, a year
after the death of Copernicus. C.R. Eastman in _Pop. Sci._ 68:325.]

[Footnote 112: Delambre: _Astr. Mod._ pp. xi-xii.]

[Footnote 113: As the earth moves, the position in the heavens of a
fixed star seen from the earth should differ slightly from its
position observed six months later when the earth is on the opposite
side of its orbit. The distance to the fixed stars is so vast,
however, that this final proof of the earth's motion was not attained
till 1838 when Bessel (1784-1846) observed stellar parallax from
Königsberg. Berry: 123-24.]

[Footnote 114: _Commentariolus_ in Prowe: III, 202.]

[Footnote 115: Holden in _Pop. Sci._, 117.]

[Footnote 116: Delambre: _Astr. Mod._, p. xi.]

[Footnote 117: Snyder: 165.]

Copernicus was extremely reluctant to publish his book because of the
misunderstandings and malicious attacks it would unquestionably
arouse.[118] Possibly, too, he was thinking of the hostility already
existing between himself and his Bishop, Dantiscus,[119] whom he did
not wish to antagonize further. But his devoted pupil and friend,
Rheticus, aided by Tiedeman Giese, Bishop of Culm and a lifelong
friend, at length (1542) persuaded him.[120] So he entrusted the
matter to Giese who passed it on to Rheticus, then connected with the
University at Wittenberg as professor of mathematics.[121] Rheticus,
securing leave of absence from Melancthon his superior, went to
Nürnberg to supervise the printing.[122] This was done by Petrejus.
Upon his return to Wittenberg, Rheticus left in charge Johann Schöner,
a famous mathematician and astronomer, and Andreas Osiander, a
Lutheran preacher interested in astronomy. The printed book[123] was
placed in Copernicus's hands at Frauenburg on May 24th, 1543, as he
lay dying of paralysis.[124]

[Footnote 118: Copernicus: Dedication, 3.]

[Footnote 119: Prowe: II, 362-7.]

[Footnote 120: Ibid: II, 406.]

[Footnote 121: Ibid: II, 501.]

[Footnote 122: Ibid: II, 517-20.]

[Footnote 123: Four other editions have since appeared; at Basel,
1566, Amsterdam 1617, Warsaw 1847, and Thorn 1873. For further
details, see Prowe: II, 543-7, and Thorn edition pp. xii-xx. The
edition cited in this study is the Thorn one of 1873.]

[Footnote 124: Prowe: II, 553-4.]

Copernicus passed away that day in ignorance that his life's work
appeared before the world not as a truth but as an hypothesis; for
there had been inserted an anonymous preface "ad lectorem de
hypothesibus huius opera" stating this was but another hypothesis for
the greater convenience of astronomers.[125] "Neque enim necesse est
eas hypotheses esse veras, imo ne verisimiles quidem, sed sufficit hoc
unum, si calculum observationibus congruentem exhibeant."[126] For
years Copernicus was thought to have written this preface to disarm
criticism. Kepler sixty years later (1601) called attention to this
error,[127] and quoted Osiander's letters to Copernicus and to
Rheticus of May, 1541, suggesting that the system be called an
hypothesis to avert attacks by theologians and Aristotelians. He
claimed that Osiander had written the preface; but Kepler's article
never was finished and remained unpublished till 1858.[128] Giese and
Rheticus of course knew that the preface falsified Copernicus's work,
and Giese, highly indignant at the "impiety" of the printer (who he
thought had written it to save himself from blame) wrote Rheticus
urging him to write another "præfatiunculus" purging the book of this
falsehood.[129] This letter is dated July 26, 1543, and the book had
appeared in April. Apparently nothing was done and the preface was
accepted without further challenge.

[Footnote 125: Copernicus: _De Revolutionibus_, I. "To the reader on
the hypotheses of this book."]

[Footnote 126: "For it is not necessary that these hypotheses be true,
nor even probable, but this alone is sufficient, if they show
reasoning fitting the observations."]

[Footnote 127: Kepler: _Apologia Tychonis contra Ursum_ in _Op. Om._:
I, 244-246.]

[Footnote 128: Prowe: II, 251, note.]

[Footnote 129: Ibid: II, 537-9.]

It remains to ask whether people other than Copernicus's intimates had
known of his theory before 1543. Peucer, Melancthon's nephew, declared
Copernicus was famous by 1525,[130] and the invitation from the
Lateran Council committee indicates his renown as early as 1514. In
Vienna in 1873[131] there was found a _Commentariolus_, or summary of
his great work,[132] written by Copernicus for the scholars friendly
to him. It was probably written soon after 1530, and gives a full
statement of his views following a series of seven axioms or theses
summing up the new theory. This little book probably occasioned the
order from Pope Clement VII in 1533 to Widmanstadt to report to him on
the new scheme.[133] This Widmanstadt did in the papal gardens before
the Pope with several of the cardinals and bishops, and was presented
with a book as his reward.

[Footnote 130: Ibid: II, 273.]

[Footnote 131: Ibid: II, 286-7.]

[Footnote 132: A second copy was found at Upsala shortly afterwards,
though for centuries its existence was unknown save for two slight
references to such a book, one by Gemma Frisius, the other by Tycho
Brahe. Prowe: II, 284.]

[Footnote 133: Ibid: II, 273-4.]

In 1536, the Cardinal Bishop of Capua, Nicolas von Schönberg,
apparently with the intent to pave the way for the theory at Rome,
wrote for a report of it.[134] It is not known whether the report was
sent, and the cardinal died the following year. But that Copernicus
was pleased by this recognition is evident from the prominence he gave
to the cardinal's letter, as he printed it in his book at the
beginning, even before the dedication to the Pope.

[Footnote 134: Prowe: II, 274, note.]

The most widely circulated account at this time, however, was the
_Narratio Prima_, a letter from Georg Joachim of Rhaetia (better known
as Rheticus), written in October, 1539, from Frauenburg to Johann
Schöner at Nürnberg.[135] Rheticus,[136] at twenty-five years of age
professor of mathematics at Wittenberg, had gone uninvited to
Frauenburg early that summer to visit Copernicus and learn for himself
more in detail about this new system. This was rather a daring
undertaking, for not only were Luther and Melancthon outspoken in
their condemnation of Copernicus, but Rheticus was going from
Wittenberg, the headquarters of the Lutheran heresy, into the
bishopric of Ermeland where to the Bishop and the King his overlord,
the very name of Luther was anathema. Nothing daunted, Rheticus
departed for Frauenberg and could not speak too highly of the cordial
welcome he received from the old astronomer. He came for a few weeks,
and remained two years to return to Wittenberg as an avowed believer
in the system and its first teacher and promulgator. Not only did he
write the _Narratio Prima_ and an _Encomium Borussæ_, both extolling
Copernicus, but what is more important, he succeeded in persuading him
to allow the publication of the _De Revolutionibus_. Rheticus returned
to his post in 1541, to resign it the next year and become Dean of the
Faculty of Arts. In all probability the conflict was too intense
between his new scientific beliefs and the statements required of him
as professor of the old mathematics and astronomy.

[Footnote 135: Prowe: II, 426-440.]

[Footnote 136: Ibid: II, 387-405.]

His colleague, Erasmus Reinhold, continued to teach astronomy there,
though he, too, accepted the Copernican system.[137] He published a
series of tables (_Tabulæ Prutenicæ_, 1551) based on the Copernican
calculations to supersede the inaccurate ones by Regiomontanus; and
these were in general use throughout Europe for the next seventy-odd
years. As he himself declared, the series was based in its principles
and fundamentals upon the observations of the famous Nicolaus
Copernicus. The almanacs deduced from these calculations probably did
more to bring the new system into general recognition and gradual
acceptance than did the theoretical works.[138]

[Footnote 137: Ibid: II, 391.]

[Footnote 138: Holden in _Pop. Sci._, 119.]

Opposition to the theory had not yet gathered serious headway. There
is record[139] of a play poking fun at the system and its originator,
written by the Elbing schoolmaster (a Dutch refugee from the
Inquisition) and given in 1531 by the villagers at Elbing (3 miles
from Frauenburg). Elbing and Ermeland were hostile to each other,
Copernicus was well known in Elbing though probably from afar, for
there seems to have been almost no personal intercourse between canons
and people, and the spread of Luther's teachings had intensified the
hostility of the villagers towards the Church and its representatives.
But not until Giordano Bruno made the Copernican system the
starting-point of his philosophy was the Roman Catholic Church
seriously aroused to combat it. Possibly Osiander's preface turned
opposition aside, and certainly the non-acceptance of the system as a
whole by Tycho Brahe, the leading astronomer of Europe at that time,
made people slow to consider it.

[Footnote 139: Prowe: II, 233-244.]



CHAPTER III.

THE LATER DEVELOPMENT AND SCIENTIFIC DEFENSE OF THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.


Copernicus accomplished much, but even his genius could not far outrun
the times in which he lived. When one realizes that not only all the
astronomers before him, but he and his immediate successor, Tycho
Brahe, made all their observations and calculations unaided by even
the simplest telescope, by logarithms or by pendulum clocks for
accurate measurement of time,[140] one marvels not at their errors,
but at the greatness of their genius in rising above such
difficulties. This lack of material aids makes the work of Tycho
Brahe,[141] accounted one of the greatest observers that has ever
lived,[142] as notable in its way perhaps as that of Copernicus.

[Footnote 140: Burckhardt: 8.]

[Footnote 141: The two standard lives of Tycho Brahe are the _Vita
Tychonis Brahei_ by Gassendi (1655) till recently the sole source of
information, and Dreyer's _Tycho Brahe_ (1890) based not only on
Gassendi but on the documentary evidence disclosed by the researches
of the 19th century. For Tycho's works I have used the _Opera Omnia_
published at Frankfort in 1648. The Danish Royal Scientific Society
has issued a reprint (1901) of the rare 1573 edition of the _De Nova
Stella_.]

[Footnote 142: Bridges: 206.]

His life[143] was a somewhat romantic one. Born of noble family on
December 14th, 1546, at Knudstrup in Denmark, Tyge Brahe, the second
of ten children,[144] was early practically adopted by his father's
brother. His family wished him to become a statesman and sent him in
1559 to the university at Copenhagen to prepare for that career. A
partial eclipse of the sun on August 21st, 1560 as foretold by the
astronomers thrilled the lad and determined him to study a science
that could foretell the future and so affect men's lives.[145] When he
was sent to Leipsic with a tutor in 1562 to study law, he devoted his
time and money to the study of mathematics and astronomy. Two years
later when eighteen years of age, he resolved to perform anew the task
of Hipparchos and Ptolemy and make a catalogue of the stars more
accurate than theirs. His family hotly opposed these plans; and for
six years he wandered through the German states, now at Wittenberg,
now at Rostock (where he fought the duel in which he lost part of his
nose and had to have it replaced by one of gold and silver)[146] or at
Augsburg--everywhere working on his chosen subjects. But upon his
return to Denmark (1570) he spent two years on chemistry and medicine,
till the startling appearance of the New Star in the constellation of
Cassiopæa (November, 1572) recalled him to what became his life
work.[147]

[Footnote 143: Dreyer: 11-84.]

[Footnote 144: Gassendi: 2.]

[Footnote 145: Dreyer: 13.]

[Footnote 146: Gassendi: 9-10.]

[Footnote 147: Dreyer: 38-44.]

Through the interest and favor of King Frederick II, he was given the
island of Hveen near Elsinore, with money to build an observatory and
the pledge of an annual income from the state treasury for his
support.[148] There at Uraniborg from 1576 to 1597 he and his pupils
made the great catalogue of the stars, and studied comets and the
moon. When he was forced to leave Hveen by the hostility and the
economical tendencies of the young king,[149] after two years of
wandering he accepted the invitation of the Emperor Rudolphus and
established himself at Prague in Bohemia. Among his assistants at
Prague was young Johann Kepler who till Tycho's death (on October 24,
1601) was his chief helper for twenty months, and who afterwards
completed his observations, publishing the results in the Rudolphine
Tables of 1627.

[Footnote 148: Ibid: 84.]

[Footnote 149: Ibid: 234-5.]

This "Phoenix among Astronomers"--as Kepler calls him,[150]--was the
father of modern practical astronomy.[151] He also propounded a third
system of the universe, a compromise between the Ptolemaic and the
Copernican. In this the Tychonic system,[152] the earth is motionless
and is the center of the orbits of the sun, the moon, and the sphere
of the fixed stars, while the sun is the center of the orbits of the
five planets.[153] Mercury and Venus move in orbits with radii shorter
than the sun's radius, and the other three planets include the earth
within their circuits. This system was in harmony with the Bible and
accounted as satisfactorily by geometry as either of the other two
systems for the observed phenomena.[154] To Tycho Brahe, the Ptolemaic
system was too complex,[155] and the Copernican absurd, the latter
because to account for the absence of stellar parallax it left vacant
and purposeless a vast space between Saturn and the sphere of the
fixed stars,[156] and because Tycho's observations did not show any
trace of the stellar parallax that must exist if the earth moves.[157]

[Footnote 150: Kepler: _Tabulæ Rudolphinæ_. Title page.]

[Footnote 151: Dreyer: 317-363.]

[Footnote 152: As stated in his Book on the Comet of 1577 (pub.
1588).]

[Footnote 153: Dreyer: 168-9.]

[Footnote 154: Schiaparelli in Snyder: 165.]

[Footnote 155: Brahe: _Op. Om._, pt. I, p. 337.]

[Footnote 156: Ibid: 409-410.]

[Footnote 157: The Tychonic system has supporters to this day. See
chap. viii.]

Though Tycho thus rejected the Copernican theory, his own proved to be
the stepping stone toward the one he rejected,[158] for by it and by
his study of comets he completely destroyed the ideas of solid
crystalline spheres to the discredit of the scholastics; and his
promulgation of a third theory of the universe helped to diminish
men's confidence in authority and to stimulate independent thinking.

[Footnote 158: Dreyer: 181.]

Copernicus worked out his system by mathematics with but slight aid
from his own observations. It was a theory not yet proven true. Tycho
Brahe, though denying its validity, contributed in his mass of
painstaking, accurate observations the raw material of facts to be
worked up by Kepler into the great laws of the planets attesting the
fundamental truth of the Copernican hypothesis.

Johann Kepler[159] earned for himself the proud title of "lawmaker for
the universe" in defiance of his handicaps of ill-health, family
troubles, and straitened finances.[160] Born in Weil, Wurtemberg,
(December 27, 1571) of noble but indigent parents, he was a sickly
child unable for years to attend school regularly. He finally left the
monastery school in Mulifontane in 1586 and entered the university at
Tübingen to stay for four and a half years. There he studied
philosophy, mathematics, and theology (he was a Lutheran) receiving
the degree of Master of Arts in 1591. While at the university he
studied under Mæstlin, professor of mathematics and astronomy, and a
believer in the Copernican theory. Because of Mæstlin's teaching
Kepler developed into a confirmed and enthusiastic adherent to the new
doctrine.

[Footnote 159: The authoritative biography is the _Vita_ by Frisch in
vol. VIII, pp. 668-1028 of _Op. Om. Kep._]

[Footnote 160: Frisch: VIII, 718. [Transcriber's Note: Missing
footnote reference in original text has been added above in a logical
place.]]

In 1594 he reluctantly abandoned his favorite study, philosophy, and
accepted a professorship in mathematics at Grætz in Styria. Two years
later he published his first work: _Prodromus Dissertationum continens
mysterium cosmographicum_ etc. (1596) in which he sought to prove that
the Creator in arranging the universe had thought of the five regular
bodies which can be inscribed in a sphere according to which He had
regulated the order, the number and the proportions of the heavens and
their movements.[161] The book is important not only because of its
novelty, but because it gave the Copernican doctrine public
explanation and defense.[162] Kepler himself valued it enough to
reprint it with his _Harmonia Mundi_ twenty-five years later. And it
won for him appreciative letters from various scientists, notably from
Tycho Brahe and Galileo.[163]

[Footnote 161: Delambre: _Astr. Mod._ 314-315.]

[Footnote 162: Frisch: VIII, 999.]

[Footnote 163: Ibid: VIII, 696.]

As Kepler, a Lutheran, was having difficulties in Grætz, a Catholic
city, he finally accepted Tycho's urgent invitation to come to
Prague.[164] He came early in 1600, and after some adjustments had
been made between the two,[165] he and his family settled with Tycho
that autumn to remain till the latter's death the following November.
Kepler himself then held the office of imperial mathematician by
appointment for many years thereafter.[166]

[Footnote 164: Ibid: VIII, 699-715.]

[Footnote 165: Dreyer: 290-309.]

[Footnote 166: Frisch: VIII, 715.]

With the researches of Tycho's lifetime placed at his disposal, Kepler
worked out two of his three great planetary laws from Tycho's
observations of the planet Mars. Yet, as M. Bertrand remarks,[167] it
was well for Kepler that his material was not too accurate or its
variations (due to the then unmeasured force of attraction) might have
hindered him from proving his laws; and luckily for him the earth's
orbit is so nearly circular that in calculating the orbit of Mars to
prove its elliptical form, he could base his work on the earth's orbit
as a circle without vitiating his results for Mars.[168] That a
planet's orbit is an ellipse and not the perfect circle was of course
a triumph for the new science over the scholastics and Aristotelians.
But they had yet to learn what held the planets in their courses.

[Footnote 167: Bertrand: p. 870-1.]

[Footnote 168: The two laws first appeared in 1609 in his _Physica
Coelestis tradita commentarius de motu stellæ martis_. (Frisch:
VIII, 964.) The third he enunciated in his _Harmonia Mundi_, 1619.
(Ibid: VIII, 1013-1017.)]

From Kepler's student days under Mæstlin when as the subject of his
disputation he upheld the Copernican theory, to his death in 1630, he
was a staunch supporter of the new teaching.[169] In his _Epitome
Astronomiæ Copernicanæ_ (1616) he answered objections to it at
length.[170] He took infinite pains to convert his friends to the new
system. It was in vain that Tycho on his deathbed had urged Kepler to
carry on their work not on the Copernican but on the Tychonic
scheme.[171]

[Footnote 169: "Cor et animam meam": Kepler's expression in regard to
the Copernician theory. Ibid: VIII, 957.]

[Footnote 170: Ibid: VIII, 838.]

[Footnote 171: Ibid: VIII, 742.]

Kepler had reasoned out according to physics the laws by which the
planets moved.[172] In Italy at this same time Galileo with his optic
tube (invented 1609) was demonstrating that Venus had phases even as
Copernicus had declared, that Jupiter had satellites, and that the
moon was scarred and roughened--ocular proof that the old system with
its heavenly perfection in number (7 planets) and in appearance must
be cast aside. Within a year after Galileo's death Newton was
born[173] (January 4, 1643). His demonstration of the universal
application of the law of gravitation (1687) was perhaps the climax in
the development of the Copernican system. Complete and final proof
was adding in the succeeding years by Roemer's (1644-1710) discovery
of the velocity of light, by Bradley's (1693-1762) study of its
aberration,[174] by Bessel's discovery of stellar parallax in
1838,[175] and by Foucault's experimental demonstration of the earth's
axial motion with a pendulum in 1851.[176]

[Footnote 172: Kepler: _Op. Om._, I, 106: _Præfatio ad Lectorem_.]

[Footnote 173: Berry: 210.]

[Footnote 174: Berry: 265.]

[Footnote 175: Ibid: 359.]

[Footnote 176: Jacoby: 89.]



PART TWO

THE RECEPTION OF THE COPERNICAN THEORY.



CHAPTER I.

OPINIONS AND ARGUMENTS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.


During the lifetime of Copernicus, Roman Catholic churchmen had been
interested in his work: Cardinal Schönberg wrote for full information,
Widmanstadt reported on it to Pope Clement VII and Copernicus had
dedicated his book to Pope Paul III.[177] But after his death, the
Church authorities apparently paid little heed to his theory until
some fifty years later when Giordano Bruno forced it upon their
attention in his philosophical teachings. Osiander's preface had
probably blinded their eyes to its implications.

[Footnote 177: See before, p. 30.]

The Protestant leaders were not quite so urbane in their attitude.
While Copernicus was still alive, Luther is reported[178] to have
referred to this "new astrologer" who sought to prove that the earth
and not the firmament swung around, saying: "The fool will overturn
the whole science of astronomy. But as the Holy Scriptures state,
Joshua bade the sun stand still and not the earth." Melancthon was
more interested in this new idea, perhaps because of the influence of
Rheticus, his colleague in the University of Wittenberg and
Copernicus's great friend and supporter; but he too preferred not to
dissent from the accepted opinion of the ages.[179] Informally in a
letter to a friend he implies the absurdity of the new teaching,[180]
and in his _Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ_ he goes to some pains to disprove
the new assumption not merely by mathematics but by the Bible, though
with a kind of apology to other physicists for quoting the Divine
Witness.[181] He refers to the phrase in Psalm XIX likening the sun in
its course "to a strong man about to run a race," proving that the sun
moves. Another Psalm states that the earth was founded not to be moved
for eternity, and a similar phrase occurs in the first chapter of
Ecclesiastes. Then there was the miracle when Joshua bade the sun
stand still. While this is a sufficient witness to the truths there
are other proofs: First, in the turning of a circumference, the center
remains motionless. Next, changes in the length of the day and of the
seasons would ensue, were the position of the earth in the universe
not central, and it would not be equidistant from the two poles. (He
has previously disposed of infinity by stating that the heavens
revolve around the pole, which could not happen if a line drawn from
the center of the universe were infinitely projected).[182]
Furthermore, the earth must be at the center for its shadow to fall
upon the moon in an eclipse. He refers next to the Aristotelian
statement that to a simple body belongs one motion: the earth is a
simple body; therefore it can have but one motion. What is true of the
parts applies to the whole; all the parts of the earth are borne
toward the earth and there rest; therefore the whole earth is at rest.
Quiet is essential to growth. Lastly, if the earth moved as fast as it
must if it moves at all, everything would fly to pieces.[183]

[Footnote 178: Luther: _Tischreden_, IV, 575; "Der Narr will die ganze
Kunst Astronomiæ umkehren. Aber wie die heilige Schrift anzeigt, so
heiss Josua die Sonne still stehen, und nicht das Erdreich."]

[Footnote 179: "Non est autem hominis bene instituti dissentire a
consensu tot sæculorum." Præfatio Philippi Melanthonis, 1531, in
Sacro-Busto: _Libellus de Sphæra_ (no date).]

[Footnote 180: "Vidi dialogum et fui dissuassor editionis. Fabula per
sese paulatim consilescet; sed quidam putant esse egregiam
_katorthoma_ rem tam absurdam ornare, sicut ille Sarmaticus Astronomis
qui movet terram et figet solem. Profecto sapientes gubernatores
deberent ingeniorum petulantia cohercere." _Epistola B. Mithobio_, 16
Oct. 1541. P. Melancthon: _Opera_: IV, 679.]

[Footnote 181: "Quamquam autem rident aliqui Physicum testimonia
divina citantem, tamen nos honestum esse censemus, Philosophiam
conferre ad coelestia dicta, et in tanta caligine humanæ mentis
autoritatem divinam consulere ubicunque possumus." Melancthon: _Initia
Doctrinæ Physicæ_: Bk. I, 63.]

[Footnote 182: Ibid: 60.]

[Footnote 183: Ibid: 59-67.]

Melancthon thus sums up the usual arguments from the Scriptures, from
Aristotle, Ptolemy and the then current physics, in opposition to this
theory. Not only did he publish his own textbook on physics, but he
republished Sacrobosco's famous introduction to astronomy, writing for
it a preface urging diligent study of this little text endorsed by so
many generations of scholars.

Calvin, the great teacher of the Protestant Revolt, apparently was
little touched by this new intellectual current.[184] He did write a
semi-popular tract[185] against the so called "judicial" astrology,
then widely accepted, which he, like Luther, condemns as a foolish
superstition, though he values "la vraie science d'astrologie" from
which men understand not merely the order and place of the stars and
planets, but the causes of things. In his _Commentaries_, he accepts
the miracle of the sun's standing still at Joshua's command as proof
of the faith Christ commended, so strong that it will remove
mountains; and he makes reference only to the time-honored Ptolemaic
theory in his discussion of Psalm XIX.[186]

[Footnote 184: Farrar: _Hist. of Interpretation_: Preface, xviii:
"Who," asks Calvin, "will venture to place the authority of Copernicus
above that of the Holy Spirit?"]

[Footnote 185: Calvin: _Oeuvres François_: _Traité ... contre
l'Astrologie_, 110-112.]

[Footnote 186: Calvin: _Op. Om._ in _Corpus Reformatorum_: vol. 25,
499-500; vol. 59, 195-196.]

For the absolute authority of the Pope the Protestant leaders
substituted the absolute authority of the Bible. It is not strange,
then, that they ignored or derided a theory as yet unsupported by
proof and so difficult to harmonize with a literally accepted Bible.

