254 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



there was a professor for arithmetic and the sphere, and one for 

 Euclid, Peurbach's planetary theory and the Almagest, but their 

 students were few. . . . So, says a German writer, we face the 

 extraordinary fact that the most educated of the nation were as 

 helpless in the problems of daily life as a marketwoman of to-day. 

 The university lectures in mathematics were mainly confined 

 to the most elementary computation, matters taught more 

 thoroughly in the commercial schools, particularly after the 

 invention of printing. 



GIORDANO BRUNO (1548-1600). In the Appendix will be 

 found the judgment and sentence of the Inquisition upon 

 Galileo, together with his recantation, one of the darkest pages 

 in the history of Science. Another victim of the Inquisition was 

 Bruno, an Italian philosopher, who, having joined the Dominican 

 order at the age of fifteen, was later accused of impiety and sub- 

 jected to persecution. Bruno fled from Rome to France, and 

 later to England, where at Oxford he disputed on the rival merits 

 of the Copernican and the so-called Aristotelian systems of the 

 universe. In 1584 he published an exposition of the Copernican 

 theory. Bruno, moreover, attacked the established religion, jeered 

 at the monks, scoffed at the Jewish records, miracles, etc., and 

 after revisiting Paris, and residing for a time in Wittenberg, rashly 

 returned to Italy, where he was apprehended by the Inquisition 

 and thrown into prison. After seven years of confinement he 

 was excommunicated and, on Feb. 17, 1600, burnt at the stake. 

 In 1889 a statue in his honor was unveiled in Rome at the place 

 of his execution, the Square of the Flower Market. Thus was 

 the end of the sixteenth century illuminated by the flames of 

 martyrdom. 



REFERENCES FOR READING 



BALL. Short History of Mathematics, Chapters XII, XIII. 



FAHIE. Life of Galileo. 



GALILEO GALILEI. Two New Sciences. (Translated by Crew and De Salvio.) 



HOBSON. John Napier and the Invention of Logarithms. 



LODGE. Pioneers of Science (Galileo) . 



MACH. Science of Mechanics (for Galileo and Stevinus). 



MORLET. Life of Cardan. 



