NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 583 



at Rome lie was uo longer safe. To announce his discovery there 

 as a theory or a paradox might amuse the papal court, but to an- 

 nounce it as a truth — as the truth — was a far different matter. He 

 therefore returned to his little town in Poland. 



To publish his thought as it had now developed was evidently 

 dangerous even there, and for more than thirty years it lay slum- 

 bering in the mind of Copernicus and of the friends to whom he 

 had privately intrusted it. 



At last he prepares his great work on the Revolutions of the 

 Heavenly Bodies, and dedicates it to the Pope himself. He next 

 seeks a place of publication : he dares not send it to Rome, for 

 there are the rulers of the older Church ready to seize it ; he dares 

 not send it to Wittenberg, for there are the leaders of Protestant- 

 ism no less hostile; it is therefore intrusted to Osiander, at Nu- 

 remberg.* 



* For germs of heliocentric theory planted long before, etc., see Sir G. C. Lewis ; and 

 for a succinct statement of the claims of Pythagoras, Philolaus, Aristarchus, and Martianus 

 Capella, see Hoefer, Ilistoire de I'Astronomie, 1873, p. 107 et seq. ; also, Heller, Geschichte 

 der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, pp. 12, 13 ; also, pp. 99 et seq. For germs among 

 thinkers of India, see Whewell, vol. i, p. 277 ; also, Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic 

 Studies, New York, 1874; Essay on the Lunar Zodiac, p. 345. For the views of Vincent 

 de Beauvais, see his Speculum Naturale, edition of 1480, lib. xvi, cap. 21. For Cardinal 

 d'-\illy's view, see his Ymago Mundi, 1490, treatise De Concordia Astronomicae Veritatis 

 cum Theologia. 



For general statement of De Cusa's work, see Draper, Intellectual Development of 

 Europe, p. 512. For skillful use of De Cusa's view in order to mitigate censure upon the 

 Church for its treatment of Copernicus's discovery, see an article in the Catholic World 

 for January, 1869. For a very exact statement, in a spirit of judicial fairness, see Whew- 

 ell, History of the Inductive Sciences, p. 275 and pp. 379, 380. In the latter, Whewell 

 cites the exact words of De Cusa in the De Docta Ignorantia, and sums up in these words : 

 " This train of thought might be a preparation for the reception of the Copernican sys- 

 tem ; but it is very different from the doctrine that the sun is the center of the planetary 

 system." Whewell says; " De Cusa propounded the doctrine of the motion of the earth 

 more as a paradox than a reality. We can not consider this as any distinct anticipation 

 of a profound and consistent view of the truth." On De Cusa, see also Heller, vol. i, p. 216. 

 For Aristotle's views, and their elaboration by St. Thomas Aquinas, see the De Coelo et 

 Mundo, sec. xx, and elsewhere in the latter. It is curious to see how even such a biog- 

 rapher as Archbishop Vaughan slurs over the angelic doctor's errors. See Vaughan's Life 

 and Labors of St. Thomas of Aquin, pp. 459, 460. 



Copernicus's Danger at Borne. — The Catholic World for January, 1869, cites a speech 

 of the Archbishop of Mechlin, before the University of Louvain, to the effect that Coper- 

 nicus defended his theory at Rome, in 1500, before two thousand scholars; also, that an- 

 other professor taught the system in 1528, and was made apostolic notary by Clement 

 Vin. All this, even if the doctrines taught were identical with those of Copernicus, as 

 finally developed, which is simply not the case, avails nothing against the overwhelming 

 testimony that Copernicus felt himself in danger — testimony which the after-history of 

 the Copernican theory renders invincible. The very title of Fromundus's book, already 

 cited, published within a few miles of the archbishop's own cathedral, and sanctioned 

 expressly by the theological faculty of that same University of Louvain in 1630, utterly 

 refutes the archbishop's idea that the Church was inclined to treat Copernicus kindly. 