How widespread among the people generally did this theory become in
the years immediately following the publication of the _De
Revolutionibus_? M. Flammarion, in his _Vie de Copernic_ (1872),
refers[187] to the famous clock in the Strasburg Cathedral as having
been constructed by the University of Strasburg in protest against the
action taken by the Holy Office against Galileo, (though the clock
was constructed in 1571 and Galileo was not condemned until 1633).
This astronomical clock constructed only thirty years after the death
of Copernicus, he claims represented the Copernican system of the
universe with the planets revolving around the sun, and explained
clearly in the sight of the people what was the thought of the makers.
Lest no one should miscomprehend, he adds, the portrait of Copernicus
was placed there with this inscription: Nicolai Copernici vera
effigies, ex ipsius autographo depicta.

[Footnote 187: P. 78-79: "Ce planétaire ... represente le système du
monde tel qu'il a été expliqué par Copernic."]

This would be important evidence of the spread of the theory were it
true. But M. Flammarion must have failed to see a brief description of
the Strasburg Clock written in 1856 by Charles Schwilgué, son of the
man who renovated its mechanism in 1838-1842. He describes the clock
as it was before his father made it over and as it is today.
Originally constructed in 1352, it was replaced in 1571 by an
astrolabe based on the Ptolemaic system; six hands with the zodiacal
signs of the planets gave their daily movements and, together with a
seventh representing the sun, revolved around a map of the world.[188]
When M. Schwilgué repaired the clock in 1838, he changed it to
harmonize with the Copernican system.[189]

[Footnote 188: Schwilgué: p. 15.]

[Footnote 189: Ibid: p. 48.]

But within eighteen years after the publication of the _De
Revolutionibus_, proof of its influence is to be found in such widely
separated places as London and the great Spanish University of
Salamanca. In 1551, Robert Recorde, court physician to Edward and to
Mary and teacher of mathematics, published in London his _Castle of
Knowledge_, an introduction to astronomy and the first book printed in
England describing the Copernican system.[190] He evidently did not
consider the times quite ripe for a full avowal of his own allegiance
to the new doctrine, but the remarks of the _Maister_ and the
_Scholler_ are worth repeating:[191]

     "MAISTER: ... howbeit Copernicus a man of great learning, of
     much experience, and of wonderfull diligence in observation,
     hath renewed the opinion of Aristarchus Samius, affirming
     that the earth, not onely moveth circularly about his owne
     centre, but also may be, yea and is, continually out of the
     precise centre of the world eight and thirty hundred
     thousand miles: but because the understanding of that
     controversie depends of profounder knowledge than in this
     Introduction may be uttered conveniently, I wil let it passe
     til some other time.

     "SCHOLLER: Nay sit, in good faith, I desire not to heare
     such vaine fantasies, so farre against the common reason,
     and repugnant to the content of all the learned multitude of
     Writers, and therefore let it passe for ever and a day
     longer.

     "MAISTER: You are too yong to be a good judge in so great a
     matter: it passeth farre your learning, and their's also,
     that are much better learned than you, to improuve his
     supposition by good arguments, and therefore you were best
     condemne nothing that you do not well understand: but an
     other time, as I saide, I will so declare his supposition,
     that you shall not onely wonder to heare it, but also
     peradventure be as earnest then to credite it, as you are
     now to condemne it: in the meane season let us proceed
     forward in our former order...."

[Footnote 190: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._: "Recorde."]

[Footnote 191: Quoted (p. 135), from the edition of 1596 in the
library of Mr. George A. Plimpton. See also Recorde's _Whetstone of
Witte_ (1557) as cited by Berry, 127.]

This little book, reprinted in 1556 and in 1596, and one of the most
popular of the mathematical writings in England during that century,
must have interested the English in the new doctrine even before
Bruno's emphatic presentation of it to them in the eighties.

Yet the English did not welcome it cordially. One of the most popular
books of this period was Sylvester's translation (1591) of DuBartas's
_The Divine Weeks_ which appeared in France in 1578, a book loved
especially by Milton.[192] DuBartas writes:[193]

    "Those clerks that think--think how absurd a jest!
    That neither heavens nor stars do turn at all,
    Nor dance around this great, round earthly ball,
    But the earth itself, this massy globe of our's,
    Turns round about once every twice twelve hours!
    And we resemble land-bred novices
    New brought aboard to venture on the seas;
    Who at first launching from the shore suppose
    The ship stands still and that the firm earth goes."

[Footnote 192: DuBartas: _The Divine Weeks_ (Sylvester's trans. edited
by Haight): Preface, pp. xx-xxiii and note.]

[Footnote 193: _Op. cit._: 72.]

Quite otherwise was the situation in the sixteenth century at the
University of Salamanca. A new set of regulations for the University,
drawn up at the King's order by Bishop Covarrubias, was published in
1561. It contained the provision in the curriculum that "Mathematics
and Astrology are to be given in three years, the first, Astrology,
the second, Euclid, Ptolemy or Copernicus _ad vota audientium_," which
also indicates, as Vicente de la Fuente points out, that at this
University "the choice of the subject-matter to be taught lay not with
the teachers but with the students, a rare situation."[194] One
wonders what happened there when the professors and students received
word[195] from the Cardinal Nuncio at Madrid in 1633 that the
Congregations of the Index had decreed the Copernican doctrine was
thereafter in no way to be held, taught or defended.

[Footnote 194: La Fuente: _Historia de la Universidades ... de
España_: II, 314.]

[Footnote 195: _Doc. 86_ in Favaro: 130.]

One of the graduates of this University, Father Zuñiga,[196] (better
known as Didacus à Stunica), wrote a commentary on Job that was
licensed to be printed in 1579, but was not published until 1584 at
Toledo. Another edition appeared at Rome seven years later. It
evidently was widely read for it was condemned _donec corrigatur_ by
the Index in 1616 and the mathematical literature of the next half
century contains many allusions to his remarks on Job: IX: 6; "Who
shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble."
After commenting here upon the greater clarity and simplicity of the
Copernican theory, Didacus à Stunica then states that the theory is
not contradicted by Solomon in Ecclesiastes, as that "text signifieth
no more but this, that although the succession of ages, and
generations of men on earth be various, yet the earth itself is still
one and the same, and continueth without any sensible variation" ...
and "it hath no coherence with its context (as Philosophers show) if
it be expounded to speak of the earth's immobility. The motion that
belongs to the earth by way of speech is assigned to the sun even by
Copernicus himself, and those who are his followers.... To conclude,
no place can be produced out of Holy Scriptures which so clearly
speaks the earth's immobility as this doth its mobility. Therefore
this text of which we have spoken is easily reconciled to this
opinion. And to set forth the wonderful power and wisdom of God who
can indue the frame of the whole earth (it being of monstrous weight
by nature) with motion, this our Divine pen-man added; 'And the
pillars thereof tremble:' As if he would teach us, from the doctrine
laid down, that it is moved from its foundations."[197]

[Footnote 196: _Diccionario Enciclopédico Hispano-Americano de
literatura, ciencias y artes_ (Barcelona, 1898).]

[Footnote 197: Quoted in Salusbury: _Math. Coll._: I, 468-470 (1661),
as a work inaccessible to most readers at that time because of its
extreme rarity. It remained on the Index until the edition of 1835.]

French thinkers, like the English, did not encourage the new doctrine
at this time. Montaigne[198] was characteristically indifferent: "What
shall we reape by it, but only that we neede not care which of the two
it be? And who knoweth whether a hundred yeares hence a third opinion
will arise which happily shall overthrow these two præcedent?" The
famous political theorist, Jean Bodin, (1530-1596), was as thoroughly
opposed to it as DuBartas had been. In the last year of his life,
Bodin wrote his _Universæ Naturæ Theatrum_[199] in which he discussed
the origin and composition of the universe and of the animal,
vegetable, mineral and spiritual kingdoms. These five books (or
divisions) reveal his amazing ideas of geology, physics and astronomy
while at the same time they show a mind thoroughly at home in Hebrew
and Arabian literature as well as in the classics. His answer to the
Copernican doctrine is worth quoting to illustrate the attitude of one
of the keenest thinkers in a brilliant era:

     "THEORIST: Since the sun's heat is so intense that we read
     it has sometimes burned crops, houses and cities in
     Scythia,[200] would it not be more reasonable that the sun
     is still and the earth indeed revolves?

     "MYSTIC: Such was the old idea of Philolaus, Timæus,
     Ecphantes, Seleucus, Aristarchus of Samos, Archimedes and
     Eudoxus, which Copernicus has renewed in our time. But it
     can easily be refuted by its shallowness although no one has
     done it thoroughly.

     "THE.: What arguments do they rely on who hold that the
     earth is revolved and that the sun forsooth is still?

     "MYS.: Because the comprehension of the human mind cannot
     grasp the incredible speed of the heavenly spheres and
     especially of the tenth sphere which must be ten times
     greater than that of the eighth, for in twenty-four hours it
     must traverse 469,562,845 miles, so that the earth seems
     like a dot in the universe. This is the chief argument.
     Besides this, we get rid entirely of epicycles in
     representing the motions of the planets and what is taught
     concerning the motion of trepidation in the eighth sphere
     vanishes. Also, there is no need for the ninth and tenth
     spheres. There is one argument which they have omitted but
     which seems to me more efficacious than any, viz.: rest is
     nobler than movement, and that celestial and divine things
     have a stable nature while elemental things have motion,
     disturbance and unrest; therefore it seems more probable
     that the latter move rather than the former. But while
     serious absurdities result from the idea of Eudoxus, far
     more serious ones result from that of Copernicus.

     "THE.: What are these absurdities?

     "MYS.: Eudoxus knew nothing of trepidation, so his idea
     seems to be less in error. But Copernicus, in order to
     uphold his own hypothesis, claims the earth has three
     motions, its diurnal and annual ones, and trepidation; if we
     add to these the pull of weight towards the center, we are
     attributing four natural motions to one and the same body.
     If this is granted, then the very foundations of physics
     must fall into ruins; for all are agreed upon this that each
     natural body has but one motion of its own, and that all
     others are said to be either violent or voluntary.
     Therefore, since he claims the earth is agitated by four
     motions, one only can be its own, the others must be
     confessedly violent; yet nothing violent in nature can
     endure continuously. Furthermore the earth is not moved by
     water, much less by the motion of air or fire in the way we
     have stated the heavens are moved by the revolutions of the
     enveloping heavens. Copernicus further does not claim that
     all the heavens are immobile but that some are moved, that
     is, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. But
     why such diversity? No one in his senses, or imbued with the
     slightest knowledge of physics, will ever think that the
     earth, heavy and unwieldy from its own weight and mass,
     staggers up and down around its own center and that of the
     sun; for at the slightest jar of the earth, we would see
     cities and fortresses, towns and mountains thrown down. A
     certain courtier Aulicus, when some astrologer in court was
     upholding Copernicus's idea before Duke Albert of Prussia,
     turning to the servant who was pouring the Falernian, said:
     "Take care that the flagon is not spilled."[201] For if the
     earth were to be moved, neither an arrow shot straight up,
     nor a stone dropped from the top of a tower would fall
     perpendicularly, but either ahead or behind. With this
     argument Ptolemy refuted Eudoxus. But if we search into the
     secrets of the Hebrews and penetrate their sacred
     sanctuaries, all these arguments can easily be confirmed;
     for when the Lord of Wisdom said the sun swept in its swift
     course from the eastern shore to the west, he added this:
     Terra vero stat æternam. Lastly, all things on finding
     places suitable to their natures, remain there, as Aristotle
     writes. Since therefore the earth has been alloted a place
     fitting its nature, it cannot be whirled around by other
     motion than its own.

     "THE.: I certainly agree to all the rest with you, but
     Aristotle's law I think involves a paralogism, for by this
     argument the heavens should be immobile since they are in a
     place fitting their nature.

     "MYS.: You argue subtly indeed, but in truth this argument
     does not seem necessary to me; for what Aristotle admitted,
     that, while forsooth all the parts of the firmament changed
     their places, the firmament as a whole did not, is
     exceedingly absurd. For either the whole heaven is at rest
     or the whole heaven is moved. The senses themselves disprove
     that it is at rest; therefore it is moved. For it does not
     follow that if a body is not moved away from its place, it
     is not moved in that place. Furthermore, since we have the
     most certain proof of the movement of trepidation, not only
     all the parts of the firmament, but also the eight spheres,
     must necessarily leave their places and move up and down,
     forward and back."[202]

[Footnote 198: Montaigne: _Essays_: Bk. II, c. 2: _An Apologie of
Raymonde Sebonde_ (II, 352).]

[Footnote 199: This book, published at Frankfort in 1597, was
translated into French by M. Fougerolles and printed in Lyons that
same year. It has become extremely rare since its "atheistic
atmosphere" (Peignot: _Dictionnaire_) caused the Roman Church to place
it upon the Index by decree of 1628, where it has remained to this
day.]

[Footnote 200: Cromer in History of Poland.]

[Footnote 201: Cromer in History of Poland.[A]]

[Footnote A: I could not find this reference in either of Martin
Kromer's books; _De Origine et Rebus Gestis Polonorum, ad 1511_, or in
his _Res Publicæ sive Status Regni Poloniæ_.]

[Footnote 202: Bodin: _Univ. Nat. Theatrum_: Bk. V, sec. 2 (end).]

This was the opinion of a profound thinker and experienced man of
affairs living when Tycho Brahe and Bruno were still alive and Kepler
and Galileo were beginning their astronomical investigations. But he
was not alone in his views, as we shall see; for at the close of the
sixteenth century, the Copernican doctrine had few avowed supporters.
The Roman Church was still indifferent; the Protestants clinging to
the literal interpretation of the Bible were openly antagonistic; the
professors as a whole were too Aristotelian to accept or pay much
attention to this novelty, except Kepler and his teacher Mæstlin
(though the latter refused to uphold it in his textbook);[203] while
astronomers and mathematicians who realized the insuperable objections
to the Ptolemaic conception, welcomed the Tychonic system as a _via
media_; and the common folk, if they heard of it at all, must have
ridiculed it because it was so plainly opposed to what they saw in the
heavens every day. In the same way their intellectual superiors
exclaimed at the "delirium" of those supporting such a notion.[204]
One thinker, however was to see far more in the doctrine than
Copernicus himself had conceived, and by Giordano Bruno the Roman
Church was to be aroused.

[Footnote 203: Delambre: _Astr. Mod._: I, 663.]

[Footnote 204: Justus-Lipsius: _Physiologiæ Stoicorum_: Bk. II,
dissert. 19 (Dedication 1604, Louvain), (IV, 947); "Vides deliria,
quomodo aliter appellent?"]



CHAPTER II.

BRUNO AND GALILEO.


When the Roman Catholic authorities awoke to the dangers of the new
teaching, they struck with force. The first to suffer was the famous
monk-philosopher, Giordano Bruno, whose trial by the Holy Office was
premonitory of trouble to come for Galileo.[205]

[Footnote 205: Berti: 285.]

After an elementary education at Naples near his birth-place,
Nola,[206] Filippo Bruno[207] entered the Dominican monastery in 1562
or 1563 when about fourteen years old, assuming the name Giordano at
that time. Before 1572, when he entered the priesthood, he had fully
accepted the Copernican theory which later became the basis of all his
philosophical thought. Bruno soon showed he was not made for the
monastic life. Various processes were started against him, and fleeing
to Rome he abandoned his monk's garments and entered upon the sixteen
years of wandering over Europe, a peripatetic teacher of the
philosophy of an infinite universe as deduced from the Copernican
doctrine and thus in a way its herald.[208] He reached Geneva in 1579
(where he did not accept Calvinism as was formerly thought),[209] but
decided before many months had passed that it was wise to depart
elsewhere because of the unpleasant position in which he found himself
there. He had been brought before the Council for printing invectives
against one of the professors, pointing out some twenty of his
errors. The Council sent him to the Consistory, the governing body of
the church, where a formal sentence of excommunication was passed
against him. When he apologized it was withdrawn. Probably a certain
stigma remained, and he left Geneva soon thereafter with a warm
dislike for Calvinism. After lecturing at the University of Toulouse
he appeared in Paris in 1581, where he held an extraordinary
readership. Two years later he was in England, for he lectured at
Oxford during the spring months and defended the Copernican theory
before the Polish prince Alasco during the latter's visit there in
June.[210]

[Footnote 206: McIntyre: 3-15.]

[Footnote 207: Four lives of Bruno have been written within the last
seventy-five years. The first is _Jordano Bruno_ by Christian
Bartholmèss (2 vol., Paris 1846). The next, _Vita di Giordano Bruno da
Nola_ by Domenico Berti (1868, Turin), quotes in full the official
documents of his trial. Frith's _Life of Giordano Bruno_ (London,
1887), has been rendered out of date by J.L. McIntyre's _Giordano
Bruno_ (London, 1903), which includes a critical bibliography. In
addition, W.R. Thayer's _Throne Makers_ (New York, 1899), gives
translations of Bruno's confessions to the Venetian Inquisition.
Bruno's Latin works (_Opera Latina Conscripta_), have been republished
by Fiorentino (3 vol., Naples, 1879), and the _Opere Italiane_ by
Gentile (3 vol., Naples, 1907).]

[Footnote 208: Bartholmèss: I, 134.]

[Footnote 209: Libri: IV, 144.]

[Footnote 210: McIntyre: 16-40.]

To Bruno belongs the glory of the first public proclamation in England
of the new doctrine,[211] though only Gilbert[212] and possibly Wright
seem to have accepted it at the time. Upon Bruno's return to London,
he entered the home of the French ambassador as a kind of secretary,
and there spent the happiest years of his life till the ambassador's
recall in October, 1585. It was during this period that he wrote some
of his most famous books. In _La Cena de la Ceneri_ he defended the
Copernican theory, incidentally criticising the Oxford dons most
severely,[213] for which he apologized in _De la Causa, Principio et
Uno_. He developed his philosophy of an infinite universe in _De
l'Infinito e Mondi_, and in the _Spaccio de la Bestia Trionphante_
"attacked all religions of mere credulity as opposed to religions of
truth and deeds."[214] This last book was at once thought to be a
biting attack upon the Roman Church and later became one of the
grounds of the Inquisition's charges against him. During this time in
London also, he came to know Sir Philip Sydney intimately, and Fulk
Greville as well as others of that brilliant period. He may have known
Bacon;[215] but it is highly improbable that he and Shakespeare
met,[216] or that Shakespeare ever was influenced by the other's
philosophy.[217]

[Footnote 211: Bartholmèss: I, 134.]

[Footnote 212: Gilbert: _De Magnete_ (London, 1600).]

[Footnote 213: Berti: 369, Doc. XIII.]

[Footnote 214: McIntyre: 16-40.]

[Footnote 215: Bartholmèss: I, 134.]

[Footnote 216: Beyersdorf: _Giordano Bruno und Shakespear_, 8-36.]

[Footnote 217: Such passages as _Troilus and Cressida_: Act I, sc. 3;
_King John_, Act III, sc. 1; and _Merry Wives_, Act III, sc. 2,
indicate that Shakespeare accepted fully the Ptolemaic conception of a
central, immovable earth. See also Beyersdorf: _op. cit._]

Leaving Paris soon after his return thither, Bruno wandered into
southern Germany. At Marburg he was not permitted to teach, but at
Wittenberg the Lutherans cordially welcomed him into the university.
After a stay of a year and a half, he moved on to Prague for a few
months, then to Helmstadt, Frankfort and Zurich, and back to Frankfort
again where, in 1591, he received an invitation from a young Venetian
patrician, Moecenigo, to come to Venice as his tutor. He re-entered
Italy, therefore, in August, much to the amazement of his
contemporaries. It is probable that Moecenigo was acting for the
Inquisition.[218] At any rate, he soon denounced Bruno to that body
and in May, 1592, surrendered him to it.[219]

[Footnote 218: McIntyre: 68.]

[Footnote 219: Ibid: 47-72.]

In his trial before the Venetian Inquisition,[220] Bruno told the
story of his life and stated his beliefs in answer to the charges
against him, based mainly on travesties of his opinions. In this
statement as well as in _La Cena de le Ceneri_, and in _De Immenso et
Innumerabilis_,[221] Bruno shows how completely he had not merely
accepted the Copernican doctrine, but had expanded it far beyond its
author's conception. The universe according to Copernicus, though
vastly greater than that conceived by Aristotle and Ptolemy, was still
finite because enclosed within the sphere of the fixed stars. Bruno
declared that not only was the earth only a lesser planet, but "this
world itself was merely one of an infinite number of particular worlds
similar to this, and that all the planets and other stars are infinite
worlds without number composing an infinite universe, so that there is
a double infinitude, that of the greatness of the universe, and that
of the multitude of worlds."[222] How important this would be to the
Church authorities may be realized by recalling the patristic doctrine
that the universe was created for man and that his home is its center.
Of course their cherished belief must be defended from such an attack,
and naturally enough, the Copernican doctrine as the starting point of
Bruno's theory of an infinite universe was thus brought into
question;[223] for, as M. Berti has said,[224] Bruno's doctrine was
equally an astro-theology or a theological astronomy.

[Footnote 220: See official documents in Berti: 327-395.]

[Footnote 221: Bruno: _De Immenso et Innumerabilis_: Lib. III, cap. 9
(vol. 1, pt. 1, 380-386).]

[Footnote 222: Thayer: 268.]

[Footnote 223: Berti: 285.]

[Footnote 224: Ibid: 282.]

The Roman Inquisition was not content to let the Venetian court deal
with this arch heretic, but wrote in September, 1592, demanding his
extradition. The Venetian body referred its consent to the state for
ratification which the Doge and Council refused to grant. Finally,
when the Papal Nuncio had represented that Bruno was not a Venetian
but a Neapolitan, and that cases against him were still outstanding
both in Naples and in Rome, the state consented, and in February of
the next year, Bruno entered Rome, a prisoner of the Inquisition.
Nothing further is known about him until the Congregations took up his
case on February 4th, 1599. Perhaps Pope Clement had hoped to win back
to the true faith this prince of heretics.[225] However Bruno stood
firm, and early in the following year he was degraded, sentenced and
handed over to the secular authorities, who burned him at the stake in
the Campo di Fiori, February 17, 1600.[226] All his books were put on
the Index by decree of February 8, 1600, (where they remain to this
day), and as a consequence they became extremely rare. It is well to
remember Bruno's fate, when considering Galileo's case, for
Galileo[227] was at that time professor of mathematics in the
university of Padua and fully cognizant of the event.

[Footnote 225: Fahie: 82-89.]

[Footnote 226: Thayer: 299.]

[Footnote 227: The publication of A. Favaro's _Galileo e
l'Inquisizione: Documenti del Processo Galileiano ... per la prima
volta integralmente pubblicati_, (Firenze, 1907), together with that
of the National Edition (in 20 vols.) of Galileo's works, edited by
Favaro (Firenze, completed 1909), renders somewhat obsolete all
earlier lives of Galileo. The more valuable, however, of these books
are: Martin's _Galilée_ (Paris, 1868), a scholarly Catholic study
containing valuable bibliographical notes; Anon. (Mrs. Olney):
_Private Life of Galileo_, based largely on his correspondence with
his daughter from which many extracts are given; and von Gebler's
_Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia_ (trans. by Mrs. Sturge, London,
1879), which includes in the appendix the various decrees in the
original. Fahie's _Life of Galileo_ (London, 1903), is based on
Favaro's researches and is reliable. The documents of the trial have
been published in part by de l'Epinois, von Gebler and Berti, but
Favaro's is the complete and authoritative edition.]

Galileo's father, though himself a skilled mathematician, had
intended that his son (born at Pisa, February 15, 1564), should be a
cloth-dealer, but at length permitted him to study medicine instead at
the university of Pisa, after an elementary education at the monastery
of Vallombrosa near Florence. At the Tuscan Court in Pisa, Galileo
received his first lesson in mathematics, which thereupon became his
absorbing interest. After nearly four years he withdrew from the
university to Florence and devoted himself to that science and to
physics. His services as a professor at this time were refused by five
of the Italian universities; finally, in 1589, he obtained the
appointment to the chair of physics at Pisa. He became so unpopular
there, however, through his attacks on the Aristotelian physics of the
day, that after three years he resigned and accepted a similar
position at Padua.[228] He remained here nearly eighteen years till
his longing for leisure in which to pursue his researches, and the
patronage of his good friend, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, brought him a
professorship at the university of Pisa again, this time without
obligation of residence nor of lecturing. He took up his residence in
Florence in 1610; and later (1626), purchased a villa at Arcetri
outside the city, in order to be near the convent where his favorite
daughter "Suor Maria Celeste" was a religious.[229]

[Footnote 228: Fahie: 20-40.]

[Footnote 229: Ibid: 121.]

