230 HISTORY OF FORMAL ASTRONOMY. 



Sect. 4. The Copernican Si/stem opposed on Theological Grounds. 



THE doctrine of the Earth's motion round the Sun, when i,t was 

 asserted and promulgated by Copernicus, soon after 1500, excited no 

 visible alarm among the theologians of his own time. Indeed, it was 

 received with favor by the most intelligent ecclesiastics ; and lectures 

 in support of the heliocentric doctrine were delivered in the ecclesias- 

 tical colleges. But the assertion and confirmation of this doctrine by 

 Galileo, about a century later, excited a storm of controversy, and was 

 visited with severe condemnation. Galileo's own behavior appears 

 to have provoked the interference of the ecclesiastical authorities ; but 

 there must have been a great change in the temper of the times to 

 make it possible for his adversaries to bring down the sentence of the 

 Inquisition upon opinions which had been so long current without 

 giving any serious offence. 



[2d Ed.] [It appears to me that the different degree of toleration 

 accorded to the heliocentric theory in the time of Copernicus and of 

 Galileo, must be ascribed in a great measure to the controversies and 

 alarms which had in the mean time arisen out of the Reformation in 

 religion, and which had rendered the Romish Church more jealous of 

 innovations in received opinions than it had previously been. It 

 appears too that the discussion of such novel doctrines was, at that 

 time at least, less freely tolerated in Italy than in other countries. In 

 1597, Kepler writes to Galileo thus : "Confide Galilaee et progredere. 

 Si bene conjecto, pauci de pnecipuis Europse Mathematicis a nobis 

 secedere volent; tanta vis est veritatis. Si tibi Italia minus est idonea 

 ad publicationem et si aliqua habitures es impedimenta, forsan Ger- 

 mania nobis hanc libertatem coucedet." Veuturi, Mem. di Galileo, 

 vol. i. p. 19. 



I would not however be understood to assert the condemnation of 

 new doctrines in science to be either a general or a characteristic 

 practice of the Romish Church. Certainly the' intelligent and culti- 

 vated minds of Italy, and many of the most eminent of her ecclesiastics 

 among them, have always been the foremost in promoting and welcom- 

 ing the progress of science : and, as I have stated, there w r ere found 

 among the Italian ecclesiastics of Galileo's time many of the earliest 

 and most enlightened adherents of the Copernican system. The con- 

 demnation of the doctrine of the earth's motion, is, so far as I am 

 aware, the only instance in which the Papal authority has pronounced 

 a decree upon a point of science. And the most candid of the adhe- 