During the greater part of his lectureship at Padua, Galileo taught
according to the Ptolemaic cosmogony out of compliance with popular
feeling, though himself a Copernican. In a letter to Kepler (August 4,
1597)[230] he speaks of his entire acceptance of the new system for
some years; but not until after the appearance of the New Star in the
heavens in 1604 and 1605, and the controversy that its appearance
aroused over the Aristotelian notion of the perfect and unchangeable
heavens, did he publicly repudiate the old scheme and teach the new.
The only information we have as to how he came to adopt the Copernican
scheme for himself is the account given by "_Sagredo_," Galileo's
spokesman in the famous _Dialogue on the Two Principal Systems_
(1632):

     "Being very young and having scarcely finished my course of
     Philosophy which I left off, as being set upon other
     employments, there chanced to come into these parts a
     certain foreigner of Rostock, whose name as I remember, was
     Christianus Vurstitius, a follower of Copernicus, who in an
     Academy made two or three lectures upon this point, to whom
     many flock't as auditors; but I thinking they went more for
     the novelty of the subject than otherwise, did not go to
     hear him; for I had concluded with myself that that opinion
     could be no other than a solemn madnesse. And questioning
     some of those who had been there, I perceived they all made
     a jest thereof, except one, who told me that the business
     was not altogether to be laugh't at, and because this man
     was reputed by me to be very intelligent and wary, I
     repented that I was not there, and began from that time
     forward as oft as I met with anyone of the Copernican
     persuasion, to demand of them, if they had always been of
     the same judgment; and of as many as I examined, I found not
     so much as one, who told me not that he had been a long time
     of the contrary opinion, but to have changed it for this, as
     convinced by the reasons proving the same: and afterwards
     questioning them, one by one, to see whether they were well
     possest of the reasons of the other side, I found them all
     to be very ready and perfect in them; so that I could not
     truly say that they had took up this opinion out of
     ignorance, vanity, or to show the acuteness of their wits.
     On the contrary, of as many of the Peripateticks and
     Ptolemeans as I have asked (and out of curiosity I have
     talked with many) what pains they had taken in the Book of
     Copernicus, I found very few that had so much as
     superficially perused it: but of those whom, I thought, had
     understood the same, not one; and moreover, I have enquired
     amongst the followers of the Peripatetick Doctrine, if ever
     any of them had held the contrary opinion, and likewise
     found that none had. Whereupon considering that there was no
     man who followed the opinion of Copernicus that had not been
     first on the contrary side, and that was not very well
     acquainted with the reasons of Aristotle and Ptolemy; and on
     the contrary, that there is not one of the followers of
     Ptolemy that had ever been of the judgment of Copernicus,
     and that had left that to embrace this of Aristotle,
     considering, I say, these things, I began to think that one,
     who leaveth an opinion imbued with his milk, and followed by
     very many, to take up another owned by very few, and denied
     by all the Schools, and that really seems a very great
     Parodox, must needs have been moved, not to say forced, by
     more powerful reasons. For this cause I am become very
     curious to dive, as they say, into the bottom of this
     business ... and bring myself to a certainty in this
     subject."[231]

[Footnote 230: Galileo: _Opere_, X, 68.]

[Footnote 231: 'The Second Day' in Salusbury: _Math. Coll._ I,
110-111.]

Galileo's brilliant work in mechanics and his great popularity--for
his lectures were thronged--combined with his skilled and witty
attacks upon the accepted scientific ideas of the age, embittered and
antagonized many who were both conservative and jealous.[232] The
Jesuits particularly resented his influence and power, for they
claimed the leadership in the educational world and were jealous of
intruders. Furthermore, they were bound by the decree of the fiftieth
General Congregation of their society in 1593 to defend Aristotle, a
decree strictly enforced.[233] While a few of the Jesuits were
friendly disposed to Galileo at first, the controversies in which he
and they became involved and their bitter attacks upon him made him
feel by 1633 that they were among his chief enemies.[234]

[Footnote 232: Fahie: 265.]

[Footnote 233: Conway: 46-47.]

[Footnote 234: Conway: 46-47.]

Early in 1609, Galileo heard a rumor of a spy-glass having been made
in Flanders, and proceeded to work one out for himself according to
the laws of perspective. The fifth telescope that he made magnified
thirty diameters, and it was with such instruments of his own
manufacture that he made in the next three years his famous
discoveries: Jupiter's four satellites (which he named the Medicean
Planets), Saturn's "tripartite" character (the rings were not
recognized as such for several decades thereafter), the stars of the
Milky Way, the crescent form of Venus, the mountains of the moon, many
more fixed stars, and the spots on the sun. Popular interest waxed
with each new discovery and from all sides came requests for
telescopes; yet there were those who absolutely refused even to look
through a telescope lest they be compelled to admit Aristotle was
mistaken, and others claimed that Jupiter's moons were merely defects
in the instrument. The formal announcement of the first of these
discoveries was made in the _Sidereus Nuncius_ (1610), a book that
aroused no little opposition. Kepler, however, had it reprinted at
once in Prague with a long appreciative preface of his own.[235]

[Footnote 235: Fahie: 77-126.]

The following March Galileo went to Rome to show his discoveries and
was received with the utmost distinction by princes and church
dignitaries alike. A commission of four scientific members of the
Roman College had previously examined his claims at Cardinal
Bellarmin's suggestion, and had admitted their truth. Now Pope Paul V
gave him long audiences; the Academia dei Lincei elected him a member,
and everywhere he was acclaimed. Nevertheless his name appears on the
secret books of the Holy Office as early as May of that year
(1611).[236] Already he was a suspect.

[Footnote 236: Doc. in Favaro: 13.]

His _Delle Macchie Solari_ (1611) brought on a sharp contest over the
question of priority of discovery between him and the Jesuit father,
Christopher Scheiner of Ingolstadt, from which Galileo emerged
victorious and more disliked than before by that order. Opposition was
becoming active; Father Castelli, for instance, the professor of
mathematics at Pisa and Galileo's intimate friend, was forbidden to
discuss in his lectures the double motion of the earth or even to hint
at its probability. This same father wrote to his friend early in
December, 1613, to tell him of a dinner-table conversation on this
matter at the Tuscan Court, then wintering at Pisa. Castelli told how
the Dowager Grand Duchess Cristina had had her religious scruples
aroused by a remark that the earth's motion must be wrong because it
contradicted the Scriptures, a statement that he had tried to
refute.[237] Galileo wrote in reply (December 21, 1613), the
letter[238] that was to cause him endless trouble, in which he marked
out the boundaries between science and religion and declared it a
mistake to take the literal interpretation of passages in Scripture
that were obviously written according to the understanding of the
common people. He pointed out in addition how futile the miracle of
the sun's standing still was as an argument against the Copernican
doctrine for, even according to the Ptolemaic system, not the sun but
the _primum mobile_ must be stayed for the day to be lengthened.

[Footnote 237: Fahie: 149.]

[Footnote 238: Galileo: _Opere_, V, 281-288.]

Father Castelli allowed others to read and to copy this supposedly
private letter; copies went from hand to hand in Florence and
discussion ran high. On the fourth Sunday in December, 1614, Father
Caccini of the Dominicans preached a sermon in the church of S.M.
Novella on Joshua's miracle, in which he sharply denounced the
Copernican doctrine taught by Galileo as heretical, so he
believed.[239] The Copernicans found a Neapolitan Jesuit who replied
to Caccini the following Sunday from the pulpit of the Duomo.[240]

[Footnote 239: Doc. in Favaro: 48-49.]

[Footnote 240: Doc. in Favaro: 49.]

In February (1615), came the formal denunciation of Galileo to the
Holy Office at Rome by Father Lorini, a Dominican associate of
Caccini's at the Convent San Marco. The father sent with his "friendly
warning," a copy of the letter to Castelli charging that it contained
"many propositions which were either suspect or temerarious," and, he
added, "though the _Galileisti_ were good Christians they were rather
stubborn and obstinate in their opinions."[241] The machinery of the
Inquisition began secretly to turn. The authorities failed to get the
original of the letter, for Castelli had returned that to Galileo at
the latter's request.[242] Pope Paul sent word to Father Caccini to
appear before the Holy Office in Rome to depose on this matter of
Galileo's errors "pro exoneratione suæ conscientiæ."[243] This he did
"freely" in March and was of course sworn to secrecy. He named a
certain nobleman, a Copernican, as the source of his information about
Galileo, for he did not know the latter even by sight. This nobleman
was by order of the Pope examined in November after some delay by the
Inquisitor at Florence. His testimony was to the effect that he
considered Galileo the best of Catholics.[244]

[Footnote 241: Ibid: 38: "amorevole avviso."]

[Footnote 242: Ibid: 46, 47, 51.]

[Footnote 243: Ibid: 47.]

[Footnote 244: Ibid: 49.]

Meanwhile the Consultors of the Holy Office had examined Lorini's copy
of the letter and reported the finding of only three objectionable
places all of which, they stated, could be amended by changing certain
doubtful phrases; otherwise it did not deviate from the true faith. It
is interesting to note that the copy they had differed in many minor
respects from the original letter, and in one place heightened a
passage with which the Examiners found fault as imputing falsehood to
the Scriptures although they are infallible.[245] Galileo's own
statement ran that there were many passages in the Scriptures which
according to the literal meaning of the words, "hanno aspetto diverso
dal vero...." The copy read, "molte propositioni falso quanto al nudo
senso delle parole."

[Footnote 245: Ibid: 43-45, see original in Galileo: _Opere_, V,
281-285.]

Rumors of trouble reached Galileo and, urged on by his friends, in
1615 he wrote a long formal elaboration of the earlier letter,
addressing this one to the Dowager Grand Duchess, but he had only
added fuel to the fire. At the end of the year he voluntarily went to
Rome, regardless of any possible danger to himself, to see if he could
not prevent a condemnation of the doctrine.[246] It came as a decided
surprise to him to receive an order to appear before Cardinal
Bellarmin on February 26, 1616,[2] and there to learn that the Holy
Office had already condemned it two days before. He was told that the
Holy Office had declared: first, "that the proposition that the sun is
the center of the universe and is immobile is foolish and absurd in
philosophy and formally heretical since it contradicts the express
words of the Scriptures in many places, according to the meaning of
the words and the common interpretation and sense of the Fathers and
the doctors of theology; and, secondly, that the proposition that the
earth is not the center of the universe nor immobile receives the same
censure in philosophy and in regard to its theological truth, it at
least is erroneous in Faith."[247]

[Footnote 246: Doc. in Favaro: 78.]

[Footnote 247: Ibid: 61.]

Exactly what was said at that meeting between the two men became the
crucial point in Galileo's trial sixteen years later, hence a somewhat
detailed study is important. At the meeting of the Congregation on
February 25th, the Pope ordered Cardinal Bellarmin to summon Galileo
and, in the presence of a notary and witnesses lest he should prove
recusant, warn him to abandon the condemned opinion and in every way
to abstain from teaching, defending or discussing it; if he did not
acquiesce, he was to be imprisoned.[248] The Secret Archives of the
Vatican contain a minute reporting this interview (dated February 26,
1616), in which the Cardinal is said to have ordered Galileo to
relinquish this condemned proposition, "nec eam de cætero, quovis
modo, teneat, doceat aut defendat, verbo aut scriptis," and that
Galileo promised to obey.[249] Rumors evidently were rife in Rome at
the time as to what had happened at this secret interview, for Galileo
wrote to the Cardinal in May asking for a statement of what actually
had occurred so that he might silence his enemies. The Cardinal
replied:

     "We, Robert Cardinal Bellarmin, having heard that Signor
     Galileo was calumniated and charged with having abjured in
     our hand, and also of being punished by salutary penance,
     and being requested to give the truth, state that the
     aforesaid Signor Galileo has not abjured in our hand nor in
     the hand of any other person in Rome, still less in any
     other place, so far as we know, any of his opinions and
     teachings, nor has he received salutary penance nor any
     other kind; but only was he informed of the declaration made
     by his Holiness and published by the Sacred Congregation of
     the Index, in which it is stated that the doctrine
     attributed to Copernicus,--that the earth moves around the
     sun and that the sun stands in the center of the world
     without moving from the east to the west, is contrary to the
     Holy Scriptures and therefore cannot be defended nor held
     (non si possa difendere né tenere). And in witness of this
     we have written and signed these presents with our own hand,
     this 26th day of May, 1616.

     ROBERT CARDINAL BELLARMIN."[250]

[Footnote 248: Ibid: 61.]

[Footnote 249: Doc. in Favaro: 61-62.]

[Footnote 250: Ibid: 88.]

Galileo's defense sixteen years later[251] was that he had obeyed the
order as given him by the Cardinal and that he had not "defended nor
held" the doctrine in his _Dialoghi_ but had refuted it. The
Congregation answered that he had been ordered not only not to hold
nor defend, but also not to treat in any way (quovis modo) this
condemned subject. When Galileo disclaimed all recollection of that
phrase and produced the Cardinal's statement in support of his
position, he was told that this document, far from lightening his
guilt, greatly aggravated it since he had dared to deal with a subject
that he had been informed was contrary to the Holy Scriptures.[252]

[Footnote 251: Ibid: 80-86.]

[Footnote 252: Ibid: 145.]

To return to 1616. On the third of March the Cardinal reported to the
Congregation in the presence of the Pope that he had warned Galileo
and that Galileo had acquiesced.[253] The Congregation then reported
its decree suspending "until corrected" "Nicolai Copernici De
Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, et Didaci Astunica in Job," and
prohibiting "Epistola Fratris Pauli Antonii Foscarini Carmelitæ,"
together with all other books dealing with this condemned and
prohibited doctrine. The Pope ordered this decree to be published by
the Master of the Sacred Palace, which was done two days later.[254]
But this prohibition could not have been widely known for two or three
years; the next year Mulier published his edition of the _De
Revolutionibus_ at Amsterdam without a word of reference to it; in
1618 Thomas Feyens, professor at Louvain, heard vague rumors of the
condemnation and wondered if it could be true;[255] and the following
spring Fromundus, also at Louvain and later a noted antagonist of the
new doctrine, wrote to Feyens asking:

     "What did I hear lately from you about the Copernicans? That
     they have been condemned a year or two ago by our Holy
     Father, Pope Paul V? Until now I have known nothing about
     it; no more have this crowd of German and Italian scholars,
     very learned and, as I think, very Catholic, who admit with
     Copernicus that the earth is turned. Is it possible that
     after a lapse of time as considerable as this, we have
     nothing more than a rumor of such an event? I find it hard
     to believe, since nothing more definite has come from Italy.
     Definitions of this sort ought above all to be published in
     the universities where the learned men are to whom the
     danger of such an opinion is very great."[256]

[Footnote 253: Ibid: 16.]

[Footnote 254: Doc. in Favaro: 16.]

[Footnote 255: Monchamp: 46.]

[Footnote 256: Fromundus: _De Cometa Anni_ 1618: chap. VII, p. 68.
(From the private library of Dr. E.E. Slosson. A rare book which Lecky
could not find. _History of Rationalism in Europe_, I, 280, note.)]

Galileo meanwhile had retired to Florence and devoted himself to
mechanical science, (of which his work is the foundation) though
constantly harassed by much ill health and many family perplexities.
At the advice of his friends, he allowed the attacks on the Copernican
doctrine to go unanswered,[257] till with the accession to the
papacy in 1623 of Cardinal Barberini, as Urban VIII, a warm admirer
and supporter of his, he thought relief was in sight. He was further
cheered by a conversation Cardinal di Zollern reported having had with
Pope Urban, in which his Holiness had reminded the Cardinal how he
(the Pope) had defended Copernicus in the time of Paul V, and asserted
that out of just respect owed to the memory of Copernicus, if he had
been pope then, he would not have permitted his opinion to be declared
heretical.[258] Feeling that he now had friends in power, Galileo
began his great work, _Dialogo sopra i Due Sistemi Massimi del Mondo_,
a dialogue in four "days" in which three interlocutors discuss the
arguments for and against the Copernican theory, though coming to no
definite conclusion. Sagredo was an avowed Copernican and Galileo's
spokesman, Salviati was openminded, and the peripatetic was Simplicio,
appropriately named for the famous Sicilian sixth century commentator
on Aristotle.[259]

[Footnote 257: In 1620 the Congregation issued the changes it required
to have made in the _De Revolutionibus_. They are nine in all, and
consist mainly in changing assertion of the earth's movement to
hypothetical statement and in striking out a reference to the earth as
a planet. Doc. in Favaro: 140-141. See illustration, p. 61.]

[Footnote 258: Doc. in Favaro: 149.]

[Footnote 259: Galileo: _Dialogo_: To the Reader.]

[Illustration: A "CORRECTED" PAGE FROM THE _De Revolutionibus_.

A photographic facsimile (reduced) of a page from Mulier's edition
(1617) of the _De Revolutionibus_ as "corrected" according to the
_Monitum_ of the Congregations in 1620. The first writer underlined
the passages to be deleted or altered with marginal notes indicating
the changes ordered; the second writer scratched out these passages,
and wrote out in full the changes the other had given in abbreviated
form. The _Notæ_ are Mulier's own, and so were not affected by the
order. The effect of the page is therefore somewhat contradictory!]

In 1630 he brought the completed manuscript to Riccardi, Master of the
Sacred Palace, for permission to print it in Rome. After much reading
and re-reading of it both by Riccardi and his associate, Father
Visconti, permission was at length granted on condition that he insert
a preface and a conclusion practically dictated by Riccardi,
emphasizing its hypothetical character.[260] The Pope's own argument
was to be used: "God is all-powerful; all things are therefore
possible to Him; ergo, the tides cannot be adduced as a necessary
proof of the double motion of the earth without limiting God's
omnipotence--which is absurd."[261] Galileo returned to Florence in
June with the permission to print his book in Rome. Meanwhile the
plague broke out. He decided to print it in Florence instead, and on
writing to Riccardi for that permission, the latter asked for the book
to review it again. The times were too troublesome to risk sending it,
so a compromise was finally effected: Galileo was to send the preface
and conclusion to Rome and Riccardi agreed to instruct the Inquisitor
at Florence as to his requirements and to authorize him to license the
book.[262] The parts were not returned from Rome till July, 1631, and
the book did not appear till February of the following year, when it
was published at Florence with all these licenses, both the Roman and
the Florentine ones.

[Footnote 260: Doc. in Favaro: 70.]

[Footnote 261: Fahie: 230.]

[Footnote 262: Ibid: 240.]

The _Dialogo_ was in Italian so that all could read it. It begins with
an outline of the Aristotelian system, then points out the
resemblances between the earth and the planets. The second "day"
demonstrates the daily rotation of the earth on its axis. The next
claims that the necessary stellar parallax is too minute to be
observed and discusses the earth's annual rotation. The last seeks to
prove this rotation by the ebb and flow of the tides. It is a
brilliant book and received a great reception.

The authorities of the Inquisition at once examined it and denounced
Galileo (April 17, 1633) because in it he not merely taught and
defended the "condemned doctrine but was gravely suspected of firm
adherence to this opinion."[263] Other charges made against him were
that he had printed the Roman licenses without the permission of the
Congregation, that he had printed the preface in different type so
alienating it from the body of the book, and had put the required
conclusion into the mouth of a fool (Simplicio), that in many places
he had abandoned the hypothetical treatment and asserted the forbidden
doctrine, and that he had dealt indecisively with the matter though
the Congregation had specifically condemned the Copernican doctrine as
contrary to the express words of the Scripture.[264]

[Footnote 263: Doc. in Favaro: 88-89. [Transcriber's Note: Missing
footnote reference in original text has been added above in a logical
place.]]

[Footnote 264: Ibid: 66.]

The Pope became convinced that Galileo had ridiculed him in the
character of Simplicio to whom Galileo had naturally enough assigned
the Pope's syllogistic argument. On the 23rd of September, he ordered
the Inquisitor of Florence to notify Galileo (in the presence of
concealed notary and witnesses in case he were "recusant") to come to
Rome and appear before the Sacred Congregation before the end of the
next month;[265] the publication and sale of the _Dialogo_ meanwhile
being stopped at great financial loss to the printer.[266] Galileo
promised to obey; but he was nearly seventy years old and so much
broken in health that a long difficult journey in the approaching
winter seemed a great and unnecessary hardship, especially as he was
loath to believe that the Church authorities were really hostile to
him. Delays were granted him till the Pope in December finally ordered
him to be in Rome within a month.[267] The Florentine Inquisitor
replied that Galileo was in bed so sick that three doctors had
certified that he could not travel except at serious risk to his life.
This certificate declared that he suffered from an intermittent pulse,
from enfeebled vital faculties, from frequent dizziness, from
melancholia, weakness of the stomach, insomnia, shooting pains and
serious hernia.[268] The answer the Pope made to this was to order the
Inquisitor to send at Galileo's expense a commissary and a doctor out
to his villa to see if he were feigning illness; if he were, he was to
be sent bound and in chains to Rome at once; if [Transcriber's Note:
'he' missing] were really too ill to travel, then he was to be sent in
chains as soon as he was convalescent and could travel safely.[269]
Galileo did not delay after that any longer than he could help, and
set out for Rome in January in a litter supplied by the Tuscan Grand
Duke.[270] The journey was prolonged by quarantine, but upon his
arrival (February 13, 1633), he was welcomed into the palace of
Niccolini, the warm-hearted ambassador of the Grand Duke.

[Footnote 265: Ibid: 17-18.]

[Footnote 266: Galileo: _Opere_, XV, 26.]

[Footnote 267: Doc. in Favaro: 74.]

[Footnote 268: Ibid: 75.]

[Footnote 269: Ibid: 76.]

[Footnote 270: Ibid: 80-81.]

Four times was the old man summoned into the presence of the Holy
Office, though never when the Pope was presiding. In his first
examination held on the 12th of April, he told how he thought he had
obeyed the decree of 1616 as his _Dialogo_ did not defend the
Copernican doctrine but rather confuted it, and that in his desire to
do the right, he had personally submitted the book while in manuscript
to the censorship of the Master of the Sacred Palace, and had accepted
all the changes he and the Florentine Inquisitor had required. He had
not mentioned the affair of 1616 because he thought that order did not
apply to this book in which he proved the lack of validity and of
conclusiveness of the Copernican arguments.[271] With remarkable, in
fact unique, consideration, the Holy Office then assigned Galileo to a
suite of rooms within the prisons of the Holy Office, allowed him to
have his servant with him and to have his meals sent in by the
ambassador. On the 30th after his examination, they even assigned as
his prison, the Ambassador's palace, out of consideration for his age
and ill-health.

[Footnote 271: Ibid: 80-81.]

In his second appearance (April 30), Galileo declared he had been
thinking matters over after re-reading his book (which he had not read
for three years), and freely confessed that there were several
passages which would mislead a reader unaware of his real intentions,
into believing the worse arguments were the better, and he blamed
these slips upon his vain ambition and delight in his own skill in
debate.[272] He thereupon offered to write another "day" or two more
for the _Dialogo_ in which he would completely refute the two "strong"
Copernican arguments based on the sun's spots and on the tides.[273]
Ten days later, at his third appearance, he presented a written
statement of his defence in which he claimed that the phrase _vel
quovis modo docere_ was wholly new to him, and that he had obeyed the
order given him by Cardinal Bellarmin over the latter's own signature.
However he would make what amends he could and begged the Cardinals to
"consider his miserable bodily health and his incessant mental trouble
for the past ten months, the discomforts of a long hard journey at the
worst season, when 70 years old, together with the loss of the greater
part of the year, and that therefore such suffering might be adequate
punishment for his faults which they might condone to failing old age.
Also he commended to them his honor and reputation against the
calumnies of his ill-wishers who seek to detract from his good
name."[274] To such a plight was the great man brought! But the end
was not yet.

[Footnote 272: Doc. in Favaro: 83.]

[Footnote 273: Ibid: 84.]

[Footnote 274: Ibid: 85-87.]

Nearly a month later (June 16), by order of the Pope, Galileo was once
again interrogated, this time under threat of torture.[275] Once again
he declared the opinion of Ptolemy true and indubitable and said he
did not hold and had not held this doctrine of Copernicus after he had
been informed of the order to abandon it. "As for the rest," he added,
"I am in your hands, do with me as you please." "I am here to
obey."[276] Then by the order of the Pope, ensued Galileo's complete
abjuration on his knees in the presence of the full Congregation,
coupled with his promise to denounce other heretics (i.e.,
Copernicans).[277] In addition, because he was guilty of the heresy of
having held and believed a doctrine declared and defined as contrary
to the Scriptures, he was sentenced to "formal imprisonment" at the
will of the Congregation, and to repeat the seven penitential Psalms
every week for three years.[278]

[Footnote 275: Ibid: 101.]

[Footnote 276: Doc. in Favaro: 101.]

[Footnote 277: Doc. in Favaro: 146.]

[Footnote 278: Ibid: 145.]

At Galileo's earnest request, his sentence was commuted almost at
once, to imprisonment first in the archiepiscopal palace in Siena
(from June 30-December 1), then in his own villa at Arcetri, outside
Florence, though under strict orders not to receive visitors but to
live in solitude.[279] In the spring his increasing illness occasioned
another request for greater liberty in order to have the necessary
visits from the doctor; but on March 23, 1634, this was denied him
with a stern command from the Pope to refrain from further petitions
lest the Sacred Congregation be compelled to recall him to their
prisons in Rome.[280]

[Footnote 279: Ibid: 103, 129.]

[Footnote 280: Ibid: 134.]

The rule forbidding visitors seems not to have been rigidly enforced
all the time, for Milton visited him, "a prisoner of the Inquisition"
in 1638;[281] yet Father Castelli had to write to Rome for permission
to visit him to learn his newly invented method of finding longitude
at sea.[282] When in Florence on a very brief stay to see his doctor,
Galileo had to have the especial consent of the Inquisitor in order to
attend mass at Easter. He won approval from the Holy Congregation,
however, by refusing to receive some gifts and letters brought him by
some German merchants from the Low Countries.[283] He was then totally
blind, but he dragged out his existence until January 8, 1642 (the
year of Newton's birth), when he died. As the Pope objected to a
public funeral for a man sentenced by the Holy Office, he was buried
without even an epitaph.[284] The first inscription was made 31 years
later, and in 1737, his remains were removed to Santa Croce after the
Congregation had first been asked if such action would be
unobjectionable.[285]

[Footnote 281: Milton: _Areopagitica_: 35.]

[Footnote 282: Doc. in Favaro: 135.]

[Footnote 283: Ibid: 137.]

[Footnote 284: Fahie: 402.]

[Footnote 285: Doc. in Favaro: 138; and Fahie: 402.]

Pope Urban had no intention of concealing Galileo's abjuration and
sentence. Instead, he ordered copies of both to be sent to all
inquisitors and papal nuncios that they might notify all their clergy
and especially all the professors of mathematics and philosophy within
their districts, particularly those at Florence, Padua and Pisa.[286]
This was done during the summer and fall of 1633. From Wilna in
Poland, Cologne, Paris, Brussels, and Madrid, as well as from all
Italy, came the replies of the papal officials stating that the order
had been obeyed.[287] He evidently intended to leave no ground for a
remark like that of Fromundus about the earlier condemnation.

[Footnote 286: Doc. in Favaro: 101, 103.]

[Footnote 287: Ibid: 104-132.]

Galileo was thus brought so low that the famous remark, "Eppur si
muove," legend reports him to have made as he rose to his feet after
his abjuration, is incredible in itself, even if it had appeared in
history earlier than its first publication in 1761.[288] But his
discoveries and his fight in defence of the system did much both to
strengthen the doctrine itself and to win adherents to it. The
appearance of the moon as seen through a telescope destroyed the
Aristotelian notion of the perfection of heavenly bodies. Jupiter's
satellites gave proof by analogy of the solar system, though on a
smaller scale. The discovery of the phases of Venus refuted a hitherto
strong objection to the Copernican system; and the discovery of the
spots on the sun led to his later discovery of the sun's axial
rotation, another proof by analogy of the axial rotation of the earth.
Yet he swore the Ptolemaic conception was the true one.

[Footnote 288: Fahie: 325, note.]

The abjuration of Galileo makes a pitiful page in the history of
thought and has been a fruitful source of controversy[289] for nearly
three centuries. He was unquestionably a sincere and loyal Catholic,
and accordingly submitted to the punishment decreed by the
authorities. But in his abjuration he plainly perjured himself,
however fully he may be pardoned for it because of the extenuating
circumstances. Had he not submitted and been straitly imprisoned, if
not burned, the world would indeed have been the poorer by the loss
of his greatest work, the _Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze_, which he did
not publish until 1636.[290]

[Footnote 289: For full statement, see Martin: 133-207.]

[Footnote 290: Gebler: 263.]

Even more hotly debated has been the action of the Congregations in
condemning the Copernican doctrine, and sentencing Galileo as a
heretic for upholding it.[291] Though both Paul V and Urban VIII
spurred on these actions, neither signed either the decree or the
sentence, nor was the latter present at Galileo's examinations. Pope
Urban would prefer not so openly to have changed his position from
that of tolerance to his present one of active opposition caused
partly by his piqued self-respect[292] and partly by his belief that
this heresy was more dangerous even than that of Luther and
Calvin.[293] It is a much mooted question whether the infallibility of
the Church was involved or not. Though the issue at stake was not one
of faith, nor were the decrees issued by the Pope _ex cathedra_, but
by a group of Cardinals, a fallible body, yet they had the full
approbation of the Popes, and later were published in the Index
preceded by a papal bull excommunicating those who did not obey the
decrees contained therein.[294] It seems to be a matter of the letter
as opposed to the spirit of the law. De Morgan points out that
contemporary opinion as represented by Fromundus, an ardent opponent
of Galileo, did not consider the Decree of the Index or of the
Inquisition as a declaration of the Church,[295]--a position which
Galileo himself may have held, thus explaining his practical disregard
of the decree of 1616 after he was persuaded the authorities were more
favorably disposed to him. But M. Martin, himself a Catholic,
thinks[296] that theoretically the Congregations could punish Galileo
only for disobedience of the secret order,--but even so his book had
been examined and passed by the official censors.

[Footnote 291: See Gebler: 244-247; White: I, 159-167; also Martin.]

[Footnote 292: Martin: 136; and Salusbury: _Math. Coll._ "To the
reader."]

[Footnote 293: Galileo: _Opere_, XV, 25.]

[Footnote 294: Putnam: I, 310.]

[Footnote 295: De Morgan: I, 98.]

[Footnote 296: Martin: 140.]

When the Index was revised under Pope Benedict XIV in 1757, largely
through the influence of the Jesuit astronomer Boscovich, so it is
said,[297] the phrase prohibiting all books teaching the immobility
of the sun, and the mobility of the earth was omitted from the
decrees.[298] But in 1820, the Master of the Sacred Palace refused to
permit the publication in Rome of a textbook on astronomy by Canon
Settele, who thereupon appealed to the Congregations. They granted his
request in August, and two years later, issued a decree approved by
Pope Pius VII ordering the Master of the Sacred Palace in future "not
to refuse license for publication of books dealing with the mobility
of the earth and the immobility of the sun according to the common
opinion of modern astronomers" on that ground alone.[299] The next
edition of the _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ (1835) did not contain
the works of Copernicus, Galileo, Foscarini, à Stunica and Kepler
which had appeared in every edition up to that time since their
condemnation in 1616, (Kepler's in 1619).

[Footnote 297: _Cath. Ency._: "Boscovich."]

[Footnote 298: Doc. in Favaro: 159.]

[Footnote 299: Ibid: 30, 31.]



CHAPTER III.

THE OPPOSITION AND THEIR ARGUMENTS.


The Protestant leaders had rejected the Copernican doctrine as
contrary to the Scriptures. The Roman Congregations had now condemned
Galileo for upholding this doctrine after they had prohibited it for
the same reasons. These objections are perhaps best summarized in that
open letter Foscarini wrote to the general of his order, the
Carmelites, at Naples in January, 1615,[300]--the letter that was
absolutely prohibited by the Index in March, 1616. He gave these
arguments and answered them lest, as he said, "whilst otherwise the
opinion is favored with much probability, it be found in reality to be
extremely repugnant (as at first sight it seems) not only to physical
reasons and common principles received on all hands (which cannot do
so much harm), but also (which would be of far worse consequence) to
many authorities of Sacred Scripture. Upon which account many at first
looking into it explode it as the most fond paradox and monstrous
_capriccio_ that ever was heard of." "Yet many modern authors," he
says further on, "are induced to follow it, but with much hesitancy
and fear, in regard that it seemeth in their opinion so to contradict
the Holy Scriptures that it cannot possibly be reconciled to them."
Consequently Foscarini argued that the theory is either true or false;
if false, it ought not to be divulged; if true, the authority of the
Sacred Scriptures will not oppose it; neither does one truth
contradict another. So he turned to the Bible.

[Footnote 300: In Salusbury: _Math. Coll._: I, 471-503.]

He found that six groups of authorities seemed to oppose this
doctrine. (1) Those stating that the earth stands fast, as Eccles.
1:4. (2) Those stating that the sun moves and revolves; as Psalm XIX,
Isaiah XXXVIII, and the miracle in Josh. X:12-14. (3) Those speaking
of the heaven above and the earth beneath, as in Joel II. Also Christ
came _down_ from Heaven. (4) Those authorities who place Hell at the
center of the world, a "common opinion of divines," because it ought
to be in the lowest part of the world, that is, at the center of the
sphere. Then by the Copernican hypothesis, Hell must either be in the
sun; or, if in the earth, if the earth should move about the sun, then
Hell within the earth would be in Heaven, and nothing could be more
absurd. (5) Those authorities opposing Heaven to earth and earth to
Heaven, as in Gen. I, Mat. VI, etc. Since the two are always mutually
opposed to each other, and Heaven undoubtedly refers to the
circumference, earth must necessarily be at the center. (6) Those
authorities ("rather of fathers and divines than of the Sacred
Scriptures") who declare that after the Day of Judgment, the sun shall
stand immovable in the east and the moon in west.

Foscarini then lays down in answer six maxims, the first of which is
that things attributed to God must be expounded metaphorically
according to our manner of understanding and of common speech. The
other maxims are more metaphysical, as that everything in the
universe, whether corruptible or incorruptible, obeys a fixed law of
its nature; so, for example, Fortune is _always_ fickle. In concluding
his defense, he claims among other things, that the Copernician is a
more admirable hypothesis than the Ptolemaic, and that it is an easy
way into astronomy and philosophy. Then he adds that there may be an
analogy between the seven-branched candlestick of the Old Testament
and the seven planets around the sun, and possibly the arrangement of
the seeds in the "Indian Figg," in the pomegranate and in grapes is
all divine evidence of the solar system. With such an amusing
reversion to mediæval analogy his spirited letter ends.

Some or all of these scriptural arguments appear in most of the
attacks on the doctrine even before its condemnation by the Index in
1616 was widely known. Besides these objections, Aristotle's and
Ptolemy's statements were endlessly repeated with implicit faith in
their accuracy. Even Sir Francis Bacon (1567-1631) with all his
modernity of thought, failed in this instance to recognize the value
of the new idea and, despite his interest in Galileo's discoveries,
harked back to the time-honored objections. At first mild in his
opposition, he later became emphatically opposed to it. In the
_Advancement of Learning_[301] (1604), he speaks of it as a possible
explanation of the celestial phenomena according to astronomy but as
contrary to natural philosophy. Some fifteen years later in the _Novum
Organon_,[302] he asserts that the assumption of the earth's movement
cannot be allowed; for, as he says in his _Thema Coeli_,[303] at
that time he considered the opinion that the earth is stationary the
truer one. Finally, in his _De Augmentis Scientiarum_[304] (1622-1623)
he speaks of the old notions of the solidity of the heavens, etc., and
adds, "It is the absurdity of these opinions that has driven men to
the diurnal motion; which I am convinced is most false." He gives his
reasons in the _Descriptio Globi Intellectualis_[305] (ch. 5-6): "In
favor of the earth [as the center of the world] we have the evidence
of our sight, and an inveterate opinion; and most of all this, that as
dense bodies are contracted into a narrow compass, and rare bodies are
widely diffused (and the area of every circle is contracted to the
center) it seems to follow almost of necessity that the narrow space
about the middle of the world be set down as the proper and peculiar
place for dense bodies." The sun's claims to such a situation are
satisfied through having two satellites of its own, Venus and Mercury.
Copernicus's scheme is inconvenient; it overloads the earth with a
triple motion; it creates a difficulty by separating the sun from the
number of the planets with which it has much in common; and the
"introduction of so much immobility into nature ... and making the
moon revolve around the earth in an epicycle, and some other
assumptions of his are the speculations of one who cares not what
fictions he introduces into nature, provided his calculations answer."
The total absence of all reference to the Scriptures is the unique and
refreshing part of Bacon's thought.

[Footnote 301: Bk. II: sec. 8, §1.]

[Footnote 302: Bk. II, ch. 46.]

[Footnote 303: _Phil. Works_: 705.]

[Footnote 304: Bk. III.]

[Footnote 305: _Phil. Works_: 684-685.]

All the more common arguments against the diurnal rotation of the
earth are well stated in an interesting little letter (1619) by
Thomas Feyens, or Fienus, a professor at the school of medicine in the
University of Louvain.[306] Thus Catholic, Protestant, and unbeliever,
Feyens, Melancthon, Bacon and Bodin, all had recourse to the same
arguments to oppose this seemingly absurd doctrine.

[Footnote 306: Translated in Appendix C. For criticism, see Monchamp:
58-64.]

Froidmont, or Fromundus, the good friend and colleague of Feyens at
Louvain, was also much interested in these matters, so much so that
some thought he had formerly accepted the Copernican doctrine and
"only fled back into the camp of Aristotle and Ptolemy through terror
at the decree of the S. Congregation of Cardinals."[307] His indignant
denial of this imputation of turn-coat in 1634 is somewhat weakened by
reference to his _Saturnalitæ Coenæ_[308] (1615) in which he suggests
that, if the Copernican doctrine is admitted, then Hell may be in the
sun at the center of the universe rather than in the earth, in order
to be as far as possible from Paradise. He also refers in his _De
Cometa_ (1618) to the remark of Justus-Lipsius[309] that this paradox
was buried with Copernicus, saying "You are mistaken, O noble scholar:
it lives, and it is full of vigor even now among many,"[310] thus
apparently not seeing serious objection to it. M. Monchamp summarizes
Froidmont's point of view as against Aristotle and Ptolemy, half for
Copernicus and wholly for Tycho Brahe.

[Footnote 307: Fromundus: _Vesta_: Ad Lectorem.]

[Footnote 308: Monchamp: 41.]

[Footnote 309: Justus-Lipsius: IV, 947.]

[Footnote 310: Monchamp: 48.]

Froidmont's best known books are the two he wrote in answer to a
defense of the Copernican position first by Philip Lansberg, then by
his son. The _Ant-Aristarchus sive Orbis Terræ Immobilis, Liber unicus
in quo decretum S. Congregationis S.R.E. Cardinal. an. 1616, adversus
Pythagorico-Copernicanus editum, defenditur_, appeared in 1631 before
Galileo's condemnation. The Jesuit Cavalieri wrote to Galileo in May
about it thus:[311] "I have run it through, and verily it states the
Copernican theory and the arguments in its favor with so much skill
and efficacy that he seems to have understood it very well indeed. But
he refutes them with so little force that he seems rather to be of an
opinion contrary to that expressed in the title of his book. I have
given it to M. César. If you wish it, I will have it sent to you. The
arguments he brings against Copernicus are those you have so
masterfully stated and answered in your _Dialogo_." Nearly a year
later, Galileo wrote to Gassendi and Diodati that he had received this
book a month before and, although he had been unable to read much of
it on account of his eye trouble, it seemed to him that of all the
opponents of Copernicus whom he had seen, Fromundus was the most
sensible and efficient.[312] Again he wrote in January, 1633,
regretting that he had not seen it till six months after he had
published his dialogues, for he would have both praised it and
commented upon certain points. "As for Fromundus (who however shows
himself to be a man of great talent) I wish he had not fallen into
what seems to me a truly serious error, although a rather common one,
in order to refute the Copernican opinion, of beginning by poking
scorn and ridicule at those who consider it true, and then (what seems
to me still less becoming) of basing his attack chiefly on the
authority of the Scriptures, and finally of deducing from this that in
this respect it is an opinion little short of heretical. To argue in
this way is clearly not praiseworthy;" for as Galileo goes on to show,
if the Scriptures are the word of God, the heavens themselves are his
handiwork. Why is the one less noble than the other?[313]

[Footnote 311: Ibid: 94.]

[Footnote 312: Galileo: _Opere_: XV, 25.]

[Footnote 313: Ibid: XIV, 340-341.]

Froidmont replied in 1633 to Lansberg's reply with his second attack,
_Vesta, sive Ant-Aristarchi Vindex_, in which he laid even more
emphasis upon the theological and scriptural objections. Yet, in
ignorance of Galileo's condemnation, he considers the charge of heresy
too strong. "The partisans of this system do not after all disdain the
authority of the Scriptures, although they appear to interpret it in a
way rather in their favor." He also, and rightly, denies the existence
at that time of any conclusive proof.[314]

[Footnote 314: Monchamp: 107-108.]

In spite of Froidmont's position, the University of Louvain was not
cordial in its response to the papal nuncio's announcement in
September, 1633, of Galileo's abjuration and sentence, in marked
contrast to the reply sent by the neighboring university of Douay. The
latter body, in a letter signed by Matthæus Kellison (Sept. 7, 1633),
declared the condemned theory "should be discarded and hissed from the
schools; and that in the English College there in Douay, this paradox
never had been approved and never would be, but had always been
opposed and always would be."[315]

[Footnote 315: Doc. in Favaro: 120-121, 132, 133.]

This opposition in the universities in Belgium continued throughout
the century to be based not so much on scientific grounds as upon the
Bible. This may be seen in the manuscript reports of lectures in
physics and astronomy given at Liège in 1662, and at Louvain between
1650-1660, though one of these does not mention the decree of
1616.[316] The general congregation of the Society of Jesus in 1650
drew up a list of the propositions proscribed in their teaching,
though, according to M. Monchamp (himself a Catholic) not thereby
implying a denial of any probability they might have. The 35th
proposition ran: "Terra movetur motu diurno; planetæ, tanquam
viventia, moventur ab intrinseco. Firmamentum stat."[317] The Jesuit
astronomer Tacquet in his textbook (Antwerp, 1669) respected this
decision, acknowledging that no scientific reason kept him from
defending the theory, but solely his respect for the Christian
faith.[318]

[Footnote 316: Monchamp: 125, 143.]

[Footnote 317: Ibid: 148-149.]

[Footnote 318: Ibid: 152-153.]

One of the pupils of the Jesuits revolted however. Martin van Welden,
appointed professor of mathematics at Louvain in 1683, debated a
series of theses in January, 1691. The second read: "Indubitum est
systhema Copernici de planetarum motu circa sole; inter quos merito
terra censetur." His refusal to alter the wording except to change
_indubitum_ to _certum_ brought on a stormy controversy within the
faculty which eventually reached the Council of Brabant and the papal
nuncio at Brussels.[319] The professor finally submitted, though he
was not forbidden to teach the Copernician system, nor did the faculty
affirm its falsity, merely that it was contrary to the Roman decree.
The professor re-opened the matter with a similar thesis in July,
thereby arousing a second controversy that this time reached even the
Privy Council. Once more he submitted, but solely with an apology for
having caused a disagreement. His new theses in 1695 contained no
explicit mention of the Copernician system; at least he had learned
tact.[320]

[Footnote 319: Ibid: 182-234.]

[Footnote 320: Monchamp: 321.]

The absorption of the German states in the Thirty Years War may
account for the apparent absence there of Copernican discussion until
after the Peace of Westphalia. A certain Georgius Ludovicus Agricola
gave a syllogistic refutation of the doctrine as his disputation at
the university of Wittenberg in 1665. While he acknowledged its
ingenuity, he preferred to it "the noblest, truest, and divinely
inspired system" of Tycho Brahe. The four requirements of an
acceptable astronomical hypothesis according to this student are: (1)
That it suit all the observations of all the ages; (2) That as far as
possible, it be simple and clear; (3) That it be not contrary to the
principles of physics and optics; (4) That it be not contrary to the
Holy Scriptures. As the Copernican theory does not meet all these
tests, it is unsatisfactory. Incidentally, he considers it "ridiculous
to include the earth among the planets, because then we would be
living in Heaven, forsooth, since we would be in a star." He decides
finally "that the decree of March, 1616, condemning the Copernican
opinion was not unjust, nor was Galileo unfairly treated."[321]

[Footnote 321: Agricola: _Disputatio_.]

Two years later appeared a textbook at Nürnberg, by a Jesuit father,
based on the twelfth century Sacrobosco treatise and without a single
reference so far as I could find, to Copernicus![322] Another
publication of the same year was a good deal more up to date. This was
a kind of catechism in German by Johann-Henrich Voight[323] explaining
for the common people various scientific and mathematical problems in
a hundred questions and answers. He himself, a Royal Swedish
astronomer, obviously preferred the Tychonic system, but he left his
reader free to choose between that and the Copernican one, both of
which he carefully explained.[324] He made an interesting summary in
parallel columns of the arguments for and against the earth's motion
which it seems worth while to repeat as an instance of what the common
people were taught:


Reasons for asserting the earth is motionless:

1. David in Psalm 89: God has founded the earth and it shall not be
moved.

2. Joshua bade the sun stand still--which would not be notable were it
not already at rest.

3. The earth is the heaviest element, therefore it more probably is at
rest.

4. Everything loose on the earth seeks its rest on the earth, why
should not the whole earth itself be at rest?

5. We always see half of the heavens and the fixed stars also in a
great half circle, which we could not see if the earth moved, and
especially if it declined to the north and south....

6. A stone or an arrow shot straight up falls straight down. But if
the earth turned under it, from west to east, it must fall west of its
starting point.

7. In such revolutions houses and towers would fall in heaps.

8. High and low tide could not exist; the flying of birds and the
swimming of fish would be hindered and all would be in a state of
dizziness.


Reasons for the belief that the earth is moved:

1. The sun, the most excellent, the greatest and the midmost star,
rightly stands still like a king while all the other stars with the
earth swing round it.

2. That you believe that the heavens revolve is due to ocular
deception similar to that of a man on a ship leaving shore.

3. That Joshua bade the sun stand still Moses wrote for the people in
accordance with the popular misconception.

4. As the planets are each a special created thing in the heavens, so
the earth is a similar creation and similarly revolves.

5. The sun fitly rests at the center as the heart does in the middle
of the human body.

6. Since the earth has in itself its especial _centrum_, a stone or an
arrow falls freely out of the air again to its own _centrum_ as do all
earthly things.

7. The earth can move five miles in a second more readily than the sun
can go forty miles in the same time.

And similarly on both sides.[325]

[Footnote 322: Schotto: _Organum Mathematicum_ (1667).]

[Footnote 323: Voight: _Der Kunstgünstigen Einfalt Mathematischer
Raritäten Erstes Hundert_. (Hamburg, 1667).]

[Footnote 324: Voight: _op. cit._: 28.]

[Footnote 325: Ibid: 30-31.]

Another writer preferring the Tychonic scheme was Longomontanus, whose
_Astronomica Danica_ (Amsterdam, 1640) upheld this theory because it
"obviates the absurdities of the Copernican hypothesis and most aptly
corresponds to celestial appearances," and also because it is "midway
between that and the Ptolemaic one."[326] Even though he speaks of the
"apparent motion of the sun," he attributed diurnal motion to the
heavens, and believed the earth was at the center of the universe
because (1), from the account of the Creation, the heaven and the
earth were first created, and what could be more likely than that the
heavens should fill the space between the center (the earth) and the
circumference? (2) and because of the incredibly enormous interval
between the sphere of the fixed stars and the earth necessitated by
Copernican doctrine.[327]

[Footnote 326: Longomontanus: _Op. cit._: 162.]

[Footnote 327: Longomontanus: _Op. cit._: 158.]

The high-water mark of opposition after Galileo's condemnation was
reached in the _Almagestum Novum_ (Bologna, 1651) by Father Riccioli
of the Society of Jesus. It was the authoritative answer of that
order, the leaders of the Church in matters of education, to the
challenges of the literary world for a justification of the
condemnation of the Copernican doctrine and of Galileo for upholding
it. Father Riccioli had been professor of philosophy and of
mathematics for six years and of theology for ten when by order of his
superiors, he was released from his lectureship to prepare a book
containing all the material he could gather together on this great
controversy of the age.[328] He wrote it as he himself said, as "an
_apologia_ for the Sacred Congregation of the Cardinals who officially
pronounced these condemnations, not so much because I thought such
great height and eminence needed this at my hands but especially in
behalf of Catholics; also out of the love of truth to which every
non-Catholic, even, should be persuaded and from a certain notable
zeal and eagerness for the preservation of the Sacred Scriptures
intact and unimpaired; and lastly because of that reverence and
devotion which I owe from my particular position toward the Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church."[329]

[Footnote 328: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._: Præfatio, I, xviii.]

[Footnote 329: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._: II, 496.]

This monumental work, the most important literary production of the
Society in the 17th century,[330] is abundant witness to Riccioli's
remarkable erudition and industry. Nearly one-fifth of the total bulk
of the two huge volumes is devoted to a statement of the Copernican
controversy. This is prefaced by a brief account of his own theory of
the universe--the invention of which is another proof of the ability
of the man--for his scientific training prevented his acceptance of
the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory in the light of Galileo's
discoveries; his position as a Jesuit and a faithful son of the Church
precluded him from adopting the system condemned by its
representatives; and Tycho Brahe's scheme was not wholly to his
liking. Therefor he proposed an adaptation of the last-named, more in
accordance, as he thought, with the facts.[331] Where Tycho had all
the planets except the earth and the moon encircle the sun, and that
in turn, together with the moon and the sphere of the fixed stars,
sweep around the earth as the center of the universe, Riccioli made
only Mars, Mercury and Venus encircle the sun,--Mars with an orbit the
radius of which included the earth within its sweep, the other two
planets with orbital radii shorter than that of the sun, and so
excluding the earth. This he did, (1) because both Jupiter and Saturn
have their own kingdoms in the heavens, and Mars, Mercury and Venus
are but satellites of the sun; (2) because there are greater varieties
of eccentricity among these three than the other two; (3) because
Saturn and Jupiter are the greatest planets and with the sphere of the
fixed stars move more slowly; (4) Mars belongs with the sun because of
their related movements; and (5) because it is likely that one of the
planets would have much in common both with Saturn and Jupiter and
with Mercury and Venus also.[332]

[Footnote 330: _Cath. Ency._: "Riccioli," and Walsh: Catholic
Churchmen in Science: 200. (2nd series, 1909.)]

[Footnote 331: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._: II, 288-289; see frontispiece.]

[Footnote 332: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._: II, 288-289; see frontispiece.]

Then he takes up the attack upon the Copernican doctrine. M. Delambre
summarizes and comments upon 57 of his arguments against it,[333] and
Riccioli himself claims[334] to have stated "40 new arguments in
behalf of Copernicus and 77 against him." But these sound somewhat
familiar to the reader of anti-Copernican literature: as, for
instance, "which is more natural, straight or circular movement?" Or,
the Copernican argument that movement is easier if the object moved is
smaller involves a matter of Faith since it implies a question of
God's power; for to God all is alike, there is no hard nor easy.[335]
Although diurnal movement is useful to the earth alone and so,
according to the Copernicans, the earth should have the labor of it,
Riccioli argues that everything was created for man; let the stars
revolve around him. The sun may be nobler than the earth, but man is
nobler than the sun.[336] If the earth's movement were admitted,
Ptolemy's defense would be broken down through the elimination of the
epicycles of the superior planets: here, if ever, the Copernicans
appear to score, as Riccioli himself admits,[337] but he calls to his
aid Tycho Brahe and the Bible. "To invoke such aids is to avow his
defeat" is M. Delambre's comment at this point.[338] There are many
more arguments, of which the foregoing are but instances chosen more
or less at random; but no one of them is of especial weight or
novelty.

[Footnote 333: Delambre: _Astr. Mod._: I, 674-680.]

[Footnote 334: Riccioli: _Apologia_: 2.]

[Footnote 335: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._: II, 313, 315.]

[Footnote 336: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._: II, 330-351.]

[Footnote 337: Ibid: II, 339-340.]

[Footnote 338: Delambre: _Op. cit._: I, 677.]

To strengthen his case, Riccioli listed the supporters of the
heliocentric doctrine throughout the ages, with those of the opposite
view. If a man's fame adds to the weight of his opinion, the modern
reader will be inclined to think the Copernicans have the best of it,
for omitting the ancients, most of those opposing it are obscure
men.[339]

[Footnote 339: Ibid: I, 673.]


In favor of the Copernican doctrine [references omitted].[340]

  Copernicus
  Rheticus
  Mæstlin
  Kepler
  Rothman
  Galileo
  Gilbert (diurnal motion)
  Foscarini
  Didacus Stunica (_sic_)
  Ismael Bullialdus
  Jacob Lansberg
  Peter Herigonus
  Gassendi,--"but submits his intellect captive to the Church decrees."
  Descartes "inclines to this belief."
  A.L. Politianus
  Bruno


Against the hypothesis of the earth's movement.

  Aristotle
  Ptolemy
  Theon the Alexandrine
  Regiomontanus
  Alfraganus
  Macrobius
  Cleomedes
  Petrus Aliacensis
  George Buchanan
  Maurolycus
  Clavius
  Barocius
  Michael Neander
  Telesius
  Martinengus
  Justus-Lipsius
  Scheiner
  Tycho
  Tasso
  Scipio Claramontius
  Michael Incofer
  Fromundus
  Jacob Ascarisius
  Julius Cæsar La Galla
  Tanner
  Bartholomæus Amicus
  Antonio Rocce
  Marinus Mersennius
  Polacco
  Kircher
  Spinella
  Pineda
  Lorinis
  Mastrius
  Bellutris
  Poncius
  Delphinus
  Elephantutius

[Footnote 340: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._: II, 290.]

Riccioli nevertheless viewed the Copernican system with much sympathy.
After a full statement of it, he comments: "We have not yet exhausted
the full profundities of the Copernican hypothesis, for the deeper one
digs into it, the more ingenious and valuable subtilties may one
unearth." Then he adds that "the greatness of Copernicus has never
been sufficiently appreciated nor will it be,--that man who
accomplished what no astronomer before him had scarcely been able even
to suggest without an insane machinery of spheres, for by a triple
motion of the earth he abolished epicycles and eccentrics. What before
so many Atlases could not support, this one Hercules has dared to
carry. Would that he had kept himself within the limits of his
hypothesis!"[341]

[Footnote 341: Riccioli: _Op. cit._: II, 304, 309.]

His conclusions seem to show that only his position as a Jesuit
restrained him from being a Copernican himself.[342] "I. If the
celestial phenomena alone are considered, they are equally well
explained by the two hypotheses [Ptolemaic and Copernican]. II. The
physical evidence as explained in the two systems with exception of
percussion and the speed of bodies driven north or south, and east or
west, is all for immobility. III. One might waver indifferently
between the two hypotheses aside from the witness of the Scriptures,
which settles the question. IV. There are in addition plenty of other
motives besides Scriptural ones for rejecting this system." (!) But
with the Scriptural evidence he adduces the decree of the Index under
Paul V against the doctrine, and the sentence of Galileo, so that "the
sole possible conclusion is that the earth stands by nature immobile
in the center of the universe, and the sun moves around it with both a
diurnal and an annual motion."[343]

[Footnote 342: Delambre: _Astr. Mod._: I, 680.]

[Footnote 343: Riccioli: _Op. cit._: II, 478 (condensed), 500.]

Even this great book was as insufficient to stop the criticism of the
action of the Congregations, as it was to stop the spread of the
doctrine. So once again the father took up the cudgels in defense of
the Church. The full title of his _Apologia_ runs: "An Apologia in
behalf of an argument from physical mathematics against the Copernican
system, directed against that system by a new argument from the reflex
motion of falling weights." (Venice, 1669). He states in this that his
_Almagestum Novum_ had received the approbation of professors of
mathematics at Bologna, of one at Pisa, and of another at Padua, and
he quotes the conclusion from _Nicetas Orthodoxus_ ("a diatribe by
Julius Turrinus, doctor of mathematics, philosophy, medicine, law, and
Greek letters"): "That the sun is revolved by diurnal and by annual
motion, and that the earth is at rest I firmly hold, infallibly
believe, and openly confess, not because of mathematical reasons, but
solely at the command of faith, by the authority of the Scriptures,
and the nod of approval (_nutu_) of the Roman See, whose rules laid
down at the dictation of the spirit of truth, may I, as befits
everyone, uphold as law."[344]

[Footnote 344: Riccioli: _Apologia_: 4.]

Riccioli further on proceeds to answer his objecters, declaring that
"the Church did not decide _ex cathedra_ that the Scripture concerning
movement should be interpreted literally; that the censure was laid by
qualified theologians and approved by eminent cardinals, and was not
merely provisional, nor for the time being absolute, since the
contrary could never be demonstrated; and that while it was the
primary intent of the Inquisitors to condemn the opinion as heretical
and directly contrary to the Scriptures ... they added that it was
absurd and false also in philosophy, in order, not to avert any
objections which could be on the side of philosophy or astronomy, but
only lest any one should say that Scripture is opposed to
philosophy."[345] These answers are indicative of the type of
criticism with which the Church had to cope even at that time.[346]

[Footnote 345: Ibid: 103.]

[Footnote 346: One bit of contemporary opinion on Riccioli and his
work has come down to us. A canon at Liège, Réné-François Sluse, wrote
asking a friend (about 1670) to sound Wallis, the English
mathematician, as to his opinion of the _Almagestum Novum_, and of
this argument based on the acceleration of movement in falling bodies.
Wallis himself replied that he thought the argument devoid of all
value. The canon at once wrote, "I do not understand how a man as
intelligent as Riccioli should think he could bring to a close a
matter so difficult [the refutation] by a proof as futile as this."
Monchamp: 165-166.

For a full, annotated list of books published against the Copernican
system between 1631-1688, see Martin: _Galilée_: 386-388.]



CHAPTER IV.

THE GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.


Just as Tycho Brahe's system proved to be for some a good half-way
station between the improbable Ptolemaic and the heretical Copernican
system;[347] so the Cartesian philosophy helped others to reconcile
their scientific knowledge with their reverence for the Scriptures,
until Newton's work had more fully demonstrated the scientific truth.

[Footnote 347: See Moxon: _Advice, A Tutor to Astronomy and Geography_
(1670): 269.]

Its originator, Réné Descartes[348] (1596-1650) was in Holland when
word of Galileo's condemnation reached him in 1633, as he was seeking
in the bookshops of Amsterdam and Leyden for a copy of the
_Dialogo_.[349] He at once became alarmed lest he too be accused of
trying to establish the movement of the earth, a doctrine which he had
understood was then publicly taught even in Rome, and which he had
made the basis of his own philosophy. If this doctrine were condemned
as false, then his philosophy must be also; and, true to his training
by the Jesuits, rather than go against the Church he would not publish
his books. He set aside his _Cosmos_, and delayed the publication of
the _Méthode_ for some years in consequence, even starting to
translate it into Latin as a safeguard.[350] His conception of the
universe, the Copernican one modified to meet the requirements of a
literally interpreted Bible, was not printed until 1644, when it
appeared in his _Principes_.[351]

[Footnote 348: Haldane's _Descartes_ (1905) is the most recent and
authoritative account based upon Descartes's works as published in the
Adams-Tannery edition (Paris, 1896. foll.). This edition supersedes
that of Cousin. [Transcriber's Note: Missing footnote reference in
original text has been added above in a logical place.]]

[Footnote 349: Haldane: 153.]

[Footnote 350: Ibid: 158.]

[Footnote 351: Descartes: _Principes_, Pt. III, chap. 13.]

According to this statement which he made only as a possible
explanation of the phenomena and not as an absolute truth, while there
was little to choose between the Tychonic and the Copernican
conceptions, he inclined slightly toward the former. He conceived of
the earth and the other planets as each borne along in its enveloping
heaven like a ship by the tide, or like a man asleep on a ship that
was sailing from Calais to Dover. The earth itself does not move, but
it is transported so that its position is changed in relation to the
other planets but not visibly so in relation to the fixed stars
because of the vast intervening spaces. The laws of the universe
affect even the most minute particle, and all alike are swept along in
a series of vortices, or whirlpools, of greater or less size. Thus the
whole planetary system sweeps around the sun in one great vortex, as
the satellites sweep around their respective planets in lesser ones.
In this way Descartes worked out a mechanical explanation of the
universe of considerable importance because it was a rational one
which anyone could understand. Its defects were many, to be sure, as
for example, that it did not allow for the elliptical orbits of the
planets;[352] and one critic has claimed that this theory of a
motionless earth borne along by an enveloping heaven was comparable to
a worm in a Dutch cheese sent from Amsterdam to Batavia,--the worm has
travelled about 6000 leagues but without changing its place![353] But
this theory fulfilled Descartes's aim: to show that the universe was
governed by mechanical laws of which we can be absolutely certain and
that Galileo's discoveries simply indicated this.[354]

[Footnote 352: Haldane: 291.]

[Footnote 353: Monchamp: 185, note.]

[Footnote 354: Haldane: 292.]

This exposition of the Copernican doctrine strongly appealed to the
literary world of the 17th and 18th centuries in western Europe,
especially in the Netherlands, in the Paris salons and in the
universities.[355] M. Monchamp cites a number of contemporary comments
upon its spread, in one of which it is claimed that in 1691, the
university of Louvain had for the preceding forty years been
practically composed of Cartesians.[356] For the time being, this
theory was a more or less satisfactory explanation of the universe
according to known laws; it answered to Galileo's observations; it was
in harmony with the Scriptures, and its vortices paved the way for the
popular acceptance of Newton's law of universal gravitation.

[Footnote 355: Ibid: 193, 279.]

[Footnote 356: Monchamp: 177-181.]

Protestant England was of course little disturbed by the decree
against the Copernican doctrine, a fact that makes it possible,
perhaps, to see there more clearly the change in people's attitude
from antagonism to acceptance, than in Catholic Europe where fear of
the Church's power, and respect for its decisions inhibited honest
public expression of thought and conviction. While in England also the
literal interpretation of the Scriptures continued to be with the
common people a strong objection against the doctrine, the rationalist
movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries along with
Newton's great work, helped win acceptance for it among the better
educated classes.

Bruno had failed to win over his English hearers, and in 1600 when the
_De Magnete_ was published, William Gilbert, (1540-1603) was
apparently the only supporter of the earth's movement then in
England,[357] and he advocated the diurnal motion only.[358] Not many,
however, were as outspoken as Bacon in denunciation of the system;
they were simply somewhat ironically indifferent. An exception to this
was Dean Wren of Windsor (father of the famous architect). He could
not speak strongly enough against it in his marginal notes on Browne's
_Pseudodoxia Epidemica_. As Dr. Johnson wrote,[359] Sir Thomas Browne
(1605-1682) himself in his zeal for the old errors, did not easily
admit new positions, for he never mentioned the motion of the earth
but with contempt and ridicule. This was not enough for the Dean, who
wrote in the margin of Browne's book, at such a passage,[360] that
there were "eighty-odd expresse places in the Bible affirming in
plaine and overt terms the naturall and perpetuall motion of sun and
moon" and that "a man should be affrighted to follow that audacious
and pernicious suggestion which Satan used, and thereby undid us all
in our first parents, that God hath a double meaning in his commands,
in effect condemning God of amphibologye. And all this boldness and
overweaning having no other ground but a seeming argument of some
phenomena forsooth, which notwithstanding we know the learned Tycho,
prince of astronomers, who lived fifty-two years since Copernicus,
hath by admirable and matchlesse instruments and many yeares exact
observations proved to bee noe better than a dreame."

[Footnote 357: Berry quotes (p. 92) a passage from Thomas Digges (d.
1595) with the date 1590: "But in this our age, one rare witte (seeing
the continuall errors that from time to time more and more continually
have been discovered, besides the infinite absurdities in their
Theoricks, which they have been forced to admit that would not confess
any mobility in the ball of the Earth) hath by long studye, paynfull
practise, and rare invention delivered a new Theorick or Model of the
World, shewing that the Earth resteth not in the Center of the whole
world or globe of elements, which encircled or enclosed in the Moone's
orbit, and together with the whole globe of mortality is carried round
about the Sunne, which like a king in the middst of all, rayneth and
giveth laws of motion to all the rest, sphærically dispersing his
glorious beames of light through all this sacred celestiall Temple."
Browne also refers to Digges (I, 383).]

[Footnote 358: Gilbert: _De Magnete_, Bk. VI, c. 3-5 (214-228).]

[Footnote 359: Johnson: _Life_, in Browne: I, xvii.]

[Footnote 360: Browne: I, 35.]

Richard [Transcriber's Note: Robert] Burton (1576-1639) in
_The Anatomy of Melancholy_ speaks of the doctrine as a "prodigious
tenent, or paradox," lately revived by "Copernicus, Brunus and some
others," and calls Copernicus in consequence the successor of
Atlas.[361] The vast extent of the heavens that this supposition
requires, he considers "quite opposite to reason, to natural
philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional, (so some will)
as prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of the heavens." If
the earth is a planet, then other planets may be inhabited (as
Christian Huygens argued later on); and this involves a possible
plurality of worlds. Burton laughs at those who, to avoid the Church
attitude and yet explain the celestial phenomena, invent new
hypotheses and new systems of the world, "correcting others, doing
worse themselves, reforming some and marring all," as he says of
Roeslin's endeavors. "In the meantime the world is tossed in a blanket
amongst them; they hoyse the earth up and down like a ball, make it
stand and goe at their pleasure."[362] He himself was indifferent.

[Footnote 361: Burton: _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I, 1; I, 66. First
edition, 1621; reprinted 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651-2, 1660, 1676.]

[Footnote 362: Ibid: I, 385, 389.]

Others more sensitive to the implications of this system, might
exclaim with George Herbert (1593-1633):[363]

    "Although there were some fourtie heav'ns, or more,
      Sometimes I peere above them all;
    Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
      Sometimes to hell I fall.

    "O rack me not to such a vast extent,
      Those distances belong to thee.
    The world's too little for thy tent,
      A grave too big for me."

[Footnote 363: Herbert: II, 315.]

Or they might waver, undecided, like Milton who had the archangel
answer Adam's questions thus:[364]

    "But whether thus these things, or whether not,
    Whether the Sun predominant in Heaven
    Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun,
    Hee from the East his flaming robe begin,
    Or Shee from West her silent course advance
    With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps
    On her soft axle, while she paces ev'n
    And bears thee soft with the smooth Air along,
    Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,
    Leave them to God above, him serve and feare;
    Of other Creatures, as him pleases best,
    Wherever plac't, let him dispose; joy thou
    In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
    And the fair Eve: Heaven is for thee too high
    To know what passes there: be lowlie wise." (1667)

[Footnote 364: Milton: _Paradise Lost_, Bk. VIII, lines 159 _et seq._

The great Puritan divine, John Owen (1616-1683), accepts the miracle
of the sun's standing still without a word of reference to the new
astronomy. (_Works_: II, 160.) Farrar states that Owen declared
Newton's discoveries were against the evident testimonies of Scripture
(Farrar: _History of Interpretation_: xviii.), but I have been unable
to verify this statement. Owen died before the _Principia_ was
published in 1687.]

Whewell thinks[365] that at this time the diffusion of the Copernican
system was due more to the writings of Bishop Wilkins than to those of
any one else, for their very extravagances drew stronger attention to
it. The first, "The Discovery of a New World: or a Discourse tending
to prove that there may be another habitable world in the moon,"
appeared in 1638; and a third edition was issued only two years later
together with the second book; "Discourse concerning a New
Planet--that 'tis probable our Earth is one of the planets." In this
latter, the Bishop stated certain propositions as indubitable; among
these were, that the scriptural passages intimating diurnal motion of
the sun or of the heavens are fairly capable of another
interpretation; that there is no sufficient reason to prove the earth
incapable of those motions which Copernicus ascribes to it; that it is
more probable the earth does move than the heavens, and that this
hypothesis is exactly agreeable to common appearances.[366] And these
books appeared when political and constitutional matters, and not
astronomical ones, were the burning questions of the day in England.

[Footnote 365: Whewell: I, 410.]

[Footnote 366: Wilkins: _Discourse Concerning a New Planet_.]

The spread of the doctrine was also helped by Thomas Salusbury's
translations of the books and passages condemned by the Index in 1616
and 1619. This collection, "intended for gentlemen," he published by
popular subscription immediately after the Restoration,[367] a fact
that indicates that not merely mathematicians (whom Whewell
claims[368] were by that time all decided Copernicans) but the general
public were interested and awake.[369]

[Footnote 367: Salusbury: _Math. Coll._: To the Reader.]

[Footnote 368: Whewell: I, 411.]

[Footnote 369: One London bookseller in 1670 advertised for sale
"spheres according to the Ptolmean, Tychonean and Copernican systems
with books for their use." (Moxon: 272.) In 1683 in London appeared
the third edition of Gassendi's _Institutio_, the textbook of
astronomy in the universities during this period of uncertainty. It
too wavers between the Tychonic and the Copernican systems.]

The appearance of Newton's _Principia_ in 1687 with his statement of
the universal application of the law of gravitation, soon ended
hesitancy for most people. Twelve years later, John Keill,
(1671-1721), the Scotch mathematician and astronomer at Oxford,
refuted Descartes's theory of vortices and opened the first course of
lectures delivered at Oxford on the new Newtonian philosophy.[370] Not
only were his lectures thronged, but his books advocating the
Copernican system in full[371] went through several editions in
relatively few years.

[Footnote 370: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._: "Keill."]

[Footnote 371: Keill: _Introductio ad Veram Astronomiam_.]

In the Colonies, Yale University which had hitherto been using
Gassendi's textbook, adopted the Newtonian ideas a few years later,
partly through the gift to the university of some books by Sir Isaac
himself, and partly through the enthusiasm of two young instructors
there, Johnson and Brown, who in 1714-1722 widened the mathematical
course by including the new theories.[372] The text they used was by
Rohault, a Cartesian, edited by Samuel Clarke with critical notes
exposing the fallacies of Cartesianism. This "disguised Newtonian
treatise" was used at Yale till 1744. The University of Pennsylvania
used this same text book even later.[373]

[Footnote 372: Cajori: 29-30.]

[Footnote 373: Cajori: 37.]

In 1710 Pope (1688-1744) refers to "our Copernican system,"[374] and
Addison (1671-1719) in the _Spectator_ (July 2, 1711) writes this very
modern passage:

     "But among this set of writers, there are none who more
     gratify and enlarge the imagination, than the authors of the
     new philosophy, whether we consider their theories of the
     earth or heavens, the discoveries they have made by glasses,
     or any other of their contemplations on nature.... But when
     we survey the whole earth at once, and the several planets
     that lie within its neighborhood, we are filled with a
     pleasing astonishment, to see so many worlds hanging one
     above another, and sliding around their axles in such an
     amazing pomp and solemnity. If, after this, we contemplate
     those wide fields of æther, that reach in height as far as
     from Saturn to the fixed stars, and run abroad almost to an
     infinitude, our imagination finds its capacity filled with
     so immense a prospect, as puts it upon the stretch to
     comprehend it. But if we yet rise higher, and consider the
     fixed stars as so many vast oceans of flame, that are each
     of them attended with a different set of planets, and still
     discover new firmaments and new lights, that are sunk
     farther in those unfathomable depths of æther, so as not to
     be seen by the strongest of our telescopes, we are lost in
     such a labyrinth of suns and worlds, and confounded with the
     immensity and magnificence of nature.

     "Nothing is more pleasant to the fancy, than to enlarge
     itself by degrees, in its contemplation of the various
     proportions which its several objects bear to each other,
     when it compares the body of man to the bulk of the whole
     earth, the earth to the circle it describes round the sun,
     that circle to the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere of
     the fixed stars to the circuit of the whole creation, the
     whole creation itself to the infinite space that is
     everywhere diffused around it; ... But if, after all this,
     we take the least particle of these animal spirits, and
     consider its capacity wrought into a world, that shall
     contain within those narrow dimensions a heaven and earth,
     stars and planets, and every different species of living
     creatures, in the same analogy and proportion they bear to
     each other in our own universe; such a speculation, by
     reason of its nicety, appears ridiculous to those who have
     not turned their thoughts that way, though, at the same
     time, it is founded on no less than the evidence of a
     demonstration."[375]

[Footnote 374: Pope: _Works_, VI, 110.]

[Footnote 375: Addison: _Spectator_, No. 420, (IV, 372-373). An
interesting contrast to this passage and a good illustration of how
the traditional phraseology continued in poetry is found in Addison's
famous hymn, written a year later:

    "Whilst all the stars that round her [earth] burn
    And all the planets in their turn,
    Confirm the tidings as they roll,
    And spread the truth from pole to pole.

    "What though in solemn silence all
    Move round this dark terrestrial ball;
    What though no real voice nor sound
    Amidst their radiant orbs be found;

    "In reason's ear they all rejoice,
    And utter forth a glorious voice;
    Forever singing, as they shine,
    'The hand that made us is divine'."]

A little later, Cotton Mather declared (1721) that the "Copernican
hypothesis is now generally preferred," and "that there is no
objection against the motion of the earth but what has had a full
solution."[376] Soon the semi-popular scientific books took up the
Newtonian astronomy. One such was described as "useful for all
sea-faring Men, as well as Gentlemen, and Others."[377]
"Newtonianisme pour les Dames" was advertised in France in the
forties.[378] By 1738 when Pope wrote the _Universal Prayer_:

    "Yet not to earth's contracted span
      Thy goodness let me bound
    Or think thee Lord alone of man,
      When thousand worlds are round,"

the Copernican-Newtonian astronomy had become a commonplace to most
well-educated people in England. To be sure, the great John Wesley
(1770) considered the systems of the universe merely "ingenious
conjectures," but then, he doubted whether "more than Probabilities we
shall ever attain in regard to things at so great a distance from
us."[379]

[Footnote 376: Mather: _Christian Philosopher_, 75, 76.]

[Footnote 377: Leadbetter: _Astronomy_ (1729).]

[Footnote 378: In de Maupertius: _Ouvrages Divers_, (at the back).]

[Footnote 379: Wesley: _Compendium of Natural Philosophy_, I, 14,
139.]

The old phraseology, however, did recur occasionally, especially in
poetry and in hymns. For instance, a hymnal (preface dated 1806)
contains such choice selections as:

    "Before the pondr'ous earthly globe
      In fluid air was stay'd,
    Before the ocean's mighty springs
      Their liquid stores display'd"--

and:

    "Who led his blest unerring hand
      Or lent his needful aid
    When on its strong unshaken base
      The pondr'ous earth was laid?"[380]

[Footnote 380: Dobell: _Hymns_, No. 5, No. 10.]

But too much importance should not be attributed to such passages;
though poetry and astronomy need not conflict, as Keble
illustrated:[381]

    "Ye Stars that round the Sun of Righteousness
      In glorious order roll...."

[Footnote 381: Keble: _Christian Year_, 279.]

By the middle of the 18th century in England, one could say with Horne
"that the Newtonian System had been in possession of the chair for
some years;"[382] but it had not yet convinced the common people, for
as Pike wrote in 1753, "Many Common Christians to this day firmly
believe that the earth really stands still and that the sun moves all
round the earth once a day: neither can they be easily persuaded out
of this opinion, because they look upon themselves bound to believe
what the Scripture asserts."[383]

[Footnote 382: Horne: _Fair, Candid, Impartial Statement ..._, 4.]

[Footnote 383: Pike: _Philosophia Sacra_, 43.]

There was, however, just at this time a little group of thinkers who
objected to Newton's scheme, "because of the endless uninterrupted
flux of matter from the sun in light, an expense which should destroy
that orb."[384] These Hutchinsonians conceived of light as pure ether
in motion springing forth from the sun, growing more dense the further
it goes till it becomes air, and, striking the circumference of the
universe (which is perhaps an immovable solid), is thrown back toward
the sun and melted into light again. Its force as its tides of motion
strike the earth and the other planets produces their constant
gyrations.[385] Men like Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of
Sessions, and George Horne, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, as
a weapon against rationalism, favored this notion that had been
expounded by John Hutchinson (1674-1737) in his _Moses's Principia_
(1724).[386] They were also strongly attracted by the scriptural
symbolism with which the book abounds. Leslie Stephen summarizes their
doctrines as (1) extreme dislike for rationalism, (2) a fanatical
respect for the letter of the Bible, and (3) an attempt to enlist the
rising powers of scientific enquiry upon the side of orthodoxy.[387]
This "little eddy of thought"[388] was not of much influence even at
that time, but it has a certain interest as indicating the positions
men have taken when on the defensive against new ideas.

[Footnote 384: Forbes: _Letter_, (1755).]

[Footnote 385: See Wesley: I, 136-7.]

[Footnote 386: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._: "Hutchinson."]

[Footnote 387: Stephen: _Hist. of Eng. Thought_: I, 390.]

[Footnote 388: Ibid: 391.]



CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCH AND THE NEW ASTRONOMY: CONCLUSION.


Astronomical thought on the Continent was more hampered, in the
Catholic countries especially, by the restrictive opinions of the
Church. Yet in 1757, when the decree prohibiting all books dealing
with the Copernican doctrine was removed from the Index, that system
had already long been adopted by the more celebrated academies of
Europe, for so Mme. de Premontval claimed in 1750; and it was then
reaching out to non-scientific readers, through simple accounts for
"ladies and others not well versed in these somewhat technical
matters."[389] The great landmark in the development of the doctrine
was the publication of Newton's _Principia_ in 1687, though its effect
in Europe was of course slower in being felt than it was in England.
Newton's work and that of the astronomers immediately following him
was influential except where the Church's prohibitions still held
sway.

[Footnote 389: de Premontval: _Le Méchaniste Philosophe_, 54, 72. (The
Hague, 1750).]

During this period, the books published in free Holland were more
outspoken in their radical acceptance or in their uncertainty of the
truth than were those published in the Catholic countries. Christian
Huygens's treatises on the plurality of worlds not only fully accepted
the Copernican doctrine, but like those of Bishop Wilkins in England,
deduced therefrom the probability that the other planets are inhabited
even as the earth is. A writer[390] on the sphere in 1697 stated the
different theories of the universe so that his readers might choose
the one that to them appeared the most probable. He himself preferred
the Cartesian explanation as the simplest and most convenient of all,
"though it should be held merely as an hypothesis and not as in
absolute agreement with the truth." Pierre Bayle[391] also explained
the different systems, but appears himself to waver between the
Copernican and the Tychonic conceptions. He used, however, the old
word "perigee" (nearness to the earth) rather than the Newtonian
"perihelion" (nearness to the sun). His objections to the Copernican
doctrine have a familiar ring: It is contrary to the evidence of the
senses; a stone would not fall back to its starting-place, nor could a
bird return to her nest; the earth would not be equidistant from the
horizon and the two poles; and lastly it is contrary to the
Scriptures. Only a few years later, however, De Maupertius wrote that
no one at that day (1744) doubted any longer the motion of the earth
around its axis, and he believed with Newton that the laws of gravity
applied to the universe as well as to the earth. Then he proceeded to
explain the Copernican system which he favored on the ground of its
greater probability.[392]

[Footnote 390: de Brisbar: _Calendrier Historique_, (Leyden),
228-233.]

[Footnote 391: Bayle: _Système Abregé de Philosophie_ (The Hague,
1731), IV, 394-412.]

[Footnote 392: de Maupertius: _Eléments de Géographie_, xv, 9-14.]

Even in 1750, Mme. de Premontval thought it wiser to publish in
Holland her little life of her father, _Le Méchaniste Philosophe_.
This Jean Piegeon, she claimed, was the first man in France to make
spheres according to the Copernican system. An orphan, he was educated
by a priest; then took up carpentry and mechanics. When he tried to
make a celestial sphere according to the Ptolemaic system, he became
convinced of its falsity because of its complexities. Therefore he
plunged into a study of the new system which he adopted. His first
Copernican sphere was exhibited before Louis XIV at Versailles in 1706
and was bought by the king and presented to the Académie des
Sciences.[393] The second was taken to Canada by one of the royal
officials. Public interest in his work was keen; even Peter the Great,
who was then in Paris, visited his workroom.[394] M. Piegeon also
wrote a book on the Copernican system.[395]

[Footnote 393: de Premontval: 123.]

[Footnote 394: Ibid: 132.]

[Footnote 395: Ibid: 157.]

It seems, however, as though M. Piegeon were slightly in advance of
his age, or more daring, perhaps, than his contemporaries, for there
was almost no outspoken support of the Copernican system at this time
in France. Even Cassini of the French Académie des Sciences did not
explicitly support it, though he spoke favorably of it and remarked
that recent observations had demonstrated the revolutions of each
planet around the sun in accordance with that supposition.[396] But
the great orator, Bossuet, (1627-1703), clung to the Ptolemaic
conception as alone orthodox, and scriptural.[397] Abbé Fénelon
(1651-1715) writing on the existence of God, asked: "Who is it who has
hung up this motionless ball of the earth; who has placed the
foundations for it," and "who has taught the sun to turn ceasely
[Transcriber's Note: ceaselessly] and regularly in spaces where
nothing troubles it?"[398] And a writer on the history of the heavens
as treated by poets, philosophers and Moses (1739), tells Gassendi,
Descartes and many other great thinkers that their ideas of the
heavens are proved vain and false by daily experience as well as by
the account of Creation; for the most enlightened experience is wholly
and completely in accord with the account of Moses. This book was
written, the author said, for young people students of philosophy and
the humanities, also for teachers.[399]

[Footnote 396: Cassini: _De l'Origine et du Progrès ..._, 35.]

[Footnote 397: Shields: 59. I have failed to find this reference in
Bossuet's works.]

[Footnote 398: Fénelon: _Oeuvres_, I, 3 and 7.]

[Footnote 399: Pluche: _Histoire du Ciel_: viii, ix, xiii.]

The Jesuit order, still a power in Europe in the early 18th century,
was bound to the support of the traditional view, which led them into
some curious positions in connection with the discoveries made in
astronomy during this period. Thus the famous Jesuit astronomer
Boscovich (1711-1787) published in Rome in 1746 a study of the
ellipticity of the orbits of planets which necessitated the use of the
Copernican position; he stated he had assumed it as true merely to
facilitate his labors. In the second edition (1785) published some
years after the removal from the Index of the decree against books
teaching the Copernican doctrine (at his instigation, it is
claimed),[400] he added a note to this passage asking the reader to
remember the time and the place of its former publication.[401] Just
at the end of the preceding century, one of the seminary fathers at
Liège maintained that were the earth to move, being made up of so
many and divers combustible materials, it would soon burst into flames
and be reduced to ashes![402]

[Footnote 400: _Cath. Ency._: "Boscovich."]

[Footnote 401: _Opera_: III (1785).]

[Footnote 402: Cited in Monchamp: 335 note.]

During the 18th century at Louvain the Copernican doctrine was warmly
supported, but as a theory. A MS. of a course given there in 1748 has
come down to us, in which the professor, while affirming its
hypothetical character, described it as a simple, clear and
satisfactory explanation of the phenomena, then answered all the
objections made against it by theologians, physicists, and
astronomers.[403] A few years earlier, (1728) a Jesuit at Liège,
though well acquainted with Newton's work, declared: "For my part I do
not doubt the least in the world that the earth is eternally fixed,
for God has founded the terrestrial globe, and it will not be
shaken."[404] Another priest stated in the first chapter of his
astronomy that the sun and the planets daily revolve around the earth;
then later on, he explained the Copernican and the Tychonic schemes
and the Cartesian theory of motion with evident sympathy.[405] Two
others, one a Jesuit in 1682 at Naples,[406] the other in 1741 at
Verona, frankly preferred the Tychonic system, and the latter called
the system found by "Tommaso Copernico" a mere fancy.[407] Still
another priest, evidently well acquainted with Bradley's work, as late
as in 1774 declared that there was nothing decisive on either side of
the great controversy between the systems.[408] At this time, however,
a father was teaching the Copernican system at Liège without
differentiating between thesis and hypothesis.[409] And a Jesuit,
while he denied (1772) universal gravitation, the earth's movement,
and the plurality of inhabited worlds, declared that the Roman
Congregation had done wrong in charging these as heretical
suggestions. In fact, M. Monchamp, himself a Catholic priest at
Louvain, declared that the Newtonian proofs were considered by many in
the 18th century virtually to abrogate the condemnation of 1616 and
1633; hence the professors of the seminary at Liège had adopted the
Copernican system.[410]

[Footnote 403: Ibid: 326.]

[Footnote 404: Ibid: 330.]

[Footnote 405: Fontana: _Institutio_, II, 32-35.]

[Footnote 406: Ferramosca: _Positiones ..._: 19.]

[Footnote 407: Piccoli: _La Scienza_, 4, 7.]

[Footnote 408: Spagnio, _De Motu_, 81.]

[Footnote 409: Monchamp: 331.]

[Footnote 410: Monchamp: 345.]

The famous French astronomer Lalande, in Rome in 1757 when the
Inquisition first modified its position, tried to persuade the
authorities to remove Galileo's book also from the Index; but his
efforts were unavailing, because of the sentence declared against its
author.[411] In 1820 Canon Settele was not allowed by the Master of
the Sacred Palace to publish his textbook because it dealt with the
forbidden subject. His appeal to the Congregation itself resulted, as
we have seen, in the decree of 1822 removing this as a cause for
prohibition. Yet as late as in 1829, when a statue to Copernicus was
being unveiled at Warsaw, and a great convocation had met in the
church for the celebration of the mass as part of the ceremony, at the
last moment the clergy refused in a body to attend a service in honor
of a man whose book was on the Index.[412]

[Footnote 411: Bailly: II, 132, note.]

[Footnote 412: Flammarion: 196-198.]

Thus the Roman Catholic Church by reason of its organization and of
its doctrine requiring obedience to its authority was more conspicuous
for its opposition as a body to the Copernican doctrine, even though
as individuals many of its members favored the new system. But the
Protestant leaders were quite as emphatic in their denunciations,
though less influential because of the Protestant idea of the right to
individual belief and interpretation. Luther, Melancthon, Calvin,
Turrettin,[413] Owen, and Wesley are some of the notable opponents to
it. And when the scientific objections had practically disappeared,
those who interpreted the Scriptures literally were still troubled and
hesitant down to the present day. Not many years ago, people flocked
to hear a negro preacher of the South, Brother Jasper, uphold with all
his ability that the sun stood still at Joshua's command, and that
today "the sun do move!" Far more surprising is this statement in the
new _Catholic Encyclopedia_ under "Faith," written by an English
Dominican:

     "If, now, the will moves the intellect to consider some
     debatable point--_e.g._, the Copernican and Ptolemaic
     theories of the relationship between the sun and the
     earth--it is clear that the intellect can only assent to one
     of these views in proportion that it is convinced that the
     particular view is true. But neither view has, as far as we
     can know, more than probable truth, hence of itself the
     intellect can only give in its partial adherence to one of
     these views, it must always be precluded from absolute
     assent by the possibility that the other may be right. The
     fact that men hold more tenaciously to one of these than the
     arguments warrant can only be due to some extrinsic
     consideration, _e.g._, that it is absurd not to hold to what
     a vast majority of men hold."

[Footnote 413: Shields: 60.]

In astronomical thought as in many another field, science and reason
have had a hard struggle in men's minds to defeat tradition and the
weight of verbal inspiration. Within the Roman Catholic Church
opposition to this doctrine was officially weakened in 1757, but not
completely ended till the publication of the Index in 1835--the first
edition since the decrees of 1616 and 1619 which did not contain the
works of Copernicus, Galileo, Foscarini, à Stunica and Kepler. Since
then, Roman Catholic writers have been particularly active in
defending and explaining the positions of the Church in these matters.
They have not agreed among themselves as to whether the infallibility
of the Church had been involved in these condemnations, nor as to the
reasons for them. As one writer has summarized these diverse
positions,[414] they first claimed that Galileo was condemned not for
upholding a heresy, but for attempting to reconcile these ideas with
the Scriptures,--though in fact he was sentenced specifically for
heresy. In their next defense they declared Galileo was not condemned
for heresy, but for contumacy and want of respect to the Pope.[415]
This statement proving untenable, others held that it was the result
of a persecution developing out of a quarrel between Aristotelian
professors and those professors who favored experiment,--a still worse
argument for the Church itself. Then some claimed that the
condemnation was merely provisional,--a position hardly warranted by
the wording of the decrees themselves and flatly contradicted by
Father Riccioli, the spokesman of the Jesuit authorities.[416] More
recently, Roman Catholics have held that Galileo was no more a victim
of the Roman Church than of the Protestant--which fails to remove the
blame of either. The most recent position is that the condemnation of
the doctrine by the popes was not as popes but as men simply, and the
Church was not committed to their decision since the popes had not
signed the decrees. But two noted English Catholics, Roberts and
Mivart, publicly stated in 1870 that the infallibility of the papacy
was fully committed in these condemnations by what they termed
incontrovertible evidence.[417]

[Footnote 414: White: I, 159-167.]

[Footnote 415: See di Bruno: _Catholic Belief_, 286a.]

[Footnote 416: Riccioli: _Apologia_, 103.]

[Footnote 417: White: I, 165. See the answer by Wegg-Prosser: _Galileo
and his Judges_.]

One present-day Catholic calls the action of the Congregations "a
theoretical mistake;"[418] another admits it was a deplorable mistake,
but practically their only serious one;[419] and a third considers it
"providential" since it proved conclusively "that whenever there is
apparent contradiction between the truths of science and the truths of
faith, either the scientist is declaring as proved what in reality is
a mere hypothesis, or the theologian is putting forth his own personal
views instead of the teaching of the Gospel."[420] Few would accept
today, however, the opinion of the anonymous writer in the _Dublin
Review_ in the forties that "to the Pontiffs and dignitaries of Rome
we are mainly indebted for the Copernican system" and that the phrases
"heretical" and "heresy" in the sentence of 1633 were but the _stylus
curiæ_, for it was termed heresy only in the technical sense.[421]

[Footnote 418: Donat: 183.]

[Footnote 419: Walsh: _Popes and Science_, 17.]

[Footnote 420: Conway: 48.]

[Footnote 421: Anon.: _Galileo--the Roman Congregation_, 39, 60.]

The majority of Protestants, with the possible exception of the
Lutherans, were satisfied with the probable truth of the Copernican
doctrine before the end of the 18th century. Down to the present day,
however, there have been isolated protests raised against it, usually
on technical grounds supported by reference to the Scriptures. De
Morgan refers to one such, "An Inquiry into the Copernican System ...
wherein it is proved in the clearest manner, that the earth has only
her diurnal motion ... with an attempt to point out the only true way
whereby mankind can receive any real benefit from the study of the
heavenly bodies, by John Cunningham, London, 1789." De Morgan adds
that "the true way appears to be the treatment of heaven and earth as
emblematical of the Trinity."[422] Another, by "Anglo-American," is
entitled "Copernicus Refuted; or the True Solar System" (Baltimore,
1846). It begins thus:

    "One of these must go, the other stand still,
    It matters not which, so choose at your will;
    But when you find one already stuck fast,
    You've only got Hobson's choice left at last."

[Footnote 422: De Morgan: I, 172.]

This writer admits the earth's axial rotation, but declares the earth
is fixed as a pivot in the center of the universe, because the poles
of the earth are fixed and immovable, and that the sun as in the
Tychonic scheme encircles the earth and is itself encircled by five
planets.[423] His account of the origin of the Copernican system is
noteworthy: it was originated by Pythagoras and his deciples but lay
neglected because it was held to be untenable in their time; it was
"revived when learning was at its lowest ebb by a monk in his
cloister, Copernicus, who in ransacking the contents of the monastery
happened to lay his hands on the MS. and then published it to the
world with all its blunders and imperfections!"[424] One might remark
that the Anglo-American's own learning was at very low ebb.

[Footnote 423: "Anglo-American": 5-6.]

[Footnote 424: Ibid: 11.]

The Tychonic scheme was revived also some years later by a Dane,
Zytphen (1856).[425] Three years after, an assembly of Lutheran clergy
met together at Berlin to protest against "science falsely
so-called,"[426] but were brought into ridicule by Pastor Knap's
denunciations of the Copernican theory as absolutely incompatible with
belief in the Bible. A Carl Schoepffer had taken up the defense of the
Tychonic scheme in Berlin before this (1854) and by 1868 his lecture
was in its seventh edition. In it he sought to prove that the earth
revolves neither upon its own axis nor yet about the sun. He had seen
Foucault's pendulum demonstration of the earth's movement, but he held
that something else, as yet unexplained, caused the deviation of the
pendulum, and that the velocity of the heavens would be no more
amazing than the almost incredible velocity of light or of
electricity.[427] His lecture, curiously enough, fell into the hands
of the late General John Watts de Peyster of New York, who had it
translated and published in 1900 together with a supplement by Frank
Allaben.[428] Both these gentlemen accepted its scientific views and
deductions, but the General refused to go as far as his colleague in
the latter's enthusiastic acceptance of the verbal inspiration of the
Scriptures as a result of these statements.[429] A few months later,
they published a supplementary pamphlet claiming to prove the
possibility of the sun's velocity by the analogy of the velocity of
certain comets.[430] A Professor J.R. Lange of California (a German),
attracted by these documents, sent them his own lucubrations on this
subject. He considered Newton's doctrine of universal attraction
"nonsense," and had "absolute proof" in the fixity of the Pole Star
that the earth does not move.[431] In a letter to General de Peyster,
he wrote: "Let us hope and pray that the days of the pernicious
Copernican system may be numbered,"[432]--but he did not specify why
he considered it pernicious. The General was nearly eighty years old
when he became interested in these matters, and he did not live long
thereafter to defend his position. His biographers make no mention of
it. The other men seem almost obsessed, especially Lange;--like the
Italian painter, Sindico, who bombarded the director of the Paris
Observatory in 1878 with many letters protesting against the
Copernican system.[433]

[Footnote 425: De Morgan: II, 335.]

[Footnote 426: White: I, 150.]

[Footnote 427: Schoepffer: _The Earth Stands Fast_, title-page, 6-7.]

[Footnote 428: Ibid: Supplement by Allaben, 21, 74.]

[Footnote 429: Ibid: Note by J.W. de P., 74.]

[Footnote 430: De Peyster and Allaben: _Algol_, preface.]

[Footnote 431: Lange: _The Copernican System: The Greatest Absurdity
in the History of Human Thought_.]

[Footnote 432: De Peyster and Allaben: _Algol_, 74.]

[Footnote 433: Sindico: _Refutation du Système de Copernic...._]

German writers, whether Lutherans or not, appear to have opposed the
system more often in the last century than have the writers of other
nationalities. Besides those already mentioned, one proposed an
ingenious scheme in which the sun moves through space followed by the
planets as a comet is by its tail, the planets revolving in a plane
perpendicular to that of the sun's path. A diagram of it would be
cone-shaped. He included in this pamphlet, besides a list of his own
books, (all published in Leipsic), a list of twenty-six titles from
1758 to 1883, books and pamphlets evidently opposed in whole or in
part to the modern astronomy, and seventeen of these were in German or
printed in Germany.[434] In this country at St. Louis was issued an
_Astronomische Unterredung_ (1873) by J.C.W.L.; according to the late
President White, a bitter attack on modern astronomy and a decision by
the Scriptures that the earth is the principal body of the universe,
that it stands fixed, and that the sun and the moon only serve to
light it.[435]

[Footnote 434: Tischner: _Le Système Solaire se Mouvant_. (1894).]

[Footnote 435: White: I, 151.]

Such statements are futile in themselves nowadays, and are valuable
only to illustrate the advance of modern thought of which these are
the little eddies. While modern astronomers know far more than
Copernicus even dreamed of, much of his work still holds true today.
The world was slow to accept his system because of tradition,
authority, so-called common sense, and its supposed incompatibility
with scriptural passages. Catholic and Protestant alike opposed it on
these grounds; but because of its organization and authority, the
Roman Catholic Church had far greater power and could more
successfully hinder and delay its acceptance than could the
Protestants. Consequently the system won favor slowly at first through
the indifference of the authorities, then later in spite of their
active antagonism. Scholars believed it long before the universities
were permitted to teach it; and the rationalist movement of the 18th
century, the revolt against a superstitious religion, helped to
overturn the age-old conception of the heavens and to bring
Newtonian-Copernicanism into general acceptance.

The elements of this traditional conception are summarized in the
fifth book of Bodin's _Universæ Naturæ Theatrum_, a scholar's account
of astronomy at the close of the sixteenth century.[436] Man in his
terrestrial habitation occupies the center of a universe created
solely to serve him, God presides over all from the Empyrean above,
sending forth his messengers the angels to guide and control the
heavenly bodies. Such had been the thought of Christians for more than
a thousand years. Then came the influence of a new science. Tycho
Brahe "broke the crystal spheres of Aristotle"[437] by his study of
the comet of 1572; Galileo's telescopes revealed many stars hitherto
unknown, and partly solved the mysteries of the Milky Way; Kepler's
laws explained the courses of the planets, and Newton's discovery of
the universal application of the forces of attraction relieved the
angels of their duties among the heavens. Thinkers like Bruno proposed
the possibility of other systems and universes besides the solar one
in which the earth belongs. And thus not only did man shrink in
importance in his own eyes; but his conception of the heavens changed
from that of a finite place inexplicably controlled by the mystical
beings of a supernatural world, to one of vast and infinite spaces
traversed by bodies whose density and mass a man could calculate,
whose movements he could foretell, and whose very substance he could
analyze by the science of today. This dissolution of superstition,
especially in regard to comets was notably rapid and complete after
the comet of 1680.[438] Thus the rationalist movement with the new
science opened men's minds to a universe composed of familiar
substances and controlled by known or knowable laws with no tinge
remaining of the supernatural. Today a man's theological beliefs are
not shaken by the discovery of a new satellite or even a new planet,
and the appearance of a new comet merely provides the newspaper editor
with the subject of a passing jest.

[Footnote 436: See translated sections in Appendix C.]

[Footnote 437: Robinson: 107.]

[Footnote 438: Ibid: 119.]

Yet it was fully one hundred and fifty years after the publication of
the _De Revolutionibus_ before its system met with the general
approval of scholars as well as of mathematicians; then nearly a
generation more had to elapse before it was openly taught even at
Oxford where the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches had no control.
During the latter part of this period, readers were often left free to
decide for themselves as to the relative merits of the Tychonic and
Copernican or Copernican-Cartesian schemes. But it took fully fifty
years and more, besides, before these ideas had won general acceptance
by the common people, so wedded were they to the traditional view
through custom and a superstitious reverence for the Bible. Briefly
then, the _De Revolutionibus_ appeared in 1543; and quietly won some
supporters, notably Bruno, Kepler and Galileo; the Congregations of
the Index specifically opposed it in 1616 and 1633; however it
continued to spread among scholars and others with the aid of
Cartesianism for another fifty years till the appearance of Newton's
_Principia_ in 1687. Then its acceptance rapidly became general even
in Catholic Europe, till it was almost a commonplace in England by
1743, two hundred years after its first formal promulgation, and had
become strong enough in Europe to cause the Congregations in 1757 to
modify their stand. Thereafter opposition became a curiosity rather
than a significant fact. Only the Roman Church officially delayed its
recognition of the new astronomy till the absurdity of its obsolete
position was brought home to it by Canon Settele's appeal in 1820.
Fifteen years later the last trace of official condemnation was
removed, a little over two hundred years after the decrees had first
been issued, and just before Bessel's discovery of stellar parallax at
length answered one of the strongest and oldest arguments against the
system. Since then have come many _apologias_ in explanation and
extenuation of the Church's decided stand in this matter for so many
generations.

Though Galileo himself was forced to his knees, unable to withstand
his antagonists, his work lived on after him; he and Copernicus,
together with Kepler and Newton stand out both as scientists and as
leaders in the advance of intellectual enlightenment. The account of
their work and that of their less well-known supporters, compared with
that of their antagonists, proves the truth of the ancient Greek
saying which Rheticus used as the motto for the _Narratio Prima_, the
first widely known account of the Copernican system: "One who intends
to philosophize must be free in mind."



APPENDIX A.

PTOLEMY: _Syntaxis Mathematica (Almagest)_

     "That the earth has no movement of rotation," in _Opera Quæ
     Exstant Omnia_, edidit Heiberg, Leipsic, 1898, Bk. I, sec.
     7: (I, 21-25); compared with the translation into French by
     Halma, Paris, 1813.


By proofs similar to the preceding, it is shown that the earth cannot
be transported obliquely nor can it be moved away from the center.
For, if that were so, all those things would take place which would
happen if it occupied any other point than that of the center. It
seems unnecessary to me, therefore, to seek out the cause of
attraction towards the center when it is once evident from the
phenomena themselves, that the earth occupies the center of the
universe and that all heavy bodies are borne towards it; and this will
be readily understood if it is remembered that the earth has been
demonstrated to have a spherical shape, and according to what we have
said, is placed at the center of the universe, for the direction of
the fall of heavy bodies (I speak of their own motions) is always and
everywhere perpendicular to an uncurved plane drawn tangent to the
point of intersection. Obviously these bodies would all meet at the
center if they were not stopped by the surface, since a straight line
drawn to the center is perpendicular to a plane tangent to the sphere
at that point.

Those who consider it a paradox that a mass like the earth is
supported on nothing, yet not moved at all, appear to me to argue
according to the preconceptions they get from what they see happening
to small bodies about them, and not according to what is
characteristic of the universe as a whole, and this is the cause of
their mistake. For I think that such a thing would not have seemed
wonderful to them any longer if they had perceived that the earth,
great as it is, is merely a point in comparison to the surrounding
body of the heaven. They would find that it is possible for the earth,
being infinitely small relative to the universe, to be held in check
and fixed by the forces exercised over it equally and following
similar directions by the universe, which is infinitely great and
composed of similar parts. There is neither up nor down in the
universe, for that cannot be imagined in a sphere. As to the bodies
which it encloses, by a consequence of their nature it happens that
those that are light and subtle are as though blown by the wind to the
outside and to the circumference, and seem to appear to us to go _up_,
because that is how we speak of the space above our heads that
envelops us. It happens on the other hand that heavy bodies and those
composed of dense parts are drawn towards the middle as towards a
center, and appear to us to fall _down_, because that it is the word
we apply to what is beneath our feet in the direction of the center of
the earth. But one should believe that they are checked around this
center by the retarding effect of shock and of friction. It would be
admitted then that the entire mass of the earth, which is considerable
in comparison to the bodies falling on it, could receive these in
their fall without acquiring the slightest motion from the shock of
their weight or of their velocity. But if the earth had a movement
which was common to it and to all other heavy bodies, it would soon
seemingly outstrip them as a result of its weight, thus leaving the
animals and the other heavy bodies without other support than the air,
and would soon touch the limits of the heaven itself. All these
consequences would seem most ridiculous if one were only even
imagining them.

There are those who, while they admit these arguments because there is
nothing to oppose them, pretend that nothing prevents the supposition,
for instance, that if the sky is motionless, the earth might turn on
its axis from west to east, making this revolution once a day or in a
very little less time, or that, if they both turn, it is around the
same axis, as we have said, and in a manner conformable to the
relations between them which we have observed.

It has escaped these people that in regard to the appearances of the
planets themselves, nothing perhaps prevents the earth from having the
simpler motion; but they do not realize how very ridiculous their
opinion is in view of what takes place around us and in the air. For
if we grant them that the lightest things and those composed of the
subtlest parts do not move, which would be contrary to nature, while
those that are in the air move visibly more swiftly than those that
are terrestrial; if we grant them that the most solid and heavy bodies
have a swift, steady movement of their own, though it is true however
that they obey impelling forces only with difficulty; they would be
obliged to admit that the earth by its revolution has a movement more
rapid than the movements taking place around it, since it would make
so great a circuit in so short a time. Thus the bodies which do not
rest on it would appear always to have a motion contrary to its own,
and neither the clouds, nor any missile or flying bird would appear to
go towards the east, for the earth would always outstrip them in this
direction, and would anticipate them by its own movement towards the
east, with the result that all the rest would appear to move backwards
towards the west.

If they should say that the atmosphere is carried along by the earth
with the same speed as the earth's own revolution, it would be no less
true that the bodies contained therein would not have the same
velocity. Or if they were swept along with the air, no longer would
anything seem to precede or to follow, but all would always appear
stationary, and neither in flight nor in throwing would any ever
advance or retreat. That is, however, what we see happening, since
neither the retardation nor the acceleration of anything is traceable
to the movement of the earth.



APPENDIX B.

"TO HIS HOLINESS, PAUL III, SUPREME PONTIFF,

PREFACE BY NICHOLAS COPERNICUS TO HIS BOOKS ON REVOLUTIONS."

     (A translation of the _Præfatio_ in Copernicus: _De
     Revolutionibus_; pp. 3-8.)


"I can certainly well believe, most holy Father, that, while mayhap a
few will accept this my book which I have written concerning the
revolutions of the spheres of the world, ascribing certain motions to
the sphere of the earth, people will clamor that I ought to be cast
out at once for such an opinion. Nor are my ideas so pleasing to me
that I will not carefully weigh what others decide concerning them.
And although I know that the meditations of philosophers are remote
from the opinions of the unlearned, because it is their aim to seek
truth in all things so far as it is permitted by God to the human
reason, nevertheless I think that opinions wholly alien to the right
ought to be driven out. Thus when I considered with myself what an
absurd fairy-tale people brought up in the opinion, sanctioned by many
ages, that the earth is motionless in the midst of the heaven, as if
it were the center of it, would think it if I were to assert on the
contrary that the earth is moved; I hesitated long whether I would
give to the light my commentaries composed in proof of this motion, or
whether it would indeed be more satisfactory to follow the example of
the Pythagoreans and various others who were wont to pass down the
mysteries of philosophy not by books, but from hand to hand only to
their friends and relatives, as the letter of Lysis to Hipparchus
proves.[439] But verily they seemed to me not to have done this, as
some think, from any dislike to spreading their teachings, but lest
the most beautiful things and those investigated with much earnestness
by great men, should be despised by those to whom spending good work
on any book is a trouble unless they make profit by it; or if they are
incited to the liberal study of philosophy by the exhortations and the
example of others, yet because of the stupidity of their wits they are
no more busily engaged among philosophers than drones among bees. When
therefore I had pondered these matters, the scorn which was to be
feared on account of the novelty and the absurdity of the opinion
impelled me for that reason to set aside entirely the book already
drawn up.

[Footnote 439: See Prowe: _Nic. Cop._: III, 128-137.]

"But friends, in truth, have brought me forth into the light again,
though I long hesitated and am still reluctant; among these the
foremost was Nicholas Schönberg, Cardinal of Capua, celebrated in all
fields of scholarship. Next to him is that scholar, my very good
friend, Tiedeman Giese, Bishop of Culm, most learned in all sacred
matters, (as he is), and in all good sciences. He has repeatedly urged
me and, sometimes even with censure, implored me to publish this book
and to suffer it to see the light at last, as it has lain hidden by me
not for nine years alone, but also into the fourth 'novenium'. Not a
few other scholars of eminence also pleaded with me, exhorting me that
I should no longer refuse to contribute my book to the common service
of mathematicians on account of an imagined dread. They said that
however absurd in many ways this my doctrine of the earth's motion
might now appear, so much the greater would be the admiration and
goodwill after people had seen by the publications of my commentaries
the mists of absurdities rolled away by the most lucid demonstrations.
Brought to this hope, therefore, by these pleaders, I at last
permitted my friends, as they had long besought me, to publish this
work.

"But perhaps your Holiness will not be so shocked that I have dared to
bring forth into the light these my lucubrations, having spent so much
work in elaborating them, that I did not hesitate even to commit to a
book my conclusions about the earth's motion, but that you will
particularly wish to hear from me how it came into my mind to dare to
imagine any motion of the earth, contrary to the accepted opinion of
mathematicians and in like manner contrary to common sense. So I do
not wish to conceal from your Holiness that nothing else moved me to
consider some other explanation for the motions of the spheres of the
universe than what I knew, namely that mathematicians did not agree
among themselves in their examinations of these things. For in the
first place, they are so completely undecided concerning the motion of
the sun and of the moon that they could not observe and prove the
constant length of the great year.[440] Next, in determining the
motions of both these and the five other planets, they did not use the
same principles and assumptions or even the same demonstrations of the
appearances of revolutions and motions. For some used only homocentric
circles; others, eccentrics and epicycles, which on being questioned
about, they themselves did not fully comprehend. For those who put
their trust in homocentrics, although they proved that other diverse
motions could be derived from these, nevertheless they could by no
means decide on any thing certain which in the least corresponded to
the phenomena. But these who devised eccentrics, even though they seem
for the most part to have represented apparent motions by a number [of
eccentrics] suitable to them, yet in the meantime they have admitted
quite a few which appear to contravene the first principles of
equality of motion. Another notable thing, that there is a definite
symmetry between the form of the universe and its parts, they could
not devise or construct from these; but it is with them as if a man
should take from different places, hands, feet, a head and other
members, in the best way possible indeed, but in no way comparable to
a single body, and in no respect corresponding to each other, so that
a monster rather than a man would be constructed from them. Thus in
the process of proof, which they call a system, they are found to have
passed over some essential, or to have admitted some thing both
strange and scarcely relevant. This would have been least likely to
have happened to them if they had followed definite principles. For if
the hypotheses they assumed were not fallacious, everything which
followed out of them would have been verified beyond a doubt. However
obscure may be what I now say, nevertheless in its own place it will
be made more clear.

[Footnote 440: _i.e._, the 15,000 solar years in which all the
heavenly bodies complete their circuits and return to their original
positions.]

"When therefore I had long considered this uncertainty of traditional
mathematics, it began to weary me that no more definite explanation of
the movement of the world machine established in our behalf by the
best and most systematic builder of all, existed among the
philosophers who had studied so exactly in other respects the minutest
details in regard to the sphere. Wherefore I took upon myself the task
of re-reading the books of all the philosophers which I could obtain,
to seek out whether any one had ever conjectured that the motions of
the spheres of the universe were other than they supposed who taught
mathematics in the schools. And I found first that, according to
Cicero, Nicetas had thought the earth was moved. Then later I
discovered according to Plutarch that certain others had held the
same opinion; and in order that this passage may be available to all,
I wish to write it down here:

     "But while some say the earth stands still, Philolaus the
     Pythagorean held that it is moved about the element of fire
     in an oblique circle, after the same manner of motion that
     the sun and moon have. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus
     the Pythagorean assign a motion to the earth, not
     progressive, but after the manner of a wheel being carried
     on its own axis. Thus the earth, they say, turns itself upon
     its own center from west to east."[441]

[Footnote 441: Plutarch: _Moralia: De Placitis Philosophorum_, Lib.
III, c. 13 (V. 326).]

When from this, therefore, I had conceived its possibility I myself
also began to meditate upon the mobility of the earth. And although
the opinion seemed absurd, yet because I knew the liberty had been
accorded to others before me of imagining whatsoever circles they
pleased to explain the phenomena of the stars, I thought I also might
readily be allowed to experiment whether, by supposing the earth to
have some motion, stronger demonstrations than those of the others
could be found as to the revolution of the celestial sphere.

Thus, supposing these motions which I attribute to the earth later on
in this book, I found at length by much and long observation, that if
the motions of the other planets were added to the rotation of the
earth and calculated as for the revolution of that planet, not only
the phenomena of the others followed from this, but also it so bound
together both the order and magnitude of all the planets and the
spheres and the heaven itself, that in no single part could one thing
be altered without confusion among the other parts and in all the
universe. Hence, for this reason, in the course of this work I have
followed this system, so that in the first book I describe all the
positions of the spheres together with the motions I attribute to the
earth; thus this book contains a kind of general disposition of the
universe. Then in the remaining books, I bring together the motions of
the other planets and all the spheres with the mobility of the earth,
so that it can thence be inferred to what extent the motions and
appearances of the other planets and spheres can be solved by
attributing motion to the earth. Nor do I doubt that skilled and
scholarly mathematicians will agree with me if, what philosophy
requires from the beginning, they will examine and judge, not casually
but deeply, what I have gathered together in this book to prove these
things. In order that learned and unlearned may alike see that in no
way whatsoever I evade judgment, I prefer to dedicate these my
lucubrations to your Holiness rather than to any one else; especially
because even in this very remote corner of the earth in which I live,
you are held so very eminent by reason of the dignity of your position
and also for your love of all letters and of mathematics that, by your
authority and your decision, you can easily suppress the malicious
attacks of calumniators, even though proverbially there is no remedy
against the attacks of sycophants.

[Illustration: A photographic facsimile (reduced) of a page from
Mulier's edition (1617) as "corrected" according to the _Monitum_ of
the Congregations in 1620. The first writer merely underlined the
passage with marginal comment that this was to be deleted by
ecclesiastical order. The second writer scratched out the passage and
referred to the second volume of Riccioli's _Almagestum Novum_ for the
text of the order. The earlier writer was probably the librarian of
the Florentine convent from which this book came, and wrote this soon
after 1620. The later writer did his work after 1651, when Riccioli's
book was published. This copy of the _De Revolutionibus_ is now in the
Dartmouth College Library.]

If perchance there should be foolish speakers who, together with those
ignorant of all mathematics, will take it upon themselves to decide
concerning these things, and because of some place in the Scriptures
wickedly distorted to their purpose, should dare to assail this my
work, they are of no importance to me, to such an extent do I despise
their judgment as rash. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, the
writer celebrated in other ways but very little in mathematics, spoke
somewhat childishly of the shape of the earth when he derided those
who declared the earth had the shape of a ball.[442] So it ought not
to surprise students if such should laugh at us also. Mathematics is
written for mathematicians to whom these our labors, if I am not
mistaken, will appear to contribute something even to the
ecclesiastical state the headship of which your Holiness now occupies.
For it is not so long ago under Leo X when the question arose in the
Lateran Council about correcting the Ecclesiastical Calendar. It was
left unsettled then for this reason alone, that the length of the year
and of the months and the movements of the sun and moon had not been
satisfactorily determined. From that time on, I have turned my
attention to the more accurate observation of these, at the suggestion
of that most celebrated scholar, Father Paul, a bishop from Rome, who
was the leader then in that matter. What, however, I may have achieved
in this, I leave to the decision of your Holiness especially, and to
all other learned mathematicians. And lest I seem to your Holiness to
promise more about the value of this work than I can perform, I now
pass on to the undertaking.

[Footnote 442: These two sentences the Congregations in 1620 ordered
struck out, as part of their "corrections."]



APPENDIX C.

     THE DRAMA OF UNIVERSAL NATURE: in which are considered the
     efficient causes and the ends of all things, discussed in a
     connected series of five books, by JEAN BODIN, (Frankfort,
     1597).

     _Book V_: On the Celestial Bodies: their number, movement,
     size, harmony and distances compared with themselves and
     with the earth. Sections 1 and 10 (in part) and 12
     (entire).

     BODIN, JEAN: _Universæ Naturæ Theatrum in quo rerum omnium
     effectrices causa et fines contemplantur, et continuæ series
     quinque libris discutiuntur_. Frankfort, 1597. Book V
     translated into English by the writer and compared with the
     French translation by François de Fougerolles, (Lyons,
     1597).


_Section 1_: On the definition and the number of the spheres.

MYSTAGOGUE: ... Now to prove that the heavens have a nature endowed
with intelligence I need no other argument than that by which
Theophrastus and Alexander prove they are living, for, they say, if
the heavens did not have intelligence, they would be greatly inferior
in dignity and excellence to men. That is why Aben-Ezra,[443] having
interpreted the Hebrew of these two words of the Psalm: "The heavens
declare," has written that the phrase _Sapperim_ (declare) in the
judgment of all Hebrews is appropriate to such great intelligence.
Also he who said "When the morning stars sang together and shouted for
joy,"[444] indicated a power endowed with intelligence, as did the
Master of Wisdom[445] also when he said that God created the heavens
with intelligence.

[Footnote 443: As Rabbi David testified on the 19th Psalm [these
footnotes are by Bodin].]

[Footnote 444: Job: 38.]

[Footnote 445: Proverbs.]

THEODORE. I have learned in the schools that the spheres are not moved
of themselves but that they have separate intelligences who incite
them to movement.

MYST. That is the doctrine of Aristotle. But Theophrastus and
Alexander,[446] (when they teach that the spheres are animated bodies)
explain adequately that the spheres are agitated by their own
coëssential soul. For if the sky were turned by an intelligence
external to it, its movement would be accidental with the result that
it, and the stars with it, would not be moved otherwise, than as a
body without soul. But accidental motion is violent. And nothing
violent in nature can be of long duration. On the contrary there is
nothing of longer duration, nor more constant, than the movement of
the heavens.

[Footnote 446: Metaphysics: II. c. 6, de Coelo. I. c. 6.]

THEO. What do you call fixed stars?

MYST. Celestial beings who are gifted with intelligence and with
light, and who are in continual motion. This is sufficiently indicated
by the words of Daniel[447] when he wrote, that the souls of those who
have walked justly in this life, and who have brought men back to the
path of virtue, all have their seat and dwelling (like the gleaming
stars) among the heavens. By these words one can plainly understand
the essence and figure of the angels as well as of the celestial
beings; for while other beings have their places in this universe
assigned to them for their habitation, as the fish the sea, the cattle
the fields, and the wild beasts the mountains and forests, even as
Origen,[448] Eusebius, and Diodorus say, so the stars are assigned
positions in the heavens. This can also be understood by the curtains
of the tabernacle which Moses, the great Lawgiver, had ornamented with
the images of cherubim showing that the heavens were indicated by the
angelic faces of the stars. While St. Augustine,[449] Jerome,[450]
Thomas Aquinas[451] and Scotus most fitly called this universe a
being, nevertheless Albertus, Damascenus, and Thomas Aquinas deny that
the heavenly bodies are animated. But Thomas Aquinas shows himself in
this inconsistent and contradictory, for he confesses that spiritual
substances are united with the heavenly bodies, which could not be
unless they were united in the same hypostasis of an animated body. If
this body is animated, it must necessarily be living and either
rational or irrational. If, on the other hand, this spiritual
substance does not make the same hypostasis with the celestial body,
it will necessarily be that the movement of the sky is accidental, as
coming from the mover outside to the thing moved, no more nor less
than the movement of a wheel comes from the one who turns it: As this
is absurd, what follows from it is necessarily absurd also.

[Footnote 447: In his last chapter.]

[Footnote 448: Which is confirmed by Pico of Mirandola: Heptaplus: Bk.
V.]

[Footnote 449: Enchiridion: cap. 43; Gen.: 2 and 18.]

[Footnote 450: On Psalm: Audite coeli.]

[Footnote 451: Summa: pt. 1, art. 3, ques. 70.]

THEO. How many spheres are there?

MYST. It is difficult to determine their number because of the variety
of opinions among the authorities, each differing from the other, and
because of the inadequacy of the proofs of such things. For Eudoxus
has stated that the spheres with their deferents are not more than
three and twenty in number. Calippus has put it at thirty, and
Aristotle[452] at forty-seven, which Alexander Aphrodisiensis[453] has
amended by adding to it two more on the advice of Sosigenes. Ptolemy
holds that there are 31 celestial spheres not including the bodies of
the planets. Johan Regiomontanus says 33, an opinion which is followed
by nearly all, because in the time of Ptolemy they did not yet know
that the eighth sphere and all the succeeding ones are carried around
by the movement of the trepidation. Thus he held that the moon has
five orbits, Mercury six, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn each four,
aside from the bodies of the planets themselves, for beyond these are
still the spheres and deferents of the eighth and ninth spheres. But
Copernicus, reviving Eudoxus' idea, held that the earth moved around
the motionless sun; and he has also removed the epicycles with the
result that he has greatly reduced their number, so that one can
scarcely find eight spheres remaining.

[Footnote 452: Metaphy. XII.]

[Footnote 453: In his commentaries on Book XII of Metaph. where he
gives the opinion of Calippus and Eudoxus.]

THEO. What should one do with such a variety of opinions?

MYST. Have recourse to the sacred fountain of the Hebrews to search
out the mysteries of a thing so deeply hidden from man; for from them
we may obtain an absolutely certain decision. The Tabernacle which the
great Lawgiver Moses ordered to be made[454] was like the Archetype of
the universe, with its ten curtains placed around it each decorated
with the figures of cherubim thus representing the ten heavens with
the beauty of their resplendent stars. And even though Aben-Ezra did
not know of the movement of trepidation, nevertheless he interpreted
this passage, "The heavens are the work of Thy fingers" as indicating
the number of the ten celestial spheres. The Pythagoreans seem also to
have agreed upon the same number since, besides the earth and the
eight heavens, they imagine a sphere Anticthon because they did not
then clearly understand the celestial movements. They thought however,
all should be embraced in the tenth.

[Footnote 454: Ex. XVIII and following. Philo Judæus in the
Allegories.]

THEO. The authority of such writers has indeed so great weight with me
that I place their statements far in advance of the arguments of all
others. Nevertheless if it can be done, I should wish to have this
illustrated and confirmed by argument in order to satisfy those who
believe nothing except on absolute proof.

MYST. It can indeed be proved that there are ten mobile spheres in
which the fiery bodies accomplish their regular courses. Yet by these
arguments that ultimate, motionless sphere which embraces and
encircles all from our terrestial abode to its circumference within
its crystalline self, encompassing plainly the utmost shores and
limits of the universe, cannot be proved. For as it has been shown
before [in Book I] the elemental world was inundated by celestial
waters from above. Nor can it apparently be included in the number of
the spheres since (as we will point out later) as great a distance
exists between it and the nearest sphere as between the ocean and the
starry heaven. Furthermore it has been said before that the essence
of the spheres consists of fire and water which is not fitting for the
celestial waters above.

THEO. By what arguments then can it be proved there are ten spheres?

MYST. The ancients knew well that there were the seven spheres of the
planets, and an eighth sphere of the fixed stars which, down to the
time of Eudoxus and Meto, they thought had but one simple movement.
These men were the first who perceived by observation that the fixed
stars were carried backward quite contrary to the movement of the
Primum Mobile. After them came Timochares, Hipparchus, and Menelaus,
and later Ptolemy, who confirmed these observations perceiving that
the fixed stars (which people had hitherto thought were fixed in their
places) had been separated from their station. For this reason they
thought best to add a ninth sphere to the eight inferior ones. Much
later an Arabian and a Spanish king, Mensor and Alphonse, great
students of the celestial sciences, in their observations noticed that
the eighth sphere with the seven following moved in turning from the
north to the east, then towards the south, and so to the west, finally
returning to the north, and that such a movement was completed in 7000
years. This Johannus Regiomontanus, a Franconian, has proved, with a
skill hitherto equalled only by that of those who proved the ninth
sphere, which travels from west to east. From this it is necessarily
concluded that there are ten spheres.

THEO. Why so?

MYST. Because every natural body[455] has but one movement which is
its own by nature; all others are either voluntary or through
violence, contrary to the nature of a mobile object; for just as a
stone cannot of its own impulse ascend and descend, so one and the
same sphere cannot of itself turn from the east to the west and from
the west to the east and still less from the north to the south and
south to north.

[Footnote 455: Aristotle: Metaph. II and XII and de Coelo I.]

THEO. What then?

MYST. It follows from this that the extremely rapid movement by which
all the spheres are revolved in twenty-four hours, belongs to the
Primum Mobile, which we call the tenth sphere, and which carries with
it all the nine lesser spheres; that the second or planetary movement,
that is, from west to east, is communicated to the lesser spheres and
belongs to the ninth sphere; that the third movement, resembling a
person staggering, belongs to the eighth sphere with which it affects
the other lesser spheres and makes them stagger in a measure outside
of the poles, axes and centres of the greater spheres.


_Section 10_: On the position of the universe according to its
divisions.

* * * *

THEO. Does it not also concern Physics to discuss those things that
lie outside the universe?

MYST. If there were any natural body beyond the heavens, most
assuredly it would concern Physics, that is, the observer and student
of nature. But in the book of Origins,[456] the Master workman is said
to have separated the waters and placed the firmament in between them.
The Hebrew philosophers declare that the crystalline sphere which
Ezekiel[457] called the great crystal and upon which he saw God
seated, as he wrote, is as far beyond the farthermost heaven as our
ocean is far from that heaven, and that this orb is motionless and
therefore is called God's throne. For "seat" implies quiet and
tranquility which could be proper for none other than the one immobile
and immutable God. This is far more probable and likely than
Aristotle's absurd idea, unworthy the name of a philosopher, by which
he placed the eternal God in a moving heaven as if He were its source
of motion and in such fashion that He was constrained of necessity to
move it. We have already refuted this idea. It has also been shown
that these celestial waters full of fertility and productiveness
sometimes are spread abroad more widely and sometimes less so, as
though obviously restrained, whence the heavens are said to be
closed[458] and roofed[459] with clouds or that floods burst forth out
of the heaven to inundate the earth. Finally we read in the Holy
Scriptures that the eternal God is seated upon the flood.

[Footnote 456: Gen.: 1.]

[Footnote 457: Chap. 1 and 10. Exod.: 24.]

[Footnote 458: I Kings: 8. Deut.: 28.]

[Footnote 459: Psalm 146.]

THEO. Why then are not eleven spheres counted?

MYST. Because the crystalline sphere is said to have been separated
from the inferior waters by the firmament, and it therefore cannot be
called a heaven. Furthermore motion is proper to all the heavens, but
the crystalline one is stationary. That is why Rabi Akiba called[460]
it a marble counterpart of the universe. This also is signified in the
construction of the altar which was covered with a pavilion in
addition to its ten curtains for, as it is stated elsewhere,[461] God
covers the heavens with clouds, and the Scriptures often make mention
of the waters beyond the heavens.[462] There are those, however, who
teach that the Hebrew word _Scamajim_ may be applied only to a dual
number, so that they take it to mean the crystalline sphere and the
starry one. But I think those words in Solomon's speech[463] "the
heaven of heaven, and the heavens of the heavens" refer in the
singular to the crystalline sphere, in the plural to the ten lesser
spheres.

[Footnote 460: According to Maymon: Perplexorum, III.]

[Footnote 461: Psalm 147.]

[Footnote 462: Psalm 148. Gen. 1 and 7.]

[Footnote 463: Also in Psalm 67 and 123.]

THEO. It does not seem so marvelous to me that an aqueous or
crystalline sphere exists beyond the ten spheres, as that it is as far
beyond the furthermost sphere as the ocean is far this side of it,
that is, as astrologists teach, 1040 terrestrial diameters.

MYST. It is written most plainly that the firmament holds the middle
place between the two waters. Therefore God is called[464] in Hebrew
_Helion_, the Sun, that is, the Most High, and under His feet the
heaven is spread like a crystal,[465] although He is neither excluded
nor included in any part of the universe, it is however consistent
with His Majesty to be above all the spheres and to fill heaven and
earth with His infinite power as Isaiah[466] indicated when he writes:
"His train filled the temple;" it is the purest and simplest act, the
others are brought about by forces and powers. He alone is
incorporeal, others are corporeal or joined to bodies. He alone is
eternal, others according to their nature are transitory and fleeting
unless they are strengthened by the Creator's might; wherefore the
Chaldean interpreter is seen everywhere to have used the words,
Majesty, Glory or Power in place of the presence of God.

[Footnote 464: Psalm 92.]

[Footnote 465: Exod. 24. Ezek. 1, 10.]

[Footnote 466: Isa. 6.]

THEO. Nevertheless so vast and limitless a space must be filled with
air or fire, since there are no spheres there, nor will nature suffer
any vacuum.

MYST. If then the firmament occupies the middle position between the
two waters, then by this hypothesis you must admit that the space
beyond the spheres is empty of elemental and celestial bodies;
otherwise you would have to admit that the last sphere extends on even
to the crystalline orb, which can in no way be reconciled with the
Holy Scriptures and still less with reason because of the incredible
velocity of this sphere. Therefore it is far more probable that this
space is filled with angels.

THEO. Is there some medium between God and the angels which shares in
the nature of both?

MYST. What is incorporeal and indivisible cannot communicate any part
of its essence to another; for if a creature had any part of the
divine essence, it would be all God, since God neither has parts nor
can be divided, therefore He must be separated from all corporeal
contact or intermixture.


_Section 12_: On guardian angels.

THEO. What then in corporeal nature is closest to God?

MYST. The two Seraphim, who stand near the eternal Creator,[467] and
who are said to have six wings, two wherewith to fly, the others to
cover head and feet. By this is signified the admirable swiftness with
which they fulfill His commands, yet head and feet are veiled for so
the purpose of their origin and its earliest beginning are not known
to us. Also they have eyes scattered in all parts of their bodies to
indicate that nothing is hidden from them. And they also pour oil for
lighting through a funnel into the seven-branched candlestick; that
is, strength and power are poured forth by the Creator to the seven
planets, so that we should turn from created things to the worship and
love of the Creator.

[Footnote 467: Isa. 6. Ezek. 1 and 10. Zach. 4. Exod. 24, 25.]

THEO. Since nothing is more fitting for the Divine goodness than to
create, to generate, and to pile up good things for all, whence comes
the destruction of the world and the ruin of all created things?

MYST. It is true Plato and Aristotle attributed the cause of all ills
to the imperfection of matter in which they thought was some
_kakopoion_,[468] but that is absurd since it is distinctly written:
All that God had made was good, or as the Hebrews express it,
beautiful,--so evil is nothing-else than the absence[469] or privation
of good.

[Footnote 468: Maleficium quidam, _i.e._, some evil-power. Job 5.]

[Footnote 469: Augustine against Faustus wrote that vanity is not
produced from the dust, nor evil from the earth.]

THEO. Can not wicked angels be defined without privation since they
are corporeal essences?

MYST. Anything that exists is said to be good and to be a participant
by its existence in the divine goodness; and even as in a well
regulated Republic, executioners, lictors, and corpse-bearers are no
less necessary than magistrates, judges and overseers; so in the
Republic of this world, for the generation, management and
guardianship of things God has gathered together angels as leaders and
directors for all the celestial places, for the elements, for living
beings, for plants, for minerals, for states, provinces, families and
individuals. And not only has He done this, but He has also assigned
His servants, lictors, avengers and others to places where they may do
nothing without His order, nor inflict any punishment upon wicked men
unless the affair has been known fully and so decided. Thus God is
said[470] to have made Leviathan, which is the outflow of Himself,
that is, the natural rise and fall of all things. "I have created a
killer,"[471] He said, "to destroy," and so also Behemoth, and the
demons cleaving to him, which are often called ravens, eagles and
lions, and which are said to beg their food of God, that is, the
taking of vengeance upon the wicked whose punishment and death they
feed upon as upon ordinary fare. From these, therefore, or rather from
ourselves, come death, pestilence, famine, war and those things we
call ills, and not from the Author of all good things except by
accident. For so God says of Himself:[472] "I am the God making good
and creating evil, making light and creating darkness." For when He
withdraws His spirit, evil follows the good; when He takes the light
away, darkness is created; as when one removes the pillars of a
building, the ruin of a house follows. If He takes the vital spark
away, death follows; nor can He be said to do evil[473] to anyone in
taking back what is His own.

[Footnote 470: Job 41 and 49. Isa. 54. Ezek. 31.]

[Footnote 471: Isa. 54.]

[Footnote 472: Isa. 45.]

[Footnote 473: Job 34.]

THEO. When the Legislator asked Him to disclose His face to his gaze,
why did the Architect of the universe and the Author of all things
reply: "My face is to be seen by no mortal man, but only my back?"

MYST. This fine allegory signifies that God cannot be known from
superior or antecedent causes but from behind His back, that is, from
results, for a little later He adds, "I will cover thine eyes with My
hand." Thus the hand signifies those works which He has placed before
anyone's eyes, and it indicates that He places man not in an obscure
corner but in the center of the universe so that He might better and
more easily than in heaven contemplate the universe and all His works
through the sight of which, as through spectacles, the Sun, that is,
God Himself, may be disclosed. And therefore we undertook this
disputation concerning nature and natural things, so that even if they
are but slightly explained, nevertheless we may attain from this
disquisition an imperfect knowledge of the Creator and may break forth
in His praises with all our might, that at length by degrees we may be
borne on high and be blessed by the Divine reward; for this is indeed
the supreme and final good for a man.

     Here endeth the Drama of Nature which Jean Bodin wrote while
     all France was aflame with civil war.

FINIS



APPENDIX D.

A TRANSLATION OF A LETTER BY THOMAS FEYENS

ON THE QUESTION: IS IT TRUE THAT THE HEAVENS ARE MOVED AND THE EARTH
IS AT REST? (FEBRUARY, 1619)

     (_Thomæ Fieni Epistolica Quæstio_: An verum sit, coelum
     moveri et terram quiescere? Londini, 1655.)


To the eminent and noble scholars, Tobias Matthias and George Gays:

It is proved that the heavens are moved and the earth is stationary:
First; by authority; for besides the fact that this is asserted by
Aristotle and Ptolemy whom wellnigh all Philosophers and
Mathematicians have followed by unanimous consent, except for
Copernicus, Bernardus Patricius[474] and a very few others, the Holy
Scriptures plainly attest it in at least two places which I have seen.
In Joshua,[475] are the words: Steteruntque sol et luna donec
ulcisceretur gens de inimicis suis. And a little further on: Stetit
itaque sol in medio coeli, et non festinavit occumbere spatio unius
diei, et non fuit antea et postea tam longa dies. The Scriptures
obviously refer by these words to the motion of the _primum mobile_ by
which the sun and the moon are borne along in their diurnal course and
the day is defined; and it indicates that the heavens are moved as
well as the _primum mobile_. Then Ecclesiastes, chapter 1,[476] reads:
Generatio præterit, et generatio advenit, terra autem semper stat,
oritur sol et occidit, et ad locum suum revertitur.

[Footnote 474: Feyens probably refers here to Francesco Patrizzi, who
was an enemy of the peripatetics and a great supporter of platonism.
He died in 1597 at Rome, where Clement VIII had conferred on him the
chair of philosophy.]

[Footnote 475: Joshua X: 13-14.]

[Footnote 476: Ecclesiastes I: 4.]

Secondly, it is proved by reason. All the heavens and stars were made
in man's behalf and, with other terrestrial bodies, are the servants
of man to warm, light, and vivify him.

This they could not do unless in moving they applied themselves by
turns to different parts of the world. And it is more likely that they
would apply themselves by their own movement to man and the place in
which man lives, than that man should come to them by the movement of
his own seat or habitation. For they are the servants of man; man is
not their servant; therefore it is more probable that the heavens are
moved and the earth is at rest than that the reverse is true.

Thirdly; no probable argument can be thought out from philosophy to
prove that the earth is moved and the heavens are at rest. Nor can it
be done by mathematics. By saying that the heavens are moved and the
earth is at rest, all phenomena of the heavenly bodies can be solved.
Just as in the same way in optics all can be solved by saying either
that sight comes from the thing to the eye, or that rays go from the
eye to the thing seen; so is it in astronomy. Therefore one ought
rather to abide in the ancient and general opinion than in one
received recently without justification.

Fourthly; the earth is the center of the universe; all the heavenly
bodies are observed to be moved around it; therefore it itself ought
to be motionless, for anything that moves, it seems, should move
around or above something that is motionless.

Fifthly; if the earth is moved in a circle, either it moves that way
naturally or by force, either by its own nature or by the nature of
another. It is not by its own nature, for straight motion from above
downward is natural to it; therefore circular motion could not be
natural to it. Further, the earth is a simple body; and a simple body
can not have two natural motions of distinct kinds or classes. Nor is
it moved by another body; for by what is it moved? One has to say it
is moved either by the sun or by some other celestial body; and this
cannot be said, since either the sun or that body is said to be at
rest or in motion. If it is said to be at rest, then it cannot impart
movement to another. If it is said to be in motion, then it can not
move the earth, because it ought to move either by a motion similar to
its own or the opposite of it. It is not similar, since thus it would
be observed to move neutrally as when two boats moving in the same
direction, appear not to move but to be at rest. It is not the
opposite motion, since nothing could give motion contrary to its own.
And because Galileo seems to say, in so far as I have learned from
your lordships, that the earth was moved by the sun; I prove anyway
that this is not true since the movement of the sun and of the earth
ought to be from contrary and distinct poles. The sun, however, can
not be the cause of the other's movement because it is moved above
different poles. Lastly, the earth follows the motion of no other
celestial body; since if it is moved, it moves in 24 hours, and all
the other celestial bodies require the space of many days, months and
years. Ergo. Finally, if the earth is moved by another, its motion
would be violent; but this is absurd, for no violence can be regular
and perpetual.

Sixthly; even so it is declared that the earth is moved. Nevertheless,
it must be admitted to this that either the planets themselves or
their spheres are moved, for in no other way can the diversities of
aspects among themselves be solved; nor can a reason be given why the
sun does not leave the Ecliptic and the moon does; and how a planet
can be stationary or retrograde, high or low,--and many other
phenomena. For this reason those who said the earth moved, as
Bernardus Patricius and the others said, claimed that the _primum
mobile_, forsooth, was stationary and that the earth was moved in its
place; yet they could not in the least deny that the planets
themselves were moved, but admitted it. That is the reason why both
ancient and modern mathematicians, aside from the motion of the
_primum mobile_, were forced to admit and consider the peculiar
movements of the planets themselves. If therefore it must be
acknowledged, and it is certain, that the stars and the celestial
bodies are moved; then it is more probable that all movement perceived
in the universe belongs rather to the heavenly bodies than to the
earth. For if movement were ascribed to all the rest, why for that
same reason is not diurnal rotation ascribed rather to the _primum
mobile_ than to the earth, particularly when our senses seem to decide
thus? Although one may well be mistaken, sometimes, concerning other
similar movements; yet it is not probable that all ages could be at
fault, or should be, about the movements of its most important
objects, of course the celestial luminaries.

Seventhly; it is proved by experience. For if the earth is moved, then
an arrow shot straight up on high could never fall back to the place
whence it was shot, but should fall somewhere many miles away. But
this is not so. Ergo.

This can be answered and is so customarily in this way: this does not
follow because the air is swept along with the earth, and so, since
the air which carries the arrow is turning in the same way with the
earth, the arrow also is borne along equally with it, and thus returns
to the same spot. This in truth is a pure evasion and a worthless
answer for many reasons.

It is falsely observed that the air is moved and by the same motion as
the earth. For what should move the earth? Truly, if the air is moved
by the same motion as the earth, either it ought to be moved by the
earth itself, or by that other which moves the earth, or by itself. It
is not moved by itself; since it has another motion, the straight one
of course natural to itself, and also since it has a nature, an
essence and qualities all different from the nature and the essence of
the earth; therefore it could not by its own nature have the same
motion as that other, but of necessity ought to have a different one.

Nor is it moved by any other that may move the earth; as that which
moves the earth could not at the same time and with like motion move
the air. For since the air is different from the earth in essence, in
both active and passive qualities, and in kind of substance, it can
not receive the impelling force of the acting body, or that force
applied in the same way as the earth, and so could not be moved in the
same way. The virtues [of bodies] acting and of moving diversely are
received by the recipients according to the diversity of their
dispositions. Also it can not be moved by the earth; since if it were
moved by the earth, it must be said to be moved by force, but such
motion appears to be impossible. Ergo. The minor premise is proved:
for if air is thus moved by the earth by force the air ought to be
moved more rapidly than the earth, because air is larger [than the
earth].

For what is outside is larger than what is inside. When, however, what
is larger and what is outside is driven around equally rapidly with
what is less, and what is inside, then the former is moved much more
rapidly. Thus it is true that the sphere of Saturn in its daily course
is moved far faster than the sphere of the moon. But it is impossible
that the one driven should move more rapidly than the one driving;
therefore the air is not moved by the earth's violence. Thus would it
be if the air were moved with the earth, or by itself, or by force.
Thus far, then, the force of the original argument remains; since of
its own motion, indeed, it could not be in every way conformable to
the motion of the earth as I have shown; and this because the air
differs from the earth in consistency of substance, in qualities and
in essence. But the air ought at all events to move more sluggishly
than the earth. It follows from this that an arrow shot straight up
could not return to its starting point; for the earth, moving like the
air, on account of the other's slower rate leaves it behind, and the
arrow also which is carried away from it.

Besides, if the air does not move so rapidly as the earth, a man
living in a very high tower, however quiet the air, ought then always
to feel the strongest wind and the greatest disturbance of the air.

Since mountains and towers are moved with the earth, and the air would
not be accompanying them at an equal speed, it would necessarily
follow that they would precede the air by cleaving and cutting and
ploughing through it which ought to make a great wind perceptible.

Eighthly; if a person stood in some very high tower or other high
place and aimed from that tower at some spot of earth perpendicularly
below his eye, and allowed a very heavy stone to fall following that
perpendicular line, it is absolutely certain that that stone would
land upon the spot aimed at perpendicularly underneath. But if the
earth is moved, it would be impossible for the stone to strike that
spot.

This I prove first: because either the air moves at an unequal rate
with the earth; or it moves equally rapidly. If not equally, then it
is certain the stone could not land at that spot, since the earth's
movement would outstrip the stone borne by the air. If equally
rapidly, then again the stone could not land at that spot, since
although the air was moving in itself at an equal speed, yet on that
account it could not carry the stone thus rapidly with itself and
carrying it downward falling by its own weight, for the stone tending
by gravity towards the center resists the carrying of the air.

You will say: if the earth is moved in a circle, so are all its parts;
wherefore that stone in falling not only moves in a circle by the
carrying of the air, but also in a circle because of its own nature as
being part of the earth and having the same motion with it.

Verily this answer is worthless. For although the stone is turned in a
circle by its own nature like the earth, yet its own natural gravity
impeded it so that it is borne along that much the less swiftly,
unlike the air or the earth, both of which are in their natural places
and which in consequence have no gravity as a stone falling from on
high has.

Lastly; because although the stone is moved in the world by its own
nature like the whole earth, yet it is not borne along as swiftly as
the whole earth. For as one stone by its own weight falls from the
heaven following its own direct motion straight to the center just as
a part of the earth, so also the whole earth itself would fall; and
yet it would not fall so swiftly as the whole earth, for although the
stone would be borne along in its sphere like the whole earth just as
a part of it, yet it would not be borne along as swiftly as the whole
earth; and so, in whatever way it is said, the motion of the earth
ought always to outstrip the stone and leave it a long distance
behind. Thus a stone could never fall at the point selected or a point
perpendicularly beneath it. This is false. Ergo.

Ninthly: If the earth is moved in a circular orbit, it ought to pass
from the west through the meridian to the east; consequently the air
ought to move by the same path. But if this were so, then if an archer
shot toward the east, his arrow ought to fly much farther than if he
shot toward the west. For when he shot toward the east, the arrow
would fly with the natural movement of the air and would have that
supporting it. But when he shot toward the west, he would have the
motion of the air against him and then the arrow would struggle
against it. But it is certain the arrow ought to go much farther and
faster when the movement of the air is favorable to it then when
against it, as is obvious in darts sent out with a favoring wind.
Ergo.

Similarly not a few other arguments can be worked out, but there are
none as valuable for proof as the foregoing ones. Though these were
written by me with a flying pen far from books and sick in bed with a
broken leg, yet they seem to me to have so much value that I do not
see any way by which they could rightly be refuted. These I have
written for your gracious lordships in gratitude for your goodwill on
the occasion of our conversation at your dinner four days ago; and I
ask for them that you meditate on them justly and well.



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II

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III

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INDEX


  Addison, J., 91-92.

  Agricola, G.L., 77.

  Albategnius, 15.

  Allaben, F., 103.

  Alphonse X of Castile, 15, 119.

  Ambrose, 16.

  Arabian astronomers, 15, 16, 20, 119.

  Archimedes, 11.

  Aristarchus of Samos, 11-12n., 13, 27n., 43, 46.

  Aristotle, 10, 18, 72, 81, 116, 117, 120, 122, 124.

  Augustine, 16, 17, 18.


  Bacon, Francis, 50, 72-73.

  Bacon, Roger, 20.

  Bayle, Pierre, 95-96.

  Bellarmin, Cardinal, 56, 58-59, 66.

  Benedict XIV, 69.

  Bessel, 38, 106.

  Bodin, Jean, 45-47, 104-105, 115-123.

  Boscovich, 69, 97.

  Bossuet, 97.

  Bradley, 38, 98.

  Browne, Thomas, 87-88.

  Bruno, 32, 39, 47-52, 82, 87, 88, 105, 106.

  Burton, Richard [Transcriber's Note: Robert], 88.


  Calvin, 41, 69, 99.

  Cartesian-Copernicans, 85-86, 91, 95, 98, 106.

  Cassini, G.D., 96-97.

  Castelli, 56, 67.

  Church Fathers, 17-18, 117.

  Cicero, 11, 12, 27, 111.

  Cleanthes, 13.

  Clement of Alexandria, 16.

  Clement VIII, 124n.

  Congregations of the Index, 52, 57-60, 65-71, 74, 79, 83, 101, 106,
  113.

  Copernicus, 12, 20, 21, 33, 35, 63, 81, 82-83, 88, 90, 99, 100, 102,
  104, 109, 118, 124.
    name, 23n.
    life, 23-29.
    theory, 5, 27-28, 64, 66, 68, 97-101, 104, 105-106.
    opponents, 32, 35, 39-40, 41, 45-48, 58-60, 69, 71-84, 94, 96,
      101-104.
    supporters, 30, 31, 35-38, 39, 42-43, 44-45, 48, 49-52, 53-55, 56,
      60, 71-72, 74-77, 89-94, 95-96, 97-99.


  Dante, 18.

  Delambre, 80, 81.

  de Maupertius, 96.

  de Peyster, J.W., 103.

  de Premontval, Mme., 95.

  _De Revolutionibus_, 26, 27, 42, 60, 70, 105-106, 109-115.

  Descartes, 82, 85, 97.

  Didacus à Stunica, 44, 60, 70, 82, 100.

  Digges, Thomas, 87n.

  Diogenes Laërtius, 10.

  Dominicus Maria di Novara, 24, 25.

  DuBartas, 43.


  Fénelon, 97.

  Feyens, Thomas, 60, 74, 124-129.

  Flammarion, 41.

  Forbes, Duncan, 94.

  Foscarini, 60, 70, 71-72, 82, 100.

  Foucault, 38, 102.

  Froidmont, see Fromundus.

  Fromundus, 60, 69, 74-75, 82.


  Galileo, 16, 37, 52-69, 70, 73, 74-75, 77, 79, 82, 83, 85, 86, 99,
    100, 105, 106, 125.

  Gassendi, 82, 91, 97.

  Gilbert, Wm., 50, 82, 87.

  Greek philosophers, 10-12, 27, 46, 119.


  Herbert, George, 88-89.

  Hipparchos, 13, 34.

  Hicetas, 11, 111.

  Horne, George, 94.

  Hutchinson, John, 94.

  Huygens, Christian, 88, 95.


  Index, 52, 60, 69-70, 95, 97, 99, 100.

  Inquisition, 51, 52, 56, 57-60, 64-67, 69, 84, 99.

  Isidore of Seville, 18.


  Jasper, Bro., 99.

  Jesuits, 55, 56, 76, 77, 79, 85, 97-98, 100.

  Johnson, S., 87.

  Justus-Lipsius, 74, 82.


  Keble, J., 93.

  Keill, J., 90-91.

  Kepler, 29, 34, 35-37, 47, 48, 53, 55, 70, 82, 100, 105, 106.

  Knap, 102.

  Kromer, M., 47n.


  Lactantius, 16, 115.

  Lalande, 99.

  Lange, J.R., 103.

  Lansberg, 74-75, 82.

  Leo X, 115.

  Liège, Univ. of, 76, 97-98.

  Longomontanus, 79.

  Louvain, Univ. of, 60, 74, 75-77, 86, 98.

  Luther, 31, 39, 69, 99.

  Lutherans, 101, 103, 105.


  Mæstlin, 36, 37, 48, 81.

  Martianus Capella, 74.

  Mather, Cotton, 92.

  Melancthon, 31, 39-41, 99.

  Milton, 43, 67, 89.

  Mivart, 101.

  Montaigne, 45.


  _Narratio Prima_, 31, 106.

  Newton, 37, 67, 86, 87, 90.

  Nicolas Cusanus, 22, 23.


  Origen, 16.

  Osiander, 29, 32.

  Owen, J., 89n., 99.


  Paul III, 109.

  Paul V, 56-60, 63, 69, 83.

  Peter Lombard, 18.

  Peter the Great, 96.

  Philastrius, 17.

  Philo Judæus, 16.

  Philolaus, 11, 112.

  Piegeon, J., 96.

  Pike, S., 94.

  Pius VII, 70.

  Plato, 10, 122.

  Plutarch, 10, 13, 27, 111.

  Pope, Alexander, 91, 93.

  Pseudo-Dionysius, 18.

  Ptolemy, 9n., 13, 14, 81, 107-109, 117, 119, 124.
    theory, 5, 16, 19, 27, 35, 53, 54, 66, 80, 83, 85, 96-100.

  Pürbach, 21.

  Pythagoras, 10, 11, 102.

  Pythagoreans, 109, 112.


  Recorde, R., 42-43.

  Regiomontanus, 20, 21, 81, 117, 119.

  Reinhold, Erasmus, 31.

  Rheticus, 29-31, 39, 81, 106.

  Riccioli, 5, 22, 79-84, 100, 113.

  Roberts, 101.

  Roemer, 38.


  Sacrobosco, 16, 41, 77.

  Salamanca, Univ. of, 16, 44.

  Schoepffer, C., 102.

  Schwilgué, 42.

  Settele, 99, 106.

  Shakespeare, 50.

  Sindico, 103.

  Stephen, Leslie, 94.


  Thomas Aquinas, 18.

  Turrettin, 99.

  Turrinus, J., 83.

  Tycho Brahe, 14, 32-37, 47, 82, 105.
    theory, 34, 48, 74, 77, 79, 80, 85, 96, 98, 102, 105.


  Urban VIII, 63-69.


  Van Welden, M., 76-77.

  Vitruvius, 14.

  Voight, J.H., 77-78.

  von Schönberg, N., 30, 39, 110.


  Wallis, 84n.

  Wesley, J., 93, 99.

  Whewell, 16, 89.

  Widmanstadt, 30, 39.

  Wilkins, Bp., 89-90, 95.

  Wren, Dean, 87-88.


  Yale, Univ. of, 91.


  Zytphen, 102.





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